Toleration, collective identity and quests for social justice

• Main Author: Williams, Kim
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/4477

Modern liberal democracies are a composition of multi-ethnic and multi-cultural groups vying for recognition and political participation. The challenge faced by liberalism today remains the question of difference. How to articulate, respond to and incorporate difference within the liberal polity. The liberal concept of toleration is thought to be a solution to the conflict generated by difference; arising out of social circumstances involving disapproval, toleration ensures that diapproval by those in a positon to act upon it, refrain from interference. But is the practice of toleration, with its emphasis on individual action and conduct an appropriate response to difference acted out within the social struggle that is liberal politics? An emerging group of social movements, bringing their voices to the public sphere of liberal politics, are refusing to leave their cultural, ethnic, linguistic and gendered differences outside the realm of political negotiation. These movements encompass current struggles for equality and social justice, and as such, theirs are demands requiring more than the practice of toleration. Beginning with the argument for religious toleration articulated by John Locke, followed by the argument for liberty of John Stuart Mill, I trace the origins of a current model of toleration in contemporary liberal democracies. Toleration and its focus on individualism in keeping with the liberal tradition, is justified by the liberal principles of impartiality and pluralism. This individualist conception promotes and encourages a specific, liberal subjectivity, placing the justifications of state neutrality and pluralism in question. Analyzing the concept of a 'social movement', the composition and goals which make it a movement as such, lead to the question of justice and what that encompasses. Does toleration as a response to group difference lead to a just and equitable society? The emergence of new political subjects requires a new articulation of the principles and practices upholding a liberal democratic polity. Toleration as the liberal reaction to difference is an inadequate response to demands for recognition, participation and equality.