Rethinking multicultural jurisdictions

This article is about the rights of disempowered individuals within autonomous cultural groups. For more than a decade, multiculturalism theorists have been struggling to find a suitable balance between the policies they advocate and the need to protect the vulnerable members of the groups they seek to empower. One of the most convincing and innovative solutions to emerge has been Ayelet Sachar’s model of transformative accommodations (TA). Yet, the main argument presented in this article (based on an ethnographic study) is that this model is unfeasible due to the rule of conservation of power. This claim is illustrated by two case studies: the case of the Beit Ya’acov Primary School for Girls in Emmanuel in the Israeli Occupied Territories and the case of the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana. The article concludes by suggesting that multiculturalists have yet to produce a satisfying response to what seems to be the principal challenge to the policy they advocate