The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era

Book Description

How can liberal democracy best be realized in a world fraught with conflicting new forms of identity politics and intensifying conflicts over culture? This book brings unparalleled clarity to the contemporary debate over this question. Maintaining that cultures are themselves torn by conflicts about their own boundaries, Seyla Benhabib challenges the assumption shared by many theorists and activists that cultures are clearly defined wholes. She argues that much debate--including that of "strong" multiculturalism, which sees cultures as distinct pieces of a mosaic--is dominated by this faulty belief, one with grave consequences for how we think injustices among groups should be redressed and human diversity achieved. Benhabib masterfully presents an alternative approach, developing an understanding of cultures as continually creating, re-creating, and renegotiating the imagined boundaries between "us" and "them."

Drawing on contemporary cultural politics from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States, Benhabib develops a double-track model of deliberative democracy that permits maximum cultural contestation within the official public sphere as well as in and through social movements and the institutions of civil society. Agreeing with political liberals that constitutional and legal universalism should be preserved at the level of polity, she nonetheless contends that such a model is necessary to resolve multicultural conflicts.

Analyzing in detail the transformation of citizenship practices in European Union countries, Benhabib concludes that flexible citizenship, certain kinds of legal pluralism and models of institutional powersharing are quite compatible with deliberative democracy, as long as they are in accord with egalitarian reciprocity, voluntary self-ascription, and freedom of exit and association. The Claims of Culture offers invaluable insight to all those, whether students or scholars, lawyers or policymakers, who strive to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of cultural politics in the twenty-first century.

Customer Reviews:

A Must-Read.......2003-11-18

Seyla Benhabib's important new book "The Claims of Culture" addresses a constellation of issues with which our contemporary liberal democratic society must deal in an age of cultural diversity both within the political boundaries the nation-state and at the global level. As Benhabib makes very clear, in this context we face a dual imperative of remaining sensitive to the plurality of the ways people both near and far choose how to live, while simultaneously seeking out a mode of reflexive ethical universalism that can provide foundations for normatively addressing crises with world-reach. We must also look askance at approaches to cultural diversity, which reify boundaries and in turn fail to take account of the fluid process of renegotiation and recreation constitutive of the contemporary practices of social and political self-definition.
The book is gracefully and limpidly written. Benhabib's has a masterful grasp of the multiple literatures involved in her undertaking and is a virtuoso of conveying their multiform ideas both incisively and reliably. This work is a must read for anyone interested cultural studies or political theory or their often-ignored yet undoubtedly intimate relationship.

Unreadable and Laborious.......2003-10-16

Quite simply, this is one of the most poorly written books I've ever seen. Benhabib's basic points are lost in a jungle of jargon that appears to be written only for herself or for a very tight circle of over-specialized academics who share the same unintelligible language. Tragically, Benhabib's points about the evolutionary nature of culture and its fit within democratic societies are valid, interesting, and worthy of contemplation, but her writing prevents most people from ever grasping them. Simply put, don't buy this book. If it is required for a course, as it was for me, tell your professor to pick something else.

Average customer rating:

Identity and Injury: Rights Based Discourses
Intellectually exciting

States of Injury
Wendy Brown
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Political | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Politics Out of History.
Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire
Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics
Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence
State of Exception

ASIN: 069102989X

Book Description

Whether in characterizing Catharine MacKinnon's theory of gender as itself pornographic or in identifying liberalism as unable to make good on its promises, Wendy Brown pursues a central question: how does a sense of woundedness become the basis for a sense of identity? Brown argues that efforts to outlaw hate speech and pornography powerfully legitimize the state: such apparently well-intentioned attempts harm victims further by portraying them as so helpless as to be in continuing need of governmental protection. "Whether one is dealing with the state, the Mafia, parents, pimps, police, or husbands," writes Brown, "the heavy price of institutionalized protection is always a measure of dependence and agreement to abide by the protector's rules." True democracy, she insists, requires sharing power, not regulation by it; freedom, not protection.

Refusing any facile identification with one political position or another, Brown applies her argument to a panoply of topics, from the basis of litigiousness in political life to the appearance on the academic Left of themes of revenge and a thwarted will to power. These and other provocations in contemporary political thought and political life provide an occasion for rethinking the value of several of the last two centuries' most compelling theoretical critiques of modern political life, including the positions of Nietzsche, Marx, Weber, and Foucault.

