Identity in Democracy

by Amy Gutmann

Written by one of America's leading political thinkers, this is a book about the good, the bad, and the ugly of identity politics.Amy Gutmann rises above the raging polemics that often characterize discussions of identity groups and offers a fair-minded assessment of the role they play in democracies. She addresses fundamental questions of timeless urgency while keeping in focus their relevance to contemporary Do some identity groups undermine the greater democratic good and thus their own legitimacy in a democratic society? Even if so, how is a democracy to fairly distinguish between groups such as the KKK on the one hand and the NAACP on the other? Should democracies exempt members of some minorities from certain legitimate or widely accepted rules, such as Canada's allowing Sikh members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to wear turbans instead of Stetsons? Do voluntary groups like the Boy Scouts have a right to discriminate on grounds of sexual preference, gender, or race?


Identity-group politics, Gutmann shows, is not aberrant but inescapable in democracies because identity groups represent who people are, not only what they want--and who people are shapes what they demand from democratic politics. Rather than trying to abolish identity politics, Gutmann calls upon us to distinguish between those demands of identity groups that aid and those that impede justice. Her book does justice to identity groups, while recognizing that they cannot be counted upon to do likewise to others.


Clear, engaging, and forcefully argued, Amy Gutmann's Identity in Democracy provides the fractious world of multicultural and identity-group scholarship with a unifying work that will sustain it for years to come.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Amy Gutmann is the 8th President of the University of Pennsylvania and the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Communications, and Philosophy. She is a political theorist who taught at Princeton University from 1976 to 2004 and served as its Provost.

Reviews

[Cyrus Samii · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gutmann’s goal in this book is to provide a normative framework for evaluating identity groups and their demands in the context of a democratic society organized on the basis of civic equality.

Generally speaking, there are two types of identity groups and associated demands that we might consider: identity groups demanding some exemption from democratically selected laws on the basis of their cultural or group-specific ethical commitments, and then identity groups organized to fight discrimination or injustice against their identity. Identity politics these days primarily concerns the latter. And for them, the normative evaluation is much more straightforward. What needs to be adjudicated is the legitimacy of the claims of discrimination or injustice. Normative evaluations of demand for exemptions on the basis of cultural or e.g. religious reasons are much more complicated. For these reasons, it seems, most of the book is devoted to questions about whether group demands for exemption or autonomy should be satisfied.

Generally speaking, Gutmann’s approach is practical. The evaluation of group demands needs to ensure that basic principles of civic equality are not being undermined, while also allowing for expression of cultural or identity-group-specific ethical commitments.

The book is very dense, it took me a few months to get through it even though it’s not long at all. But after reading it I came out with a much deeper understanding of concepts and dilemmas that arise in both legal and philosophical consideration of the place of identities and identity groups in democratic society.

[Adriana Matos · Rating 2 out of 5]

poderia ter 1/3 do tamanho. faz discussões legais, mas não define muito bem os termos e é muito (mas muito!) repetitivo.