Current Books

POLITICAL THEORY

MORAL AND POLITICAL REASONING IN ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICE by Andrew Light and Avner De-Shalit (eds)

Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2003. 365, £18.50, ISBN 0 262 62164 9

Readership: Academic/research

Rating: ***

Reviewer: PAUL G. HARRIS (Lingnan University, Hong Kong)

This book is written for environmental ‘activists’ (broadly defined) and environmental philosophers – perhaps mostly the latter. The editors seek to persuade readers that ‘environmental philosophy ought to be a form of applied philosophy [or] “practical philosophy” – its argumentation should be inspired by the real world and by the need to solve them’ (p. 10). Individual chapters, by reputable contributors, examine environmental philosophy and political theory; intuition and biocentrism; justice; constitutionalism; trusteeship; space and sustainability; biotechnology; historical narrative; environmental philosophy and medical ethics; applied environmental ethics; fox-hunting; and biodiversity. Although contributors do not always conform to the line of reasoning laid out by the editors, all chapters are broadly related.

To make environmental philosophy more practical, the editors recommend a ‘public reflective equilibrium’ involving reasoning from within the environmental community, and doing so for a broader selection of cases. In short, philosophers should philosophize from the perspective of environmentalists and other stakeholders most affected by environmental policies. Undertaking practical environmental philosophy requires determining the ‘values and positions of communities in order to make any moral appeal that has a hope of motivating people to take action’ (p. 13). Environmental philosophy, from this perspective, is more relevant to policy-making, to the real world, and to those in society seeking to solve actual moral dilemmas – as opposed to abstract ones often removed from reality.

The book might irk some purist philosophers, but it will come as welcome relief to sophisticated activists and those who study policy-making. It is a partial antidote for those who want more ethics, and the help of philosophers, in policy decisions, but who so far have found these to be too abstract or removed from the real world. However, it is not a how-to manual for activists. It is better suited to those who study them.

THE MICROANALYSIS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION: claptrap and ambiguity by Peter Bull

London: Routledge, 2003. 234, £58.00, ISBN 0 415 27382 X

Reviewer: DOMINIC J. WRING (Loughborough University)

The primary focus of this book is the study of interpersonal communication between assorted British politicians, interviewers and audiences over the last two decades. As such, it is not overly concerned with content and hence offers an interesting departure from most scholarship in this field, which has tended to concentrate on the role of mediation, public relations and journalism in the democratic process. Bull, a social psychologist, is particularly concerned with analysing interactions during political speeches and seeks to challenge and modify Atkinson's earlier influential work by suggesting that audiences are more prone to making spontaneous responses rather than being largely dependent on the orator's so-called ‘claptrap’ to cue their applause. Other chapters consider the role and function of interruptions in the set-piece political interview.

This study has potential practical ramifications, given that it implies that this increasingly futile broadcast format only provides a succession of score draws between the questioner and the all-too-evasive, face-saving collection of leading politicians. It is perhaps another demonstration that professional presentation has contributed to rendering such encounters increasingly redundant as election spectacles.

LIBERALISM AND THE DEFENCE OF POLITICAL CONSTRUCTIVISM by Catriona McKinnon

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 201, £45.00, ISBN 0 333 96507 8

Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research

Rating: ****

Reviewer: JONATHAN QUONG (University of Manchester)

McKinnon has provided an ingenious and sophisticated contribution to the growing literature on political liberalism and, more generally, political justification. Her primary aim is to defend a constructivist account of liberalism that is less ‘demanding,’ and thus more inclusive, than those currently on offer, particularly in comparison with Rawls's version of political liberalism. By defending a minimally demanding account of constructivism, she seeks to defuse the commonly articulated complaint that liberalism can only be justified to those who already hold liberal values and beliefs. She argues that liberalism can have a wider constituency of justification by abandoning one of the central planks of Rawls's theory – acceptance of the ‘burdens of judgement’ – and by focusing instead on each person's interest in promoting their own self-respect and the self-respect of others. She claims that acceptance of the burdens of judgement is unduly demanding because it asks everyone to accept the permanence of pluralism for the same (controversial) reason. Instead, she advocates a ‘many flowers view’, whereby there can be many reasons to accept the permanence of pluralism, so long as everyone understands that there are a plurality of ways to realise self-respect.

