Does Democracy enslave Africans? with Prof Steven Friedman and Prof Nomalanga Mkhize

Event location: South Campus, Council Chambers

Event date and time: 14/08/2018 14:30:00

Explore and interrogate the heightened concern of liberal political theory over the past decade with issues of identity and culture.

This seminar seeks to raise raise the question of whether particularistic identities are compatible with commitment to universal values such as freedom and equality and, more specifically, what forms of patriotic attachment are still possible in pluralistic liberal democracies. For example, Liberals sympathetic to nationalism have argued that nationality is a central component of individual identity for modern subjects and that access to one’s national culture is essential for realizing important liberal democratic values such as individual autonomy and social equality.