A Leftist Critique of the Principles of Identity, Diversity, and Multiculturalism PDF Download

Author: Richard Anderson-Connolly
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781498590693
Category : Civil rights
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The political and academic program of Identity, Diversity, and Multiculturalism is not a progressive social movement and, in fact, works against the principles and values of the Left. Race against Reason critiques the key tenets of the program and offers a genuinely leftist way forward.

Author: Richard Anderson-Connolly
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498590683
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Identity politics is a lightning rod in American society. To both its progressive supporters and conservative critics, it is seen as defining the agenda of the Left. Both sides are wrong. Identity politics is not a leftist project. Instead it enables the neoliberal political economy that has caused historic levels of inequality and triggered repression and mass incarceration to deal with the social wreckage. Identity politics is a form of biological essentialism, impeding morality built upon universal humanism and politics built upon solidarity. Unlike the conservative assaults, this book avoids the trivial and silly pronouncements of identity politics (a term generally avoided in the work as loaded and pejorative). It challenges the following key principles of the Identity, Diversity, and Multiculturalism Program: Diversity as Justice—the most important struggle for justice today is increasing the representation throughout society of individuals from historically marginalized groups by ending discrimination on the grounds of race, gender, sexual orientation, and similar characteristics; Colorblindness as Racism—race-neutral solutions to the problems caused by racism are harmful to blacks; Race as Culture—members of different races, specifically blacks and whites in the United States, belong to different cultures; Culture as Virtue—cultures should be respected and celebrated. This book forcefully argues that none of these tenets is—or rather should be—a leftist commitment. For progressives who accept the principles, it poses a challenge: How do you defend them from a leftist critique, one that does not deny the continuing significance of discrimination, rather than from the weaker attacks of conservatives? For those on the Right, this work represents a threat. Once leftists return to their core commitments they will form a powerful movement for political and economic change.

Author: Charles Thorpe
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793625980
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
The Covid-19 pandemic and the disruptions of climate change are features of post-normal times. In Sociology in Post-Normal Times, Charles Thorpe contends that the modern project of creating normalcy within the nation state has broken down. Integral to this is sociology, which is the science of social reform. Drawing from the work of seminal theorists such as Zygmunt Bauman and Anthony Giddens, Thorpe contends that sociology's “society” is no longer viable because globalization has put an end to social reform, thus the assumptions and goals of sociology must be left behind in order to create a new global humanity. In the face of the pandemic and climate change, Sociology in Post-Normal Times demands no less than the birth of a global humanity beyond nation states as the precondition for human survival.

Author: Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506496555
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Unraveling Religious Leadership considers various attributes related to the form and function of leadership within religious institutions in conversation with decolonial ideas and practices. Decoloniality, in negation of the ongoing legacies of colonialism, seeks ways of being and doing beyond white, eurowestern, modern ideals of who a leader is and what a leader does, especially in the context of Christianity and its entanglements with empire. In this book, Lizardy-Hajbi draws upon decolonial ideas, worldviews, and practices to question the current assumed understandings of religious leadership as individual, singular in role and structure, centralizing in power, possessing of expertise and select qualifications, production-oriented, and primarily change-inducing. Pulling on each of these threads invites a reconsideration of the epistemologies (knowledges) and ontologies (notions of being) that give shape to religious leadership in North American Christianity today. Lizardy-Hajbi's innovative approach directly challenges popular leadership styles in wide use among leaders today, placing these styles in conversation with decolonial scholarship, diverse realities and worldviews, and practices that disrupt idealized norms. Popular styles such as authentic, charismatic, servant, executive, and transformational leadership are found wanting in terms of their substance and utility for meaningful leadership within religious institutions. Ultimately, Lizardy-Hajbi engages readers by presenting alternative constructions that consider the myriad complexities within both the role and function of leadership, offering new ways to frame the leadership identities the church needs for today's world.

Author: Agnieszka Pasieka
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691258422
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
"Living Right offers an in-depth examination of far-right youth movements in Poland, Italy, and Hungary. The protagonists include students and young entrepreneurs, former skinheads, construction workers, bohemian musicians, and rich kids from the upper class who have all found a nurturing community in far-right groups. While they focus on local action, they are also part of a broader project with global ramifications. Agnieszka Pasieka engages in intensive fieldwork in these communities, particularly among members of the far-right Polish movement "National Radical Camp" (ONR), the Italian neofascist movement Lealtà Azione ("Loyalty Action, " or LA) and the FedeRazione ("Federation"), which comprises over a dozen movements across Italy, along with additional fieldwork among young Hungarian fascists. Pasieka makes some startling and counterintuitive discoveries. She observes that these groups embrace forms of civic engagement we tend to associate with left-wing organizations and movements, such as volunteerism in soup kitchens, animal shelters, and orphanages; environmental activism; and "humanitarian" missions to such places as the Balkans and the Middle East. Moreover she finds that such groups adopt language that overlaps in significant ways with left-leaning progressivism, notably a critique of globalization, consumerism, capitalism, mass culture, and "Americanization," as well as a selective embrace of the welfare state-so long as the benefits of public assistance are limited to white Christian compatriots. Members of these youth groups are often enthusiastic-but selective-readers of modern social science, and embrace notions of "cultural autonomy," "cultural rights," and "diversity." This language though buttresses an understanding of the world as made up of demarcated ethno-cultural entities, in which each entity should not mix with others. Taken together, her findings lead her to consider the far right's rejection of a hegemonic liberal order"--

