Politics of Identity

Michael Kenny is Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield

• Ackmwlegements. Preface...1 The Character and Origins of the Politics of Identity...2 The Politics of Identity in Liberal Political Theory...3 Citizenship, Public Reason and Collective Identity...4 Civil Society and the Morality of Association...5 The Public Faces of Identity Politics...6 Identities in Motion: the Political Ethics of Social Movements...7 Liberalism and the Politics of Difference...8 Liberalism and the Politics of Recognition...9 Conclusions.Notes..References and Bibliography.Index.

“A very illuminating, rich and carefully thought-through book which should attract the attention of both political philosophers and sociologists.”British Journal of Sociology “Michael Kenny identifies, analysis and deftly cuts through the obstacles that have heretofore impeded or precluded communication between Kantian-universalist liberals, on the one hand, and multicultural particularists, on the other. Although ultimately siding with the former over the latter, Kenny nevertheless shows very nicely how and what liberals can learn from multiculturalists. The politics of Identity is a timely and welcomed contribution to one of the central theoretical and political debate of our time.”Terrance Wall, Arizona State University “An authoritative, detailed and lucid examination of one of the key questions preoccupying political philosophers and policy makers alike. No better account of the challenges posed to Anglophone liberal philosophy by the politics of identity has been provided.”Jeremy Jennings, Birmingham University “The politics of Identity sensitively argues that liberals and their multicultural critics have over inflate the difference between themselves, reducing each others position to unnuanced caricatures. As a consequence, identity politics wrongly appears wholly incompatible and threatening to liberal political theory. For Kenny, liberalism has always been conceptually more robust and more flexible than both its opponents and even proponents have recognized, and this is because, in part, both liberals and their detractors. have lost sight of the richly textured contours of the liberal traditions. This book has long been overdue.”David Weinstein, Wake Forest University