Difference without Domination: Pursuing Justice in Diverse Democracies

by Danielle S. Allen (Editor), Rohini Somanathan (Editor)

Around the globe, democracy appears broken. With political and socioeconomic inequality on the rise, we are faced with the urgent question of how to better distribute power, opportunity, and wealth in diverse modern societies. This volume confronts the dilemma head-on, exploring new ways to combat current social hierarchies of domination.

            Using examples from the United States, India, Germany, and Cameroon, the contributors offer paradigm-changing approaches to the concepts of justice, identity, and social groups while also taking a fresh look at the idea that the demographic make-up of institutions should mirror the make-up of a populace as a whole. After laying out the conceptual framework, the volume turns to a number of provocative topics, among them the pernicious tenacity of implicit bias, the logical contradictions inherent to the idea of universal human dignity, and the paradoxes and problems surrounding affirmative action. A stimulating blend of empirical and interpretive analyses, Difference without Domination urges us to reconsider the idea of representation and to challenge what it means to measure equality and inequality.
 

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy

368 pages, Hardcover

Published June 22, 2020

About the author

Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, and Director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, is a political theorist who has published broadly in democratic theory, political sociology, and the history of political thought. Widely known for her work on justice and citizenship in both ancient Athens and modern America, Allen is the author of The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (2000), Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown vs. the Board of Education (2004), Why Plato Wrote (2010), Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (2014), Education and Equality (2016), and Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A. (2017). She is the co-editor of the award-winning Education, Justice, and Democracy (2013, with Rob Reich) and From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in the Digital Age (2015, with Jennifer Light). She is a former Chair of the Mellon Foundation Board, past Chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Dr. Allen received her undergraduate education in Classics at Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude. She was awarded an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Classics from Cambridge University and went on to Harvard University, where she received her M.A. and Ph.D. in political science. She joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1997 as Assistant Professor of Classics. In 2000, Dr. Allen became Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures, Political Science and the Committee on Social Thought. In 2003, she was promoted to Professor. The following year she was named Dean of the Division of Humanities, a role she was in until 2007.

Widely known for her work on justice and citizenship in ancient Athens and its application to modern America, Dr. Allen was awarded in 2002 a MacArthur Fellowship for her ability to combine "the classicist's careful attention to texts and language with the political theorist's sophisticated and informed engagement."

Reviews

[Paul Crider · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of this volume is to present a coherent, multidisciplinary approach to thinking about how we can have and encourage diversity in society without that diversity giving rise to hierarchal relations. The contributors range from philosophers to social scientists. Ultimately, I think the coherence of the volume is oversold: most of the cross references between the essays seem added in as an afterthought.

The essays by Danielle Allen and Melvin Rogers laying out the neorepublican theory of difference without domination (DwoD) and its roots in Black American political thought are strong, and make the whole volume worthwhile.

Glenn Loury's essay was a strong discussion of how social relations are prior to and provide structure for transactions, the economist's usual focus. And I can't resist noting how dissonant Loury's writing in this volume is from his social media persona.

Heather Gerken's contribution made a strong DwoD case for federalism and decentralization, notable for its more typical deployment by conservatives. Urs Lindner explored the role affirmative action can play in DwoD, giving a social egalitarian basis for the policy in place of distributive justice accounts. I found this similar, in a good way, to Elizabeth Anderson's defense of affirmative action in her Imperative of Integration.

The final notable contribution (for my interests) was Claudio López-Guerra's. I appreciate the inclusion in the volume of a piece about how DwoD interfaces with immigration, one of the sources of both difference and domination. López-Guerra suggests that citizens have an interest in how society admits new members, and argues that we should treat immigrant sponsorships as analogous to having children, as both entry options change the character of the nation. Citizens should be allotted some specific number of new admissions, whether they come from birth or sponsorship. The proposition is certainly original, but in the end I simply found it too cute by half. In addition, I worry it would do little to quench nativism while fueling arguments for population control.

Overall, none of the contributions to this volume were without merit, and some were quite good.