The book, as a whole, is tightly argued and, in many places, very convincing. In particular, McKinnon has probably done more than anyone in recent years to provide a compelling account of why self-respect is a necessary condition for anyone to participate in political justification. That said, the book is not ultimately convincing. She fails to show that we can abandon Rawls's important claim that the permanence of pluralism is reasonable and still provide a motivationally adequate story about why citizens ought to engage in public reasoning. It is even unclear that her emphasis on self-respect is less demanding than Rawls's focus on the burdens of judgement. Nevertheless, I would strongly recommend the book to anyone interested in Rawls, political liberalism or constructivism.

THE MORAL FOUNDATIONS OF TRUST by Eric M. Uslaner

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 311, £16.95, ISBN 0 521 01103 5

Reviewer: ASTRID HEDIN (Uppsala University)

Ten years after Robert Putnam's path-breaking book on how trust makes democracy work, the discipline is still disputing exactly what trust is and where it comes from. ‘Maybe we've been concentrating on the wrong type of trust’, Uslaner suggests (p. 50). He argues that trust has moral foundations, mainly childhood socialization.

According to Uslaner's statistics, participation in civil society does not create trust. Putnam's ‘virtuous circle’ – where voluntary organizations foster trust, which in turn makes democracy work – is a ‘moral dead end’. The remedy for societal distrust – which Uslaner claims is deadlocking the American Congress, rendering democracy unworkable – cannot be found in bowling or civic clubs. On the other hand, he disagrees with Bo Rothstein's statist argument that interpersonal trust is enhanced by a perception of the legal system and civil service as fair, just and reasonably efficient. He has another explanation for the high level of trust in countries like Sweden – economic equality. Over time as well as across countries, trends in interpersonal trust follow economic equality (Figures 6.6 and 8.1). His explanation of this phenomenon is that economic equality makes for optimism about one's chances of success in life, an optimism that boosts the moral value of trust. In other words, it takes morale to maintain morals. Trust can also be effected by major collective social experiences – what Rothstein terms ‘collective memories’. Uslaner shows how the Vietnam war polarized American society and undermined trust, whereas the moral crusade of the civil-rights movement accomplished the reverse and increased faith in others.

Eventually, Uslaner's many statistical computations and his numerous reviews of earlier surveys widen to involve ever more variables, in an often fascinating, but meandering and eventually opaque, argument (p. 237). The book would have profited from an additional round of editing.

CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF LIBERALISM by Gerald F. Gaus

London: Sage, 2003. 240, ISBN 0 7619 6139 9

Reviewer: SHAUN P. YOUNG (University of South Africa)

According to Gaus, the ‘main current’ of contemporary liberalism has (wisely) abandoned the fundamental Enlightenment belief in the eventual ‘convergence among all rational people on the moral and political truth’ (p. x). This book is devoted to an examination of recent efforts to develop a ‘post-Enlightenment’ theory of liberalism that can effectively explain how it is possible to secure and sustain a just and stable polity in a world characterized by reasonable disagreement. More specifically, Gaus analyzes the related conceptions of public reason, which, he proclaims, represent ‘the most philosophically interesting and innovative developments in contemporary political theory’ (p. x).

In the course of his examination, Gaus scrutinizes the conceptions of public reason embodied in value pluralism, contractarianism, pragmatism, deliberative democracy, political democracy and political liberalism and engages the arguments of many distinguished and influential contemporary theorists (such as Berlin, Gray, Gauthier, Habermas, Elster and Rawls) and those of a number of the principal historical figures in the canon of liberal political theory (such as Hobbes, Locke and Kant). He concludes that all the theories are problematic, particularly insofar as their viability eventually relies upon the natural convergence of private reason, a problem of Enlightenment liberalism they were meant to avoid. In the final chapter, he proposes a theory of ‘justificatory liberalism’ as a means for resolving this difficulty. In essence, by both allowing ‘inconclusively justified’ proposals to be accepted as valid public reason and using democratic procedures as an ‘umpire’ to resolve any disputes concerning the justifiability of publicly enforcing specific proposals, justificatory liberalism is claimed to offer a conception of public reason that effectively responds to the problems that undermine other post-Enlightenment conceptions of public reason. This book provides both an edifying survey and an interesting and insightful critique of contemporary liberal theories of public reason. Not all readers will be persuaded to agree with each of Gaus's substantive judgments, but no one will be left without food for thought.