Customer Reviews:

Identity and Injury: Rights Based Discourses.......2006-01-22

In the first half of States of Injury, Wendy Brown's critique of traditional feminism and more broadly identity politics as a whole was based upon the principle that the "I am" clause used by many marginalized groups should be avoided because of its universalizing and finalizing nature. In its place, such groups should focus on the "What I want for us" clause, because of its potential fluidity and room for political action. In the second half of the book, Brown addresses, among other things, the question of what should be desired from a gendered postmodern perspective.
Brown's scathing critique of classical liberalism begins to take shape as she attacks the litigious nature of modern state politics, and more specifically, she builds her case against a rights-based discourse for feminism. Rights require cultural and historical context, and without those important brushstrokes, their picture cannot be painted because of their amorphous or perhaps even polymorphous nature. Brown insists that rights must not be confused with equality and that they "are more likely to become sites of the production of identity as injury than vehicles of emancipation" (Brown 1995, 134). Rights then should be avoided as a political goal, but they should not be avoided altogether. Rights may well serve as a means to an end, their usefulness should not be overlooked as a step in realizing larger goals, but once again, Brown has demonstrated that focusing on rights, like focusing on identity, is a finalizing process; a rights discourse ends the conversation. What happens once rights are granted? If a woman's rights are violated it is then up to the state to uphold those rights as they have been written into law. Protection is then institutionalized, creating a female dependence on state power. There is no discussion of transcending the existing patterns of male dominance within the masculinist state because women have been granted equality under law. The liberal philosophy of writing rights into law thus entrenches and subjugates women into the existing systems of traditional subordination, allowing no real way out of the cycle of dependency, protection and regulation. As much as I was hoping for Brown to articulate some sort of policy prescriptions, or a potential way out of this structure of dominance, I did not see it. Brown herself admits that the final essay develops more than answers the questions that she raises and "it does not build toward policy recommendations or a specified political program" (173). If rights must be seen as a means and not an end, what is the end? It seems that Brown's critical analysis is arguing for a radical transformation or complete transcension of the late modern political structures found in the liberal state. Is the best hope for feminism to be found in the private sphere, away from the state? What is the way out for Brown's structural-historical analysis of feminine subordination? Is her answer to be found in the last sentence of the book? Here she suggests that "feminists can both exploit and subvert, but only by deeply comprehending in order to strategically outmaneuver its contemporary masculinist ruses" (196). It is great to understand, and it may be the first step to political action, but comprehending is not action in itself.

Intellectually exciting.......2000-07-02

This book looks at how gender and the political theories of our time (liberalism, theories of the state, Foucault, etc.) intersect. I have only read three of the chapters so far, which are self-contained, and I enjoyed them very much. Brown's response to Catherine MacKinnon is especially well-argued and helpful: she draws out how Marxism influences MacKinnon's thought, and then shows how Mackinnon's thought demonstrates the extent to which freedom for women can be incompatible with freedom in general. The prose could be better.

Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism (A Public Culture Book)

Average customer rating:

Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism (A Public Culture Book)

Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Policy & Current Events | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Economic Conditions | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Free Enterprise | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

U.S. | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

A Brief History of Neoliberalism
Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection
Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty
Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order
Cultural Identity and Global Process (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)

ASIN: 0822327155

Book Description

The essays in Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism pose a series of related questions: How are we to understand capitalism at the millennium? Is it a singular or polythetic creature? What are we to make of the culture of neoliberalism that appears to accompany it, taking on simultaneously local and translocal forms? To what extent does it make sense to describe the present juncture in world history as an âage of revolution,â one not unlike 1789–1848 in its transformative potential?
In exploring the material and cultural dimensions of the Age of Millennial Capitalism, the contributors interrogate the so-called crisis of the nation-state, how the triumph of the free market obscures rising tides of violence and cultures of exclusion, and the growth of new forms of identity politics. The collection also investigates the tendency of neoliberal capitalism to produce a world of increasing differences in wealth, environmental catastrophes, heightened flows of people and value across space and time, moral panics and social impossibilities, bitter generational antagonisms and gender conflicts, invisible class distinction, and âpariahâ forms of economic activity. In the process, the volume opens up an empirically grounded, conceptual discussion about the world-at-large at a particularly momentous historical timeâwhen the social sciences and humanities are in danger of ceding intellectual initiative to the masters of the market and the media.
In addition to its crossdisciplinary essays, Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalismâoriginally the third installment of the journal Public Culture’s âMillennial Quartetââfeatures several photographic essays. The book will interest anthropologists, political geographers, economists, sociologists, and political theorists.

