Identity in Democracy

By: Amy Gutmann

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

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. She addresses fundamental questions of timeless urgency while keeping in focus their relevance to contemporary debates: Do some identity groups undermine the greater democratic good and thus their own legitimacy in a democratic society? Even if so, how is a democracy to fairly distinguish between groups such as the KKK on the one hand and the NAACP on the other? Should democracies exempt members of some minorities from certain legitimate or widely accepted rules, such as Canads's allowing Sikh members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to wear turbans instead of Stetsons? Do voluntary groups like the Boy Scouts have a right to discriminate on grounds of sexual preference, gender, or race?

Identity-group politics, Gutmann shows, is not aberrant but inescapable in democracies, because identity groups represent who people are, not only what they want - and who people are shapes what they demand from democratic politics. Rather than trying to abolish identity politics, Gutmann calls upon us to distinguish between those demands of identity groups that aid and those that impede justice. Her book does justice to identity groups, while recognizing that they cannot be counted upon to do likewise to others. Clear, engaging, and forcefully argued, Amy Gutmann's Identity in Democracy provides the fractious world of multicultural and identy-group scholarship with a unifying work that will sustain it for years to come. The book is published by Princeton University Press.

©2003 Princeton University Press (P)2010 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Amy Gutmann's book provides a splendid scrutiny of this rich and diverse terrain, ending with a coherent and integrated understanding of the role of identity groups in democratic politics. We have reasons to be grateful." (Amartya Sen, Trinity College, 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics)

"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." ( Political Science Quarterly)