This book develops a critique of the equality paradigms and principles to be found in the majority of today’s legal orders. It accompanies the reader taking her/him/x from a critique of non-discrimination and equality to the ‘opposite’ end of the spectrum, that is, to collective rights, collectivization processes and a manifestation of recognition that is based on difference. This interdisciplinary, theoretical journey explores a multiplicity of (legal) orders in terms of how they provide spaces of articulation for ‘difference’. The book draws, emblematically, on the rights of indigenous peoples as well as recognized and unrecognized cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities. The book thereby builds on legal and political theory, which ultimately proves essential given the dedicated objective of the book, that is, to introduce a variety of recognition principles and what the author terms ‘scales of collectivization’, which facilitate a better understanding of collective rights and further ways to capture, define and ultimately measure these rights.