Contributors. Scott Bradwell, Jean Comaroff, John L. Comaroff, Fernando Coronil, Peter Geschiere, David Harvey, Luiz Paulo Lima, Caitrin Lynch, Rosalind C. Morris, David G. Nicholls, Francis Nyamnjoh, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Paul Ryer, Allan Sekula, Irene Stengs, Michael Storper, Seamus Walsh, Robert P. Weller, Hylton White, Melissa W. Wright, Jeffrey A. Zimmerman

The Cultures of Globalization (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

Average customer rating:

excellent book on globalization
It is a very interesting book, and lots of information
Coul send me the indice

The Cultures of Globalization (Post-Contemporary Interventions)
Fredric Jameson
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Theory | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

20th Century | World | History | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Globalization (A Public Culture Book)
Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Public Worlds, V. 1)
Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity
Globalization and Culture
Death of a Discipline (The Wellek Library Lectures)

ASIN: 0822321696

Book Description

A pervasive force that evades easy analysis, globalization has come to represent the export and import of culture, the speed and intensity of which has increased to unprecedented levels in recent years. The Cultures of Globalization presents an international panel of intellectuals who consider the process of globalization as it concerns the transformation of the economic into the cultural and vice versa; the rise of consumer culture around the world; the production and cancellation of forms of subjectivity; and the challenges it presents to national identity, local culture, and traditional forms of everyday life.
Discussing overlapping themes of transnational consequence, the contributors to this volume describe how the global character of technology, communication networks, consumer culture, intellectual discourse, the arts, and mass entertainment have all been affected by recent worldwide trends. Appropriate to such diversity of material, the authors approach their topics from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including those of linguistics, sociology, economics, anthropology, and the law. Essays examine such topics as free trade, capitalism, the North and South, Eurocentrism, language migration, art and cinema, social fragmentation, sovereignty and nationhood, higher education, environmental justice, wealth and poverty, transnational corporations, and global culture. Bridging the spheres of economic, political, and cultural inquiry, The Cultures of Globalization offers crucial insights into many of the most significant changes occurring in today’s world.

Contributors. Noam Chomsky, Ioan Davies, Manthia Diawara, Enrique Dussel, David Harvey, Sherif Hetata, Fredric Jameson, Geeta Kapur, Liu Kang, Joan Martinez-Alier, Masao Miyoshi, Walter D. Mignolo, Alberto Moreiras, Paik Nak-chung, Leslie Sklair, Subramani, Barbara Trent

Customer Reviews:

excellent book on globalization.......2001-06-01

Jameson and Miyoshi, as editors, give the reader by far one of the best text on the cultures of globalization, from media to environment, from feminism to the university, from perspectives drawn from the first world to perspectives from the third world. The work of almost all the contributors is very interesting and it will be impossible to write something on each one. However, and you must believe me, I never thought how good this book going to be. Once I read it, I could not believe its quality of contents. It is a book that anyone interested on globalization should read.

It is a very interesting book, and lots of information.......1999-10-27

This book is one of the best book I have read. Its streat forword to get your information you need from it and also not too complecated.

Coul send me the indice.......1999-06-27

My question is the form of view the problem with the globalizacion

An Accented Cinema : Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking

Average customer rating:

Insightful look into developing film genre

An Accented Cinema : Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking
Hamid Naficy
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

History & Criticism | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Arts & Photography | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Entertainment | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place (Afi Film Readers)
Rethinking Third Cinema
Third World Film Making and the West
Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality and Transnational Media (Rutgers Depth of Field Series)
The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses

ASIN: 0691043914

Book Description

In An Accented Cinema, Hamid Naficy offers an engaging overview of an important trend--the filmmaking of postcolonial, Third World, and other displaced individuals living in the West. How their personal experiences of exile or diaspora translate into cinema is a key focus of Naficy's work. Although the experience of expatriation varies greatly from one person to the next, the films themselves exhibit stylistic similarities, from their open- and closed-form aesthetics to their nostalgic and memory-driven multilingual narratives, and from their emphasis on political agency to their concern with identity and transgression of identity. The author explores such features while considering the specific histories of individuals and groups that engender divergent experiences, institutions, and modes of cultural production and consumption. Treating creativity as a social practice, he demonstrates that the films are in dialogue not only with the home and host societies but also with audiences, many of whom are also situated astride cultures and whose desires and fears the filmmakers wish to express.

