The themes of citizenship and community are today at the center of a lively debate as both Left and Right try to mobilize them for their cause. Indeed, such notions are crucial in the current attempt to redefine the project of theLeft in terms of an extension and radicalization of democracy. But, argue the contributors to this volume, these concepts need to be made compatible with the pluralism that marks modern democracy.

This volume sets out to examine what type of “citizen” and “community” might be required by a project of radical and plural democracy. From a diversity of disciplines and perspectives, the different contributions provide a set of elements to help us address the following challenge: how to defend the greatest possible pluralism without destroying the very framework of the democratic political community.

Contributors include Michael Walzer, Kirstie McClure, Jean Luca, Mary Dietz, Questin Skinner, Sheldon Wolin, Louise Marcil-Lacoste, Slavoj Zizek, Maurizio Passerin-d'Entrèves, Bryan Turner, and Etienne Tassin.

Chantal Mouffe is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Study of Democracy at the University of Westminister. She is author of, among other works, The Return of the Political, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (with Ernesto Laclau), Gramsci and Marxist Theory, Deconstruction and Pragmatism, and The Democratic Paradox.


Publication
July 1999

336 pages

Cloth
0 86091 344 9
US$60

Paper
0 86091 556 5
US$19