GENEALOGIES OF DIFFERENCE by Nathan Widder

Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002. 192, $29.95, ISBN 0 252 02707 8

Reviewer: SHANE P. MULLIGAN (University of Cambridge)

Widder seeks to outline a conception of ‘difference that differs from identity and difference’ (p. 3), a ‘groundless difference’ that can serve to underline a pluralist politics of ‘the singular-multiple event’. The task is twofold – to show how ‘mainstream discourse omits groundless difference’ and to ‘plot alternative lines of thought through which it can appear’ (p. 7).

The book opens from a critique of Hegel's Phenomenology and Philosophy of Right (and ‘the identity of identity and difference’) through the voices of Nietzsche, Foucault, Blanchot and Deleuze. It then turns back the clock to examine the ways in which difference has been (or might have been) construed at ‘key moments of transition in the history of metaphysics’ (p. 13). It contrasts close readings of Aristotle with the Epicureans, Augustine with the Gnostics, and Aquinas with Duns Scotus and Ockham. This history appears as a series of interlocked debates in which a strong ‘identity’ argument meets an (almost) ‘groundless’ theorist, a history in which the groundlessness of difference had remained (until Nietzsche) a tentative but inadmissible conclusion.

This book offers an erudite and provocative view along the edges of metaphysical thought. The text is exceedingly dense in places, especially the introduction – though (arguably) the novelty of the argument demands this – and readers may occasionally lose sight of the main thesis. Yet the story Widder tells is complex and engaging, even while it ultimately leads to the none-too-controversial conclusion that we need ‘to play our games of truth differently’, which means ‘approaching them with a sense of curiosity and care for that which remains opaque and different and a willingness to press thinking beyond its traditional limits’ (p. 154). In the spirit of that statement, this (somewhat opaque and different) book should be read closely by political thinkers, for it offers valuable historical insight into a central contemporary problem – how we might practice (as the final chapter is titled) an ‘ethics of a pluralism made of stolen bits’.

STATE/SPACE: a reader by Neil Brenner, Bob Jessop, Martin Jones and Gordon MacLeod (eds)

Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. 365, £17.99, ISBN 0 631 23034 3

Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research

Rating: ****

Reviewer: JOHANNA KANTOLA (University of Bristol)

This useful and interesting reader addresses an emergent research agenda on the production and transformation of state space. The pieces collected here explore the restructuring of territorially demarcated forms of state power and the decentring of nationally scaled forms of state activity. The research agenda emerges from, and draws upon, four distinct literatures – society and space; the globalisation debates; the crisis of the Keynesian welfare state; and new localisms and new regionalisms literature. The book brings these various strands together and compels us to study classic texts from this new point of view.

The first part of the book seeks to answer questions about the appropriate theoretical categories and methods through which to explore the geographies of state space. The second part examines the transformations in state space since the 1970s, and the third part focuses upon the reshaping of political space in the current period and analyses the new forms of political mobilisation and their implications for state activities.

On the one hand, the book questions the taken-for-grantedness of state territoriality. On the other, it argues against simplistic portrayals of state decline or erosion that are reproduced in a number of accounts of current global change. Overall, it offers useful frameworks and ways to conceptualise the issue and presents different theoretical, empirical and political starting points in a particularly welcome way. However, the emerging agenda is firmly based on old authoritative texts, which is perhaps why the radical potential of the topic is not fulfilled. Also, the book remains Western centric, with some contributions on East Asia but no focus on, for example, notions of state and space in Africa.

TRANSCRITIQUE ON KANT AND MARX by Kojin Karatani [translated by Sabu Kohso]

Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2003. 365, £23.50, ISBN 0 262 11274 4

Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research

Rating: ****

Reviewer: CHRIS S. JONES (University of Nottingham)

Karatani is an ambitious and often original theorist, whose work thoroughly deserves to be translated into English. Kohso's translation is smooth, readable and faithful enough to the original, which appeared as a series of essays in the literary magazine Gunzo from 1992. For Karatani, drawing on Kant's transcendental critique at the outset, transcritique forms a space for ‘transcodings between the domains of ethics and political economy’ (p. VII). In practice, it is a space delimited by the process of reading Marx through Kant, and Kant through Marx, and containing a transcultural critique common to them both. The result is an unearthing of the ethical roots of socialism in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and the location of a Kantian critique of money in Marx's Capital. Along the way, he overturns some common conventions, such as the use of Hegel as the proper intermediary between Kant and Marx.

