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3 The Politics of Recognition and “Pressure Groups” Citizenship is being put to a new test in Botswana, as it is in a growing number of democracies around the world at the beginning of the millennium . The test comes in the politics of recognition.1 In these democracies there is a liberal idea so little questioned that it is readily taken to be the core, if not the be all and end all, of citizenship. It is the idea that citizenship means that every citizen has rights as an individual, equal before the law, the same rights for all. Yet citizenship means more than that in these and perhaps most other democracies; some provision holds for the group rights of citizens.2 Both the extent and direction of that provision, however, have recently been contested. Who should have which group rights and under what circumstances? Underlying this question, of course, are others about the reshaping of liberal democracy, about the integration of nation and state, and about the effective remaking of the nation-state in a variety of forms— all pressing questions of citizenship and nationality in the new millennium. The politics of recognition puts on the national agenda new claims, demanding respect for the identity, the self-worth, and the public dignity of minority groups or indigenous peoples, while challenging established cultural dominance in public life. Further, the politics of recognition also commonly brings pressure for a shift in the kind of rights the state protects as a matter of priority. Given a past commitment by the state to protecting, above 48 all, the rights of individuals, what becomes controversial is the claim for certain rights of collectivities, primarily minority groups or indigenous peoples.3 Moving in a new direction, concerned citizens demand a pluralist turn in democracy. “Unity in diversity” becomes a popular slogan, and how people talk of “difference” positions them on one side or another in the debate about pluralism.4 On the political agenda are claims that the state must recognize some or all of the following as the collective rights of minorities and indigenous peoples: that they must have a full share of public space for the expression of their cultural heritage; that their languages should be taught in schools and accepted for use in public places; that their ways of marking their group identities and differences from others must be respected; that they should be as much entitled as any other citizens to define themselves for themselves; and that they must not be treated as necessarily deriving who and what they are, as if it were a gift to be granted or taken away by majorities or others in command of the state. The assertive minorities and indigenous peoples claim it is second-class citizenship when they are required to assimilate on others’ terms, even when those terms are imposed as coming from “the national culture.” What others call “national culture,” they regard as simply other people’s culture. In public forums they become assertive, express pride in their own culture, and object to having the culture of others used to marginalize theirs. They resist being included in the state on terms that make another culture original and authentic but theirs derivative, and thus inferior. In no fundamental way, they insist as citizens promised equality under the rule of law, must they be more subjected culturally than other citizens. Among their group rights are cultural rights. If anyone belongs to their country, they do, culturally no less than in other respects. Assertions of belonging are as much a part of the politics of recognition as are claims for cultural rights. Such politics of recognition is, by and large, a peaceful politics. Its hallmark is negotiation. There are moments of direct protest and confrontation, of course, but these are temporary, nonviolent, and contained within the understood limits usually acceptable in a democracy. This is not to deny that, in some of the same democracies where minorities advance the politics of recognition, race riots also break out. The politics of recognition and race riots are very different phenomena, however, and one does not lead directly to the other. Nor does the emphasis on peaceful change in the politics of recognition minimize the importance of talk of political violence. On the contrary, the point is that it is talk and not actual political violence. As open public speech, sometimes deploying the rhetoric of threatening disaster , citing the example of other countries, such as those overcome by...

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