Charles Taylor

In The Politics of Recognition Charles Taylor explores the possibility that in order to affirm individuals' equal dignity, we must acknowledge their cultures. He claims that individual identities are socially and dialogically constructed. That is why recognition is important. It shows how the study of identity and its politics is very important in the effort to understand control and somehow reduce the occurrence of group conflicts. The views of others may not be the last word concerning our identities, but they are the first word. If so, misrecognition can damage and can be the basis of oppression and domination (p 25).

Charles Taylor argues that human identity is constituted by cultural group membership, and an individual's sense of self worth is thus deeply tied to the value that others attach to his or her cultural group. As a result of this "new understanding of the human social condition," cultural recognition can be construed as a necessary component of individual recognition, and misrecognition can reasonably be considered a form of oppression (Taylor, 1994: 25-26). If cultural group attachment is a feature of the human social condition, liberal theory had better deal with cultural group rights if it is to be relevant.

Such observations form the basis of several criticisms of what Taylor terms procedural liberalism. Taylor sees this form of liberalism as rooted in a Kantian view of the self in which the essential feature of the self