Although the book is structured into two halves (first Kant and then Marx), Karatani is keen to point out that this structural bifurcation is false, since the text is unified by the narrative of transcritique. The very last chapters deserve special mention, as there he utilises his transcritical space to demonstrate the need for a new kind of critical engagement in the post-cold war world – a new communism and a new activism that could eventually supersede ‘the trinity of Capital–Nation–State’ (p. 265). Rather disappointingly, there is little of Karatani's characteristic insight into the philosophical (particularly Marxist) movements of modern Japan. Although he concedes that he (and transcritique itself) occupies a space ‘oscillating and transversing’ between Japanese and Western contexts, he is explicit that this is not his concern in the book. I suspect that the English language readership (as opposed to the readers of the original Japanese) might have benefited had he been more elaborate about this background.

THE ESSENCE OF HUMAN FREEDOM: an introduction to philosohy by Martin Heidegger [translated by Ted Sadler]

London: Continuum, 2002. 230, £16.99, ISBN 0 8264 5924 2

Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research

Rating: ****

Reviewer: CHRIS S. JONES (University of Nottingham)

This text is based on a series of lectures given by Heidegger at the University of Freiburg in 1930, at a crucial point in his career, just three years after the publication of his masterpiece, Being and Time. Sadler's crisp translation successfully captures the serious philosophical tone of Heidegger's writing during this period. Together with its sister volume, The Essence of Truth (which is also based on lectures from the early 1930s), this translation is a welcome addition to the corpus of Heidegger's work in English.

In an interesting ‘Preliminary’ section, Heidegger presents this volume as ‘an introduction to philosophy’ and seeks to address the apparent contradiction of explaining the general (philosophy as a whole) via the interrogation of the particular (the question of freedom). For him, in fact, there is no contradiction, as it is the (necessary) nature of philosophical inquiry to reveal the whole through the unfolding of the specific. In the first part of the book, he focuses on the problem of freedom, which, for him, is ultimately and simultaneously the problem of being (as freedom is a ‘way of being’). Here, perhaps more than anywhere else in his published work, he engages with Aristotle's Metaphysics and the conception of ouisa therein. In this lengthy section, he is building the conceptual foundations for his startling encounter with Kant.

The second part finds Heidegger tackling the practical philosophy of Kant in a reasonably systematic way. In particular, he is critical of Kant's apparent inability to resolve questions of freedom and causality. Unlike Kant, who seems, for him, to consider freedom as something separate from man and hence encountered or enjoyed by man in his relations with external causes, he insists that freedom (or rather the possibility of freedom) is an aspect of being itself – being free.

NARRATIVE POWER AND LIBERAL TRUTH: Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, and Mill by Eldon J. Eisenach

Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. 245, £18.95, ISBN 0 7425 0791 2

Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research

Reviewer: STEPHEN WINTER (St Catherine's College, Oxford)

In this collection of eleven theoretical essays on Hobbes, Locke, Bentham and Mill, Eisenach invites us to a reading of some familiar (and perhaps some unfamiliar) texts by highlighting sometimes neglected ‘engaged’ aspects of authorship. His Cambridge-style argument, developed in the (additional) introduction, is for a non-reductive appreciation of these thinkers. This comprehensive understanding develops through an extensive (read: not selective) reading of an author's texts with a mind to the historical context and intended readership.

Eisenach emphasizes the roles played by emotions, by narrative requirements and by power and personhood; but most often, his emphasis is on religion. When writing, these seminal authors not only developed arguments in response to religious concerns, but they also drew upon religion as a source of power for their writings, as a rhetorical means of enabling readers to assimilate arguments and ideas into their own (the readers’) personal narratives. Eisenach argues that these emotive elements are a critical aspect to the writing, reception and understanding of philosophy. He underlines the importance of narrative emplotment through a reading of Mill's Autobiography as political theory. His humanising nervous breakdown, which Mill traced to the arid and abstract existence of his youth and his subsequent attempt to situate an emotional element in his life is a lesson in political theory that, I feel, Eisenach wishes his own contemporaries to notice.

Of course, Eisenach's arguments apply as much to his own work as to those of his subjects, and some of the essays seem addressed to a different theoretical milieu. This is partly because ten of the essays were previously published at various points over the last twenty-five years. However, those seriously interested in the work of Hobbes, Locke, Bentham and Mill will appreciate the fine writing style and impressive depth of scholarship that, along with three additional bibliographical essays, the author puts at the disposal of the reader.