Comparing these films to Hollywood films, Naficy calls them "accented." Their accent results from the displacement of the filmmakers, their alternative production modes, and their style. Accented cinema is an emerging genre, one that requires new sets of viewing skills on the part of audiences. Its significance continues to grow in terms of output, stylistic variety, cultural diversity, and social impact. This book offers the first comprehensive and global coverage of this genre while presenting a framework in which to understand its intricacies.

Customer Reviews:

Insightful look into developing film genre.......2002-01-03

This books offers an interesting look into the world of Accented Cinema. It skillfully defines the genre and gives wonderful examples of its characteristics via a wide variety of exilic and diasporic films from all over the world. Some knowledge of the film industry is virtually a necessity to comprehend this in-depth masterpiece; moreover, readers will gain the most from this book if they have viewed a substantial amount of what would be considered "art-house" and foreign films. This is very thick reading designed for academic and theoretical purposes, not for a relaxing pleasure read, but having said that, the material is quite interesting and it is difficult to find other books on non-mainstream cinema that explore such a wide variety of films.

Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism

Average customer rating:

Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism
Koichi Iwabuchi , and KOICHI IWABUCHI
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Japan | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Entertainment Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (Asia: Local Studies / Global Themes)
Rogue Flows: Trans-asian Cultural Traffic
Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan
Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan
Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S.

ASIN: 0822328917

Book Description

Globalization is usually thought of as the worldwide spread of Westernâparticularly Americanâpopular culture. Yet if one nation stands out in the dissemination of pop culture in East and Southeast Asia, it is Japan. PokÃ©mon, anime, pop music, television dramas such as Tokyo Love Story and Long Vacationâthe export of Japanese media and culture is big business. In Recentering Globalization, Koichi Iwabuchi explores how Japanese popular culture circulates in Asia. He situates the rise of Japan’s cultural power in light of decentering globalization processes and demonstrates how Japan’s extensive cultural interactions with the other parts of Asia complicate its sense of being "in but above" or "similar but superior to" the region.

Iwabuchi has conducted extensive interviews with producers, promoters, and consumers of popular culture in Japan and East Asia. Drawing upon this research, he analyzes Japan’s "localizing" strategy of repackaging Western pop culture for Asian consumption and the ways Japanese popular culture arouses regional cultural resonances. He considers how transnational cultural flows are experienced differently in various geographic areas by looking at bilateral cultural flows in East Asia. He shows how Japanese popular music and television dramas are promoted and understood in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and how "Asian" popular culture (especially Hong Kong’s) is received in Japan.

Rich in empirical detail and theoretical insight, Recentering Globalization is a significant contribution to thinking about cultural globalization and transnationalism, particularly in the context of East Asian cultural studies.

India Abroad: Diasporic Cultures of Postwar America and England

Average customer rating:

India Abroad: Diasporic Cultures of Postwar America and England
Sandhya Shukla
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Science Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Becoming American, Being Indian: An Immigrant Community in New York City (The Anthropology of Contemporary Issues)
Ethnic Routes to Becoming American: Indian Immigrants and the Cultures of Citizenship
Callaloo Nation: Metaphors of Race and Religious Identity among South Asians in Trinidad (Latin America Otherwise)
Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Perverse Modernities)
The Karma of Brown Folk

ASIN: 0691092664

Book Description

India Abroad analyzes the development of Indian diasporas in the United States and England from 1947, the year of Indian independence, to the present. Across different spheres of culture--festivals, entrepreneurial enclaves, fiction, autobiography, newspapers, music, and film--migrants have created India as a way to negotiate life in the multicultural United States and Britain. Sandhya Shukla considers how Indian diaspora has become a contact zone for various formations of identity and discourses of nation. She suggests that carefully reading the production of a diasporic sensibility, one that is not simply an outgrowth of the nation-state, helps us to conceive of multiple imaginaries, of America, England, and India, as articulated to one another. Both the connections and disconnections among peoples who see themselves as in some way Indian are brought into sharp focus by this comparativist approach.

