Radical Egalitarianism


Book Description

Contributions from scholars in anthropology, religion, and area studies--stemming from research in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas collected to represent a form of historically grounded, ethnographically driven social science that seeks to understand social phenomena by dialogically engaging global and local perspectives.




Equality and Liberty


Book Description

Probably no issue is more confounding in the social policy arena or more closely argued among political philosophers than the question of the relationship between equality and liberty: are they compatible in a just society? In a systematic discussion that expands our understanding of what constitutes liberty, equality, and, especially, justice, Professor Nielsen puts forth a vigorous defense of an uncompromising egalitarianism based on a commitment to the belief that the interests of everyone matter, and matter equally. Marshalling the most persistent arguments against egalitarianism, the author presents accounts of Nietzschean elitism, meritocracy, and conservative libertarianism, as well as various shades of egalitarianism, and systematically responds to each opposing view. Followers of contemporary debates will especially welcome Nielsen's searching critiques of the liberal egalitarianism of John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, and of the conservative libertarianism of Milton Friedman, Frederich Hayek, and particularly Robert Nozick.




Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian


Book Description

Iain McLean reexamines the radical legacy of AdamSmith, arguing that Smith was a radical egalitarian and that his work supported all three of the slogans of the French Revolution: liberty, equality, and fraternity. McLean suggests that Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments , published in 1759, crystallized the radically egalitarian philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment. This book brings Smith into full view, showing how much of modern economics and political science is in Smith. The author locates Smith's heritage firmly within the context of the Enlightenment, while addressing the international links between American, French, and Scottish histories of political thought.







Black Visions


Book Description

This comprehensive analysis of the complex relationship of black political thought identifies which political ideologies are supported by blacks, then traces their historical roots and examines their effects on black public opinion.




In the Shadow of Justice


Book Description

"In the Shadow of Justice tells the story of how liberal political philosophy was transformed in the second half of the twentieth century under the influence of John Rawls. In this first-ever history of contemporary liberal theory, Katrina Forrester shows how liberal egalitarianism--a set of ideas about justice, equality, obligation, and the state--became dominant, and traces its emergence from the political and ideological context of the postwar United States and Britain. In the aftermath of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, Rawls's A Theory of Justice made a particular kind of liberalism essential to political philosophy. Using archival sources, Forrester explores the ascent and legacy of this form of liberalism by examining its origins in midcentury debates among American antistatists and British egalitarians. She traces the roots of contemporary theories of justice and inequality, civil disobedience, just war, global and intergenerational justice, and population ethics in the 1960s and '70s and beyond. In these years, political philosophers extended, developed, and reshaped this liberalism as they responded to challenges and alternatives on the left and right--from the New International Economic Order to the rise of the New Right. These thinkers remade political philosophy in ways that influenced not only their own trajectory but also that of their critics. Recasting the history of late twentieth-century political thought and providing novel interpretations and fresh perspectives on major political philosophers, In the Shadow of Justice offers a rigorous look at liberalism's ambitions and limits."--




Radical Pacifism in Modern America


Book Description

Radical Pacifism in Modern America traces cycles of success and decline in the radical wing of the American peace movement, an egalitarian strain of pacifism that stood at the vanguard of antimilitarist organizing and American radical dissent from 1940 to 1970. Using traditional archival material and oral history sources, Marian Mollin examines how gender and race shaped and limited the political efforts of radical pacifist women and men, highlighting how activists linked pacifism to militant masculinity and privileged the priorities of its predominantly white members. In spite of the invisibility that this framework imposed on activist women, the history of this movement belies accounts that relegate women to the margins of American radicalism and mixed-sex political efforts. Motivated by a strong egalitarianism, radical pacifist women rejected separatist organizing strategies and, instead, worked alongside men at the front lines of the struggle to construct a new paradigm of social and political change. Their compelling examples of female militancy and leadership challenge the essentialist association of female pacifism with motherhood and expand the definition of political action to include women's political work in both the public and private spheres. Focusing on the vexed alliance between white peace activists and black civil rights workers, Mollin similarly details the difficulties that arose at the points where their movements overlapped and challenges the seemingly natural association between peace and civil rights. Emphasizing the actions undertaken by militant activists, Radical Pacifism in Modern America illuminates the complex relationship between gender, race, activism, and political culture, identifying critical factors that simultaneously hindered and facilitated grassroots efforts at social and political change.




Equality and Opportunity


Book Description

Egalitarians have traditionally been suspicious of equality of opportunity. But the past twenty five years or so have seen a sea-change in egalitarian thinking about that concept. 'Luck egalitarians' such as G. A. Cohen, Richard Arneson, and John Roemer have paved a new way of thinking about equality of opportunity, and infused it with radical egalitarian content. In this book, Shlomi Segall brings together these developments in egalitarian theory and offers a comprehensive account of 'radical equality of opportunity'. Radical equality of opportunity (EOp) differs from more traditional conceptions on several dimensions. Most notably, while other accounts of equality of opportunity strive to neutralize legal and/or socio-economic obstacles to one's opportunity-set the radical account seeks to remove also natural ones. Radical EOp, then, aims at neutralizing all obstacles that lie outside individuals' control. This has far-reaching implications, and the book is devoted to exploring and defending them. The book touches on four main themes. First, it locates the ideal of radical EOp within egalitarian distributive justice. Segall advances there three claims in particular: that we ought to be concerned with equality in individual holdings (rather than merely social relations); that we ought to be bothered, as egalitarians, with unequal outcomes, and never equal ones; and that we ought to be concerned with disadvantages the absolute (rather than relative) badness of which, the agent could not have controlled. Second, the book applies the concept of radical equality of opportunity to office and hiring. It demonstrates that radical EOp yields an attractive account both with regard to justice in the allocation of jobs on the one hand, and discrimination, on the other. Third, the book offers an account of radical EOp in education and upbringing. Segall tries to defend there the rather radical implications of the account, namely that it may hold children responsible for their choices, and that it places quite demanding requirements on parents. Finally, the book develops an account of radical equality of opportunity for health, to rival Norman Daniels's Rawlsian account. The proposed account is distinguished in the parity that it creates between social and natural causes of ill health.