Skip to Main Content

Culture, Citizenship, and Community: A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness

Online ISBN:
9780191598937
Print ISBN:
9780198297680
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Culture, Citizenship, and Community: A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness

Joseph H. Carens
Joseph H. Carens

Professor, Department of Political Science

University of Toronto
Find on
Published online:
1 November 2003
Published in print:
9 March 2000
Online ISBN:
9780191598937
Print ISBN:
9780198297680
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

Contributes to contemporary debates about justice, multiculturalism, citizenship, and democratic theory. The book argues that the conventional liberal understanding of justice as neutrality needs to be supplemented by a conception of justice as evenhandedness. It also argues that theorists ought to pay attention to the moral wisdom that is sometimes embedded in practice. Claims about the moral relevance of culture and identity appear in many different forms in politics. There is no master principle that enables us to determine when we should respect such claims and when we should challenge them, but the idea of evenhanded justice often points us in the right direction. The book demonstrates this through a comparative and contextual analysis that pays close attention to the actual claims about culture and identity advanced by immigrants, national minorities, aboriginals, and other groups in a number of different societies. While the main focus is on a range of familiar and unfamiliar cases, the book includes an extended critical analysis of the work of Michael Walzer and Will Kymlicka. Finally, the book also contends that the conventional conception of citizenship is an intellectual and moral prison from which we can be liberated by adopting an understanding of citizenship that is more open to multiplicity and that grows out of practices that we judge, upon reflection, to be just and beneficial.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close