PARECON: LIFE AFTER CAPITALISM by Michael Albert

London: Verso, 2003. 311, £16.00, ISBN 1 85984 698 X

Reviewer: AGUSTIN JOSE MENENDEZ MENENDEZ (University of León, Spain)

Parecon (participatory economics) is an economic vision, an institutional blueprint and a political strategy aimed at reconciling public and private autonomy into ways superior to capitalism or communism. This book is structured in four main parts. Albert starts by presenting his criticism of the two said political-economic models, then he defends participatory economics, before he rebuts substantial criticism, and finally speculates on the concrete shape and contours of a participatory economy. The key vision is that of enlarging democratic participation to the economic sphere, and to do so by means of the combination of the socialisation of the means of production and democratic planning, both at work and consumption stages. This vision entails allocation of economic resources to be based mainly on personal effort, together with a proper consideration of need.

Albert offers a quite innovative approach to the political and social implications of the division of labour proper of modern societies and proposes a reconsideration of such division by means of job complexes, which will aim at equalizing the empowering effects stemming from work. On institutional matters, he borrows extensively from the left-wing federal tradition, and thus proposes several but interlocking levels of deliberation and decision-making. The book succeeds in combining some of the most attractive theoretical and practical insights coming from deliberative democracy theory and from libertarian socialism, especially the literature on workers’ councils. The book relies on the many technical and more popularising works by Albert and his usual co-author Robin Hanel. Still, it sheds new light on these arguments and presents them in a far more consistent way; for this reason, it is an inspiring contribution to debates on both political theory and political economy. Readers may regret, though, the omission of footnotes.

CONFLICT: from analysis to intervention by Sandra Cheldelin, Daniel Druckman and Larissa Fast (eds)

London: Continuum, 2003. 373, £25.00, ISBN 0 8264 5747 9

Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates

Rating: **

Reviewer: JEFFREY ROBERTS (University of Kent)

A more accurate title for this book would have been ‘The Functional Psychology of Conflict’. However, even with a more truthful title, I fear readers would still be disappointed. The book's eighteen chapters are organised into three sections – diagnosis; influences and context; and intervention. Presented as a textbook, the authors argue throughout that this work represents the state of the art in the study of conflict and its resolution. Although much like the title, this too is a misrepresentation. The authors claim to outline the foundations, contexts and possible means of resolving intra-personal, interpersonal and group conflicts. The chapters review a number of issues including the integration of theory, research and practice; the sources of conflict; the contexts in which conflict takes place; and methods of conflict intervention and resolution.

However, despite the breadth of issues discussed, all the essays are connected by their unrelenting focus on mental events as the most significant source of conflict. In the opening section, we learn that relative depravation, psychological states, values and interests breed conflict. This point is reiterated throughout the book. We are reminded in almost all chapters that what happens in people's heads is responsible for contentious interactions. However, the mechanisms by which these mental events are translated into conflict are left unexplained. Further problems arise with the overtly functionalist arguments that many of the essays make. We are told in chapter 10, for example, that institutions represent dominant normative orders. On numerous instances, conflict is described, à la Coser, as offering a release valve for pent-up societal pressures. Most of the explanations are extremely static, lacking discussion of how and why issues become contentious, how interests are formulated and how conflict is organised. Thankfully, others are studying the dynamics of conflict, so we need not rely on this book.

THE POLITICS OF COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE by Charles Tilly

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 275, ISBN 0 521 53145

VIOLENCE: theory and ethnography by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern

London: Continuum, 2002. 202, £19.99, ISBN 0 8264 6008 9

Reviewer: ANDREW SCHAAP (University of Melbourne)

In The Politics of Collective Violence, political scientist Charles Tilly presents a relation-based explanatory theory of collective violence as a special case of ‘contentious’ (interest-based) politics. Collective violence is contentious because participants are ‘making claims which affect each other's interests’ and political because ‘relations of participants to governments are always at stake’ (p. 26). This approach is contrasted to intentionalist or structuralist explanations. He provides a typology of various forms of collective violence (violent rituals, coordinated destruction, opportunism, brawls, scattered attacks, and broken negotiations), which are delineated in terms of the social processes that generate them. He is concerned to understand the relation between non-violent and violent political claim-making and the circumstances in which one form of political violence may turn into another (such as how the organised destruction of Tutsis, and Hutu ‘sympathisers’, in Rwanda gave way to opportunistic assault, killing and theft as the regime's control over repression diminished).