Author: Mike Gonzalez
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1641772522
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
The Plot to Change America exposes the myths that help identity politics perpetuate itself. This book reveals what has really happened, explains why it is urgent to change course, and offers a strategy to do so. Though we should not fool ourselves into thinking that it will be easy to eliminate identity politics, we should not overthink it, either. Identity politics relies on the creation of groups and then on giving people incentives to adhere to them. If we eliminate group making and the enticements, we can get rid of identity politics. The first myth that this book exposes is that identity politics is a grassroots movement, when from the beginning it has been, and continues to be, an elite project. For too long, we have lived with the fairy tale that America has organically grown into a nation gripped by victimhood and identitarian division; that it is all the result of legitimate demands by minorities for recognition or restitutions for past wrongs. The second myth is that identity politics is a response to the demographic change this country has undergone since immigration laws were radically changed in 1965. Another myth we are told is that to fight these changes is as depraved as it is futile, since by 2040, America will be a minority-majority country, anyway. This book helps to explain that none of these things are necessarily true.

Author: Will Kymlicka
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191622451
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The increasingly multicultural fabric of modern societies has given rise to many new issues and conflicts, as ethnic and national minorities demand recognition and support for their cultural identity. This book presents a new conception of the rights and status of minority cultures. It argues that certain sorts of `collective rights' for minority cultures are consistent with liberal democratic principles, and that standard liberal objections to recognizing such rights on grounds of individual freedom, social justice, and national unity, can be answered. However, Professor Kymlicka emphasises that no single formula can be applied to all groups and that the needs and aspirations of immigrants are very different from those of indigenous peoples and national minorities. The book discusses issues such as language rights, group representation, religious education, federalism, and secession - issues which are central to understanding multicultural politics, but which have been surprisingly neglected in contemporary liberal theory.

Author: Brian Barry
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745665640
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 606

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Book Description
All major western countries today contain groups that differ in their religious beliefs, customary practices or ideas about the right way in which to live. How should public policy respond to this diversity? In this important new work, Brian Barry challenges the currently orthodox answer and develops a powerful restatement of an egalitarian liberalism for the twenty-first century. Until recently it was assumed without much question that cultural diversity could best be accommodated by leaving cultural minorities free to associate in pursuit of their distinctive ends within the limits imposed by a common framework of laws. This solution is rejected by an influential school of political theorists, among whom some of the best known are William Galston, Will Kymlicka, Bhikhu Parekh, Charles Taylor and Iris Marion Young. According to them, this 'difference-blind' conception of liberal equality fails to deliver either liberty or equal treatment. In its place, they propose that the state should 'recognize' group identities, by granting groups exemptions from certain laws, publicly 'affirming' their value, and by providing them with special privileges or subsidies. In Culture and Equality, Barry offers an incisive critique of these arguments and suggests that theorists of multiculturism tend to misdiagnose the problems of minority groups. Often, these are not rooted in culture, and multiculturalist policies may actually stand in the way of universalistic measures that would be genuinely beneficial.

Author: Bhikhu Parekh
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0230204252
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
This important and much acclaimed book rapidly became a classic on first publication. In it, Bhikhu Parekh shows that the Western tradition of political philosophy has very limited theoretical resources to cope with cultural diversity. He then discusses how it can be revised and what new conceptual tools are needed. The core of the book addresses the important theoretical questions raised by contemporary multicultural society, especially the nature and limits of intercultural equality and fairness, national identity, citizenship, and cross-cultural political discourse. The new second edition includes a substantial additional chapter addressing key issues.

Author: Ryan Muldoon
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1134793545
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
Very diverse societies pose real problems for Rawlsian models of public reason. This is for two reasons: first, public reason is unable accommodate diverse perspectives in determining a regulative ideal. Second, regulative ideals are unable to respond to social change. While models based on public reason focus on the justification of principles, this book suggests that we need to orient our normative theories more toward discovery and experimentation. The book develops a unique approach to social contract theory that focuses on diverse perspectives. It offers a new moral stance that author Ryan Muldoon calls, "The View From Everywhere," which allows for substantive, fundamental moral disagreement. This stance is used to develop a bargaining model in which agents can cooperate despite seeing different perspectives. Rather than arguing for an ideal contract or particular principles of justice, Muldoon outlines a procedure for iterated revisions to the rules of a social contract. It expands Mill's conception of experiments in living to help form a foundational principle for social contract theory. By embracing this kind of experimentation, we move away from a conception of justice as an end state, and toward a conception of justice as a trajectory. Listen to Robert Talisse interview Ryan Muldoon about Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World on the podcast, New Books in Philosophy: http://tinyurl.com/j9oq324 Also, read Ryan Muldoon’s related Niskanen Center article, "Diversity and Disagreement are the Solution, Not the Problem," published Jan. 10, 2017: https://niskanencenter.org/blog/diversity-disagreement-solution-not-problem/