Identities, Affiliations, and Allegiances

Description

Where do political identities come from, how do they change over time, and what is their impact on political life? This book explores these and related questions in a globalizing world where the nation state is being transformed, definitions of citizenship are evolving in unprecedented ways, and people's interests and identities are taking on new local, regional, transnational, cosmopolitan, and even imperial configurations. Pre-eminent scholars examine the changing character of identities, affiliations, and allegiances in a variety of contexts: the evolving character of the European Union and its member countries, the Balkans and other new democracies of the post-1989 world, and debates about citizenship and cultural identity in the modern West. These essays are essential reading for anyone interested in the political and intellectual ferment that surrounds debates about political membership and attachment, and will be of interest to students and scholars in the social sciences, humanities, and law.

Seyla Benhabib is Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy and Director of the Program in Ethics, Politics and Economics at Yale University. Her most recent publications include Transformation of Citizenship: Dilemmas of the Nation-State in the Era of Globalization (2000), The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global World (2002) and The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (2004) which won the Ralph Bunche award of the American Political Science Association and the North American Society's best book in Social Philosophy award. Ian Shapiro is Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University and Henry R. Luce Director of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. His most recent publications include The Moral Foundations of Politics (2003), The State of Democratic Theory (2003), The Flight From Reality in the Human Sciences (2005) and Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth (with Michael J. Graetz, 2005). Danilo Petranovich is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Yale University. His research focuses on the shaping of American allegiances from the Founding period through the Civil War.

'Political membership centered in nation-states is making room for other affiliations and allegiances. These are shaping novel assemblages of interests and identities with local, regional, transnational, and even imperial geographies. Can these become stable meanings and gain the power historically associated with national citizenship? The essays in this extraordinary collection map complexities rather than easy answers. They leave few established propositions untouched.' Saskia Sassen, Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago and author of Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (2006) 'Identities, affiliations and allegiances ignite passions - especially when the borders they define - territorial or otherwise - are transgressed. Their analysis, when done well, ignites similar passions in the battle fields of academia where identities, affiliations and allegiances are as entrenched and uncomfortably account for normative and cognitive boundaries. This volume, rich and provocative, will ignite strong passions.' J. H. H Weiler, University Professor and Director of the Global Law School, New York University 'An exemplary demonstration of the creative benefits of collaboration between normative theorists and social scientists on a vital subject of growing concern world-wide. Its special strength is to lift issues of citizenship, immigration and ethnicity out of their specialized niches and reconsider them in the context of what one of the contributors properly characterizes as a 'PostWestphalian World.' Deserving a wide readership in philosophy, political science, sociology, and international affairs, this book will undoubtedly stimulate a reconceptualization of the entire field.' Aristide R. Zolberg, Walter P. Eberstadt Professor of Political Science, New School for Social Research