Tilly stresses the role of elites (‘political entrepreneurs’ and ‘specialists in violence’) in promoting, inhibiting and channelling collective violence, as well as the constraints and opportunities that various kinds of political regimes establish for collective violence. Somewhat unsurprisingly, he argues that the potential for collective violence (within a polity) is highest in ‘low-capacity, undemocratic’ regimes and lowest in ‘high-capacity, democratic regimes’. In earlier work, he emphasised the ways in which violence often emerges from and reflects primarily non-violent interactions (as in scattered attacks and broken negotiations). In this book, he hopes to have identified a small number of distinctive causal mechanisms and processes that mark out collective violence as a distinct form of political claim-making. He proposes that his book be read as ‘a preliminary synthesis, a guide to new research and theory’ (p. 24). His writing is accessible and entertaining. His theory is elegant and its explanatory power is demonstrated (albeit, inconclusively) through wide-ranging and sophisticated discussions of historical and contemporary cases. The book is worth reading for its treatment of the Rwandan genocide alone.

In Violence: theory and ethnography, social anthropologists Pamela Stewart and Andrew Strathern state that their purpose is not to present a single theory of violence but to ‘assess the present state of knowledge and perspectives on violence’, particularly within the discipline of anthropology (p. 1). Taking as their starting point David Riche's claim that ‘violence pertains to contested arenas of legitimacy’, they set out to examine ‘how such arenas develop, how violence is escalated or controlled and what the longer-term, emergent effects are that proceed form these arenas’ (p. 10). In addition to their own extensive field work in Papua New Guinea, they survey anthropological work on violence in a range of case studies (Sri Lanka, East Timor, Rwanda, Northern Ireland and Albania, among many others).

The book is an ‘eclectic synthesis’ (p. 152 f.). Although there are several interesting and detailed discussions of various anthropological studies of violence, it is difficult to pick out any sustained argument from the text, short of generalisations such as ‘revenge is a major motivation in the replication or reproduction of violent relations over time’ (p. 108). Yet even this seemingly uncontroversial thesis is unconvincingly demonstrated in terms of the collective violence perpetrated in East Timor since 1975. Against Stewart and Strathern's characterisation of the violent events in East Timor in terms of ‘a large-scale drama of revenge played out to its end’ (p. 131), Tilly's framework suggests a more precise description and plausible explanation: the organised violence of the Dilli massacre in 1991 and opportunistic killings by militia (instigated by the military) in 1999 should be accounted for in terms of the increasing autonomy of specialists in violence with the decreasing capacity of a transitional regime.

STUART HALL by Chris Rojek

Cambridge: Polity, 2003. 244, £14.99, ISBN 0 7456 2481 2

Readership: Academic/research

Rating: **

Reviewer: OSCAR REYES (University of Essex)

This is a timely reminder of the impact of Stuart Hall's work across a number of fields of study – culture, ideology, the media, Thatcherism, identity, ethnicity and multiculturalism. The book begins with an intellectual biography, situating Hall's early work in the context of the New Left and the influential Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), of which he was director until 1979. The account goes beyond his published texts to consider CCCS course materials and directors re-ports, as well as noting the importance of collaborative work within the Centre. For the most part, though, Rojek concentrates on Hall's major publications. The interpretation of the encoding/decoding paper on media audiences is particularly lucid, reading it alongside contemporaneous texts on Marx and ideology. His account of Hall on ‘state and society’ is less impressive, however. We are offered a fairly routine plod through the key texts without much sustained or original argument, except the off-beat conclusion that Hall is too ‘statist’ in his approach. The final section on ‘culture and civilisation’ also suffers from an idiosyncratic diversion via Norbert Elias – the relevance of which is never satisfactorily explained. Rojek is impressively complete in his assessment of Hall's contribution, but this comes at the cost of eclecticism. A key thesis is difficult to discern, and his several criticisms never quite amount to a coherent overall argument.

There are enough points of interest to make this a useful addition to a university library, where it could fruitfully be consulted by students of the New Left and cultural studies. But as an introduction to Hall's work, it ultimately fails to convince. The book is neither as well written nor as politically engaged as Hall's own writings, and students would be far better off consulting these in their original form.