This book provides a unique combination of rich ethnographic work and textual readings to illuminate the theoretical concerns central to the growing fields of diaspora studies and transnational cultural studies. Shukla argues that the multi-sitedness of diaspora compels a rethinking of time and space in anthropology, as well as in other disciplines. Necessarily, the standpoint of global belonging and citizenship makes the boundaries of the "America" in American studies a good deal more porous. And in dialogue with South Asian studies and Asian American studies, this book situates postcolonial Indian subjectivity within migrants' transnational recastings of the meanings of race and ethnicity. Interweaving conceptual and material understandings of diaspora, India Abroad finds that in constructed Indias, we can see the contradictions of identity and nation that are central to the globalized condition in which all peoples, displaced and otherwise, live.

Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of recognition

Average customer rating:

Remains a seminal work on the issues surrounding multiculturalism
Multiculturalism
Academic professionalism
A timely debate, with an emphasis on the philosophical.
A sophisticated philosophical defense of multiculturalism

Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of recognition
Charles Taylor
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Ethics & Morality | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Linguistics | Words & Language | Reference | Subjects | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Reference Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Reference | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford Political Theory)
The Ethics of Identity
The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era
The Ethics of Authenticity
Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?

ASIN: 0691037795

Book Description

A new edition of the highly acclaimed book Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition," this paperback brings together an even wider range of leading philosophers and social scientists to probe the political controversy surrounding multiculturalism. Charles Taylor's initial inquiry, which considers whether the institutions of liberal democratic government make room--or should make room--for recognizing the worth of distinctive cultural traditions, remains the centerpiece of this discussion. It is now joined by Jürgen Habermas's extensive essay on the issues of recognition and the democratic constitutional state and by K. Anthony Appiah's commentary on the tensions between personal and collective identities, such as those shaped by religion, gender, ethnicity, race, and sexuality, and on the dangerous tendency of multicultural politics to gloss over such tensions. These contributions are joined by those of other well-known thinkers, who further relate the demand for recognition to issues of multicultural education, feminism, and cultural separatism.

Praise for the previous edition:

Download Description

Customer Reviews:

Remains a seminal work on the issues surrounding multiculturalism.......2007-04-23

Charles Taylor's classic essay "The Politics of Recognition" that constitutes the heart of this book along with the several excellent responses to it remains at the center of the philosophical and political discussions of multiculturalism. Taylor's main contribution to the debate was to link the debate to the concept of authenticity, arguing that an individual's sense of self requires not merely a social context but respect that affirms them. Because group identity is a crucial aspect of one's sense of self, to have one's tradition or group recognized and respected becomes crucial. Taylor therefore concludes that under certain circumstances the state may intervene with prejudice to protect a group or provide it with special benefits. He situates this very contemporary position in the context of the history of the notion of authenticity as it has developed in Western culture.

Taylor's essay comprises, along with editor Amy Gutman's introduction, around half the book. The bulk of the volume consists of a number responses that were contained in the original publication of the book as well as two subsequent essays that were added to a later addition. All of these are, to speak truthfully, absolutely first rate, though they are of varying usefulness. Most of the first edition essays merely amend Taylor's original arguments. Why I think they make important alterations to his essay, none of them reach the heart of it. To be frank, Taylor is a wonderfully engaging, persuasive writer. Even if one has troubles with many of his core ideas, nonetheless even the most disengaged reader will agree with a host of his insights. If he errs, he does not err wildly.

The final two essays do take issue with Taylor on a deeper level. The Habermas essay is not, in my view, especially helpful. He is unquestionably one of the premiere philosophers of his age, but although he has been influenced by Anglo-American philosophy to a degree that is unusual in a German philosopher, his essays seems alien to every other essay in the collection. One first has to understand Habermas and then engage in the difficult work of fitting it to the discussion as initiated by Taylor. I simply did not find it to be terribly helpful. The essay by Kwame Anthony Appiah, on the other hand, is a different matter. Appiah is the lone writer to respond to Taylor's challenge and lay bare many of the shortcomings of his argument. He has gone on to do this additionally in his exceptionally fine THE ETHICS OF IDENTITY. Most of the ideas contained in his essays in this volume show up in expanded form in that book. Essentially, Appiah wants to question Taylor's assumption that political rights attach to groups as they do to individuals. More to the point, he wants to deny that groups are the basic unit of political consideration. Taylor believes that groups can be extended rights to such a degree that lesser rights of individuals can be impinged. For instance, in French Canada children of French-speaking parents can have access to English-language schools banned so as to guarantee the continued existence of a French-speaking population to keep Quebec French-speaking. Appiah is suspicious of the limitations on individuals that such considerations place on them, of the kinds of scripts and expectations imposed upon them. Appiah can hardly be accused of parochialism. As the child of a Ghanese father and white English mother--and therefore in the algebra of our society considered black--who was raised in Ghana, educated in England, and lives in America, and who is also gay, he falls into a number of groups that could be considered collectivities deserving of special consideration. But he finds such thinking in the long run harmful to the individuals in such groups. He is acutely aware of how a culture is essential in providing the raw material for any person to be a person, but he insists in the end that the individual and not groups--that may be impossible to define clearly in addition to all else--is the fundamental political unit.

