Subnational groups and globalization

Far too much of the concern with subnational groups, either long established (and even indigenous) or recently immigrated, is with abstract principles of justice. Far too little of it is aboutmaking societies work at all well to give prosperity to everyone and to do so through democratic procedures. Many of the ostensible principles of justice erect barriers between various groups, minority and majority. Assimilationist arguments, pro and con, typically assume assimilation of the minority or new group into the majority or established group. American, Canadian and Australian experience during the twentieth century clearly shows that assimilation goes both ways. Those from Northern European backgrounds in these nations have substantially assimilated with the newly arriving groups of Asians, Latinos and others. There is a substantial shortfall in the assimilation in both directions of blacks in the USA and of indigenous peoples in all three of the former colonial outposts. Brian Barry (2001) is among the few writers who have forcefully taken on these issues with a main eye out for the workability of contemporary societies, especially liberal societies. It would be easy to read him asmerely aggressively supporting liberalism over all-comers. But one of his main concerns is withmaking the societies he addresses reasonably good places. I wish to take up this problem as it is affected by the massive movement of globalization of the past few decades, a movement that is still on the rise. It is a seeming anomaly of our time that, just when economic progress seems to work well for remarkably many nations and when advanced nations are increasingly part of a global economy, demands for autonomy of numerous ethnic groups are shrill. There are numerous explanations for the explosion of ethnic conflicts, most of which seem to focus on claims that peoples are motivated by values or group identity. Some argue that globalization, with its supposed imposition of world – or