FEMINIST POSTCOLONIAL THEORY: a reader by Reina Lewis and Sara Mills (eds)

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003. 753, £18.95, ISBN 0 7486 1349 8

Reviewer: JOHANNA KANTOLA (University of Bristol)

This wonderful reader consists of interesting, important and useful material on feminism and postcolonialism, bringing together some of the most influential writings in gender and postcolonial theory from the 1980s and 1990s. Some of these articles are hard to get hold of, so this book plays an important role in enhancing access. The editors do not attempt to provide a ‘world coverage’. Instead, they emphasise the necessity of attending to the specificity of each historical situation and of rooting the theories we use in the analysis of the historical (p. 3).

The book is organised into six thematic parts. The first part reflects the way in which feminist postcolonial theory has engaged in a two-fold project – to racialise mainstream feminist theory and to insert feminist concerns into conceptualisations of colonialism and postcolonialism. The articles in the second part rethink whiteness. On the one hand, postcolonial feminists have analysed the role of white women in imperial encounters. On the other, white feminists have begun to focus on their own racial identities. The third section redefines the Third World subject. The texts tackle the problematic history of intervention by Western women on behalf of indigenous women and the problematic quest to find the authentic ‘native’ voice. The articles in the fourth and fifth parts focus on practical concerns and empirical problems. The section on sexuality and sexual rights discusses black women's emphasis on institutionalised rape, racial eugenics and enforced sterilisation. It also addresses female genital mutilation and prostitution. The section on harem and veil exposes the Western obsession with these practices. The reader concludes with a section on gender and postcolonial spatial relations that analyses the politics of location, the notions of diaspora, displacement, home and border. The articles are in a dialogue with one another and it is a pleasure to read them in this way.

LIBERALS AND CANNIBALS by Steven Lukes

London: Verso, 2003. 180, £16.00, ISBN 1 85984 595 95

Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research, professional

Rating: ****

Reviewer: STEPHEN de WIJZE (University of Manchester)

This collection of Lukes's previously published or publicly delivered papers over the last ten years is a must-read for anyone engaged in the multiculturalism/pluralism and identity politics debate. The thirteen essays are well written and of the characteristic high quality we have come to expect from him. They cover a wide range of topics but focus on an issue that has long interested him – how we are to understand and accommodate the diversity of moral values which are so prevalent in contemporary societies.

The book admirably cuts to the chase when examining urgent questions such as whether liberal values are ethnocentric or whether a universal framework is best able to accommodate the plethora of competing cultural, moral and religious worldviews. The first four essays should be compulsory reading for all students of multiculturalism, as they subtly examine whether dealing with difference is possible without succumbing to either the arrogance of enthocentric universalism or the moral abyss of relativism. Lukes usefully draws on sociological, anthropological and philosophical insights to offer a carefully nuanced account that exposes deep flaws in many liberal (and nonliberal) assumptions central to the debate. One key insight, for example, is that theorists of all stripes make ubiquitous use of the term ‘culture’ which is all too often based on a ‘poor man's sociology’, one assumes cultures to be undifferentiated and integrated wholes. This is a serious misrepresentation, as, in reality, cultures always have been, and remain today, ‘sites of contestation’.

Although the range of topics that concern Lukes in this collection is rather wide, the theme that holds them together is his support for a pluralism of moral and political values. Here we can see the strong influence of Isaiah Berlin's work in his thinking; and although he does not provide definitive answers to many of the important questions raised, he does leave us with a better sense of where we must look if we are to find the answers we seek.

PASSION AND PARADOX: intellectuals confront the national question by Joan Cocks

Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. 220, $16.95, ISBN 0 691 07468 2

Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research

Rating: ****

Reviewer: PHILIP SPENCER (Kingston University)

This is a stimulating set of essays on a number of intellectuals who have engaged with nationalism from a variety of perspectives. It is an imaginative selection, by no means focussing on the ‘usual suspects’ but rather on writers who (with the exception of the Marxist turned nationalist, Tom Nairn) are perhaps more celebrated for their contributions in other domains. This, though, is what makes the discussion so interesting, as Cocks probes sharply into the ways in which writers of very different political persuasions have tried to come to terms with the persistent challenge of nationalism, often revising their opinions as they went.