Multiculturalism.......2001-10-17

I found this book to be well written and therefore, very easy to read. Wonderful new material. I have learned several new theories.

Academic professionalism.......2000-05-17

At first sight the book seems so insightful - and it clearly stems from a sincere wish to understand other cultures and others holding different views than one's own within one's own culture. But then comes page 20. Gutmann writes that the task is to rescue us from a world of entrenched battlefields and point the way to "mutually respectful communities of substantial, sometimes even fundamental, INTELLECTUAL disagreement" (my emphasis). What such a viewpoint does is to limit the discussion to rational discourse. One can agree on a base-line of open discussion with those you may be in diasagreement with but only when the 'crazies' have been left outside, those who preach hatred, or even those who choose to opt out. This is all what Richard Rorty called 'wet liberalism'. Terribly disappointing. After Gutmann's intellectualist and ultimately elitist point of view dawns, the other essays fall within the same light.

A timely debate, with an emphasis on the philosophical........1999-07-26

One web page which I recently encountered urged the USA to adopt an official policy of multiculturalism, and thereby become the first great nation to make this postmodern leap; ahead of the U.K., and all of the other states which have considered such a move. Yet Canada and Australia have been formally self-designated as multicultural states for decades. What has been the result, and what does multiculturalism offer other pluralist states, such as the United States, in the 21st century? After all, some say that the end of the 'melting pot' would be the end of national unity in America, while others feel it would truly be the begining. In this book, neither the 'potential for utopia', nor the 'armageddon scenario' of multicultural policies will be appeased. Professor Charles Taylor examines the implications of state-enshrined multiculturalism, and then opens the floor to several of the world's leading intellectuals (including Jurgen Habbermas) to debate the topic in this 'heady' little book. The result is rather surprising. Rather than narrowing in on the details of the Canadian or Australian experiences with the policy, the book explores the entire developement of modern liberalism which lead to such policies, and devotes many pages to the argument concerning whether such policies weaken individual rights, while creating collective rights. This is not a manual for extremists, on either side of the debate, but it should aid those who seek to peer deeply beneath the surface of multicultural policies unearthing their philosophical base. The implications of such policies are widely considered, and for a wide range of groups across North America and Europe.

A sophisticated philosophical defense of multiculturalism.......1997-04-23

If you want to read a justification for the politics of difference, this isw your book. Taylor stays consistent with his previous work and lays out a solid theory. The only criticism of this book (and Taylor in general) is that his personal political views on Quebec get in the way of his philosophical writing and creates some tension in terms of the practical aplication of the theory.

Average customer rating:

Not just for Acedemics..........or Acedemia.

Globalization (A Public Culture Book)

Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Public Worlds, V. 1)
The Cultures of Globalization (Post-Contemporary Interventions)
Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (Public Planet)
Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality
The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge Studies in Social & Cultural Anthropology)

ASIN: 0822327236

Book Description

Edited by one of the most prominent scholars in the field and including a distinguished group of contributors, this collection of essays makes a striking intervention in the increasingly heated debates surrounding the cultural dimensions of globalization. While including discussions about what globalization is and whether it is a meaningful term, the volume focuses in particular on the way that changing sitesâlocal, regional, diasporicâare the scenes of emergent forms of sovereignty in which matters of style, sensibility, and ethos articulate new legalities and new kinds of violence.
Seeking an alternative to the dead-end debate between those who see globalization as a phenomenon wholly without precedent and those who see it simply as modernization, imperialism, or global capitalism with a new face, the contributors seek to illuminate how space and time are transforming each other in special ways in the present era. They examine how this complex transformation involves changes in the situation of the nation, the state, and the city. While exploring distinct regionsâChina, Africa, South America, Europeâand representing different disciplines and genresâanthropology, literature, political science, sociology, music, cinema, photographyâthe contributors are concerned with both the political economy of location and the locations in which political economies are produced and transformed. A special strength of the collection is its concern with emergent styles of subjectivity, citizenship, and mobilization and with the transformations of state power through which market rationalities are distributed and embodied locally.

