Anne Phillips's Multiculturalism Without Culture

Introduction
Multiculturalism without culture is written by Anne Phillips in 2007. Anne Phillips is a British professor at London School of Economics and her works focus on gender, culture and political philosophy. It is important to put this book into its context; the concept of multiculturalism has been challenged in those years and some prime ministers questioned the effectiveness of their multicultural policies like David Cameron. Hence this book takes an important part of the literature since it provided a different approach to this debate going on about multiculturalism and analyses the politics of recognition with a non-essentialist point of view. We will analyse the important aspects of her book while trying to add or criticize some points.

Inspiration: feminism versus

Briefly, Okin’s point of view is that the minority cultures that we seek to defend may have patriarchal characteristics that come into conflict with the rights of women. Okin is a well-known feminist who criticizes the modern theories of justice, liberalism and communitarianism. According to her, the family conserves and reproduces the inequalities since children grow up in a gendered context and this will influence their behaviours throughout their lives. Her essay about multiculturalism dates back to 1997 affirms that the multiculturalism has taken into account the sexist nature of some minority cultures in order to guarantee the preservation and improvement of women rights. Hence, in broader context, it provoked a big debate around the compatibility of feminism and multiculturalism. Feminism condemns established practices that oppress women; feminists believe that women and men are equal and therefore have the same respect and the same treatment. The philosophy of multiculturalism, in turn, opposes the classical assimilation, which requires minorities to adapt to mainstream society and condemns practices that oppress people or introduce discrimination towards them because