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Circumstance, Materialism and Possibilism

Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSNChapter

Published
Publication date2013
Host publicationEvaluating Culture
EditorsMatthew Thomas Johnson
PublisherSpringer
Pages120-141
Number of pages22
ISBN (print)9781349333769, 9781137313799
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

In the modern, multimedia world it is common to think about ways of life as entirely voluntary innovations — as Mill (1998, 71) put it, ‘experiments in living’. Cultural diversity is often considered in a rather superficial manner — the ‘“sari, samosa and steelband” variety of multiculturalism’, detailed and derided by Alibhai-Brown (2004, 231) — in which choice of lifestyle is dependent only upon personal preference, perception and taste. In Sen and Nussbaum, the obstacles to the free development and expression of preferences seem primarily to be social, rather than natural. Relativist or social constructivist approaches — such as those of Edwards et al. (1995) — have rejected realist accounts of the physical environment and suggested that our constraints in this world are imposed by the meanings which guide our perception.