Contributors. Arjun Appadurai, Jean FranÃ§ois Bayart, JÃ©rÃ´me BindÃ©, NÃ©stor GarcÃa Canclini, Leo Ching, Steven Feld, Ralf D. Hotchkiss, Wu Hung, Andreas Huyssen, Boubacar TourÃ© MandÃ©mory, Achille Mbembe, Philipe Rekacewicz, Saskia Sassen, Fatu Kande Senghor, Seteney Shami, Anna Tsing, Zhang Zhen

Customer Reviews:

Not just for Acedemics..........or Acedemia........2004-10-19

Mr Appadurai's book "Globalisation", should not be considered a purely "Acedemic" book, which is primarily one of it's most important

functions. This book can & does reach a wider audience of those interested in the social, political & cultural emergence of nostalgia as a way

for us to identify with sentiments of the past & the role the play in the present & the future. The overall communication sentiments of nostalgia

are a form of social manipulation as well as the by product of globalisation which has a very real effect on our society & media throughout the

world, everyday...By suppressing that, which perhaps, we are expected to regret acknowledging as realities in the world. Our present day

"ethos" is one that struggles to distinguish questions of real value & of those that seek to bridle the world & economy towards integrating

markets to meet the expectations of the political & economic powers that we live under.

Mr Appudarai accomplishes this task of exploring the above objectivity by allowing the reader to not only be informed of the manifestations of

globalisation & it's effects but to have us think & question our roles within this emerging system, as the reader.

It is our hope & perhaps even delusion as global citizens that globalisation would mobilize productive & social hybrids that would emancipate

us from our own social subjectivity..When in reality we are doing nothing more than creating the same dependancies & presenting them to

other cultures, sometimes forcefully & at times , disasterous effects.

This book allows us to explore the fabric of all our dependancies, from a micro-& macrocosmic perspective, allowing us to be enriched &

determine for ourselves a little better our role in the "Big" picture. Mr Appudarai presents examples locally & globally which allow the reader

to digest this reality & make suit of what is determined on ones own..It is a informative & exciting read. The research is extensive & unique, the

writing gradual & enjoyable, as well as timely & informative..A book to read & to suggest to those who seek to determine more about the

concept, reality & impact of globalisation.

Average customer rating:

Cosmopolitanism (A Public Culture Book)

Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Issues of Our Time)
Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice
Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Cultural Politics)
Debating Cosmopolitics (New Left Review Debates)
On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (Thinking in Action) (Thinking in Action)

ASIN: 0822328992

Book Description

As the final installment of Public Culture’s Millennial Quartet, Cosmopolitanism assesses the pasts and possible futures of cosmopolitanismâor ways of thinking, feeling, and acting beyond one’s particular society. With contributions from distinguished scholars in disciplines such as literary studies, art history, South Asian studies, and anthropology, this volume recenters the history and theory of translocal political aspirations and cultural ideas from the usual Western vantage point to areas outside Europe, such as South Asia, China, and Africa.
By examining new archives, proposing new theoretical formulations, and suggesting new possibilities of political practice, the contributors critically probe the concept of cosmopolitanism. On the one hand, cosmopolitanism may be taken to promise a form of supraregional political solidarity, but on the other, these essays argue, it may erode precisely those intimate cultural differences that derive their meaning from particular places and traditions. Given that most cosmopolitan political formationsâfrom the Roman empire and European imperialism to contemporary globalizationâhave been coercive and unequal, can there be a noncoercive and egalitarian cosmopolitan politics? Finally, the volume asks whether cosmopolitanism can promise any universalism that is not the unwarranted generalization of some Western particular.

Contributors. Ackbar Abbas, Arjun Appadurai, Homi K. Bhabha, T. K. Biaya, Carol A. Breckenridge, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Ousame Ndiaye Dago, Mamadou Diouf, Wu Hung, Walter D. Mignolo, Sheldon Pollock, Steven Randall

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books