Identity in Democracy

Description

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. Clear, engaging, and forcefully argued, 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.

Amy Gutmann Amy Gutmann is President-elect of the University of Pennsylvania. Her many books include "Democratic Education"(Princeton); "Why Deliberative Democracy?" (forthcoming, Princeton) and "Democracy and Disagreement" (Harvard), both with Dennis Thompson; and "Color Conscious" (Princeton, with K. Anthony Appiah).

Winner of the 2003 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Government and Political Science, Association of American Publishers "Typically, discussions of identity politics in American life are tinged with vitriol. Gutmann's book, by contrast, calms the debate with an unflappably reasonable analysis... She argues that, since humans are social creatures, identity politics is a permanent fixture of the political landscape."--The New Yorker "There is much to admire in this book. It is clearly written, deploys interesting and topical examples, and is accessible without losing important nuance and careful insight."--Margaret Moore, Political Science Quarterly "Although Gutmann writes as a philosopher, her text is accessible to the nonspecialist interested in analyzing core issues of diversity, identity, and community... Gutmann's analysis of identity groups is instructive to those who seek a more complex understanding of the tensions between expressions of individual identities and the creation of an equitable community."--Kristen A. Renn, Academe