Negotiating Diversity: Culture, Deliberation, TrustISBN: 978-0-7456-2405-1
Hardcover
240 pages
January 2005, Polity
Other Available Formats: Paperback
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Debates about cultural diversity have become an important,
controversial and inescapable feature of the politics of modern
democracies. Negotiating Diversity offers a lucid and
accessible analysis of the political theory of multiculturalism. It
is an ideal text for students looking for an overview of the state
of play in this area.
The book explores the work of key political philosophers such as Kymlicka, Barry and Kukathas, and draws on a range of real-world examples to illustrate its arguments. It provides a critique of the tendency to reify cultural identity in political thinking, particularly through an examination of contemporary liberalism. In its place, the author develops a deliberative alternative, which views the politics of cultural diversity as a fallible process of negotiation, argument and compromise. He confronts objections that this alternative itself presupposes a homogenous political community, and that it offers an unrealistic or oppressive vision of politics.