SOURCE: Deveaux, Monique. “Political Morality and Culture: What Difference Do Differences Make?” Social Theory and Practice 28, no. 3 (July 2002): 503-18.

In the following essay, Deveaux discusses Nussbaum's Women and Human Development in comparison to Multicultural Jurisdictions by Ayelet Shachar, contending that each addresses questions regarding the significance of cultural pluralism to concepts of social justice.

Introduction

Can a conception of political morality—specifically, a conception of justice—be said to be valid across cultures? Few contemporary philosophers explicitly claim that their account of political morality enjoys legitimacy in all societies. The universalizability of a particular conception of justice is, however, typically assumed, without adequate justification or argumentation. By contrast, social and cultural anthropologists have more readily explored the challenges that cultural diversity poses for any understanding of moral behavior and systems of ethics. Anthropologists' charge that morality is culturally bounded or coded¹ is a claim few philosophers have been...