Some chapters focus on a single writer (Marx, Isaiah Berlin and Nairn); others move across and between different authors, with particularly illuminating comparisons of Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt and Frantz Fanon, of Arendt and Berlin, and of V. S. Naipaul and Edward Said. The discussion, though, is also sustained, working through clearly identified and related themes, weaving back and forth across different perspectives, and (particularly in the case of Berlin) identifying tensions and ambivalent reactions over time. Perhaps some of this ambivalence in the face of the ‘conundrums of nationalism’ may in the end have rubbed off on Cocks herself, for all her efforts to think critically about slippages and slides. Given her awareness of the ways in which nationalists have so often sought to exclude and expel those whose (multiple) identities they find so threatening, her conclusions are perhaps oddly tentative. Her critique of Nairn, however, is particularly compelling, fortified by her earlier cogent analysis of the depth and prescience not only of Arendt but also (unfashionably) of Luxemburg. This book is much more than a compilation of essays – it is a systematic and thought-provoking work of political philosophy on a continually pressing set of issues.

NEUROPOLITICS: thinking, culture, speed by William E. Connolly

Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. 234, £16.50, ISBN 0 8166 4022 X

Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research

Rating: *****

Reviewer: JACOB SEGAL (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York)

In his new book, Connolly continues his development of post-structuralist politics in the idea of neuropolitics ‘though which cultural life mixes in the composition of body/brain processes. And vica versa’ (p. xiii). He argues that human thought is a result of process and experiences not consciously known and not in control of the agent, such as how film creates ‘affects’ on moviegoers and changes their way of experiencing the world. Surprisingly, he stresses the importance of the seemingly objective process of how the brain works even through post-structuralists focus on the social construction of meaning. For him, however, a component of neuropolitics is just how these processes are given meaning.

Connolly argues that the recognition that human identity is a creation of social and material process like brain functions engenders his own spiritual view of ‘nontheistic gratitude’ – a gratitude for all that is simply because it is. When selves experience gratitude, they resist the impulse towards feeling ‘resentment’ at their limits. Resisting resentment means lessening the tendency towards ‘normalization’ or the self-imposed process of forcing oneself into patterns of normality. Nontheistic gratitude opens the space of an ‘arts of the self’ wherein agents work on how they experience (such as altering brain functioning through medical techniques) the world without rancor or the need to mirror conventional standards. The book suffers from Connolly's usual stylistic idiosyncrasies. It lacks a clear development of ideas and is awash with terms and intellectual sources that often confuse more than enlighten. Despite this, it is fundamentally a profound and often exhilarating work. Indeed, in the reading, the reader may experience one of its central themes – that ‘thought’ is itself an opened ‘adventure’.

THE END OF OVER-CONSUMPTION: towards a lifestyle of moderation and self-restraint by Marius de Geus

Utrecht: International Books, 2003. 222, £13.95, ISBN 90 5727 046 3

Readership: Undergraduates, advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research

Rating: *****

Reviewer: JACOB SEGAL (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York)

This book has a slightly misleading title. De Geus's account of a lifestyle of moderation is only briefly developed at the end of the book and is the least persuasive part of his argument. The bulk is taken up with his idea of how to restructure society, in a ‘telescopic ecostate’, in the interest of ‘sustainable development’ – economic development limited by concerns for the environment and future generations. An ecostate protects the environment through the minimal use of coercion and has a bias towards decentralization when employing centralized power when necessary. He prefers piecemeal reforms (not a whole restructuring of society) and advocates reforms consistent with a market economy, such as a tax on polluters. He also offers excellent surveys on competiting environmental theories, on Western ideas of the human relationship to nature and how liberal theory and practice has engendered over-consumption and hedonism as social norms.

The book is admirably clear and cogent, and the survey of current debates in environmental theory is extremely informative for those not well versed in these arguments. However, it suffers from some limits. De Geus never empirically substantiates his background belief about the need for sustainable development, and so at times the book has the feel of someone preaching to the converted. His discussion of liberalism is well done, but it doesn't take into account different and more nuanced interpretations. Ultimately, the book fails to provide to provide an account of a lifestyle of moderation, which means, given his belief that such a lifestyle is a requirement for sustainability, that this excellent book, intended as a call to arms, ends up as a counsel of despair.

PHILOSOPHY IN THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND CAPITAL by Gregory Dale Adamson

London: Continuum, 2003. 169, £16.99, ISBN 0 8264 6032 1

Reviewer: FLAVIA MONCERI (University of Pisa, Italy)

The core assumption of this book is that science and capitalism, the two major products of western modernity, are the leading powers of the contemporary world, leaving no room for a philosophical activity worthy of the name (‘metaphysics’). Adamson's point is that, in order to recover the value of philosophy, we should consider that ‘metaphysics begins from the fact that our lives and the material world in which we are situated are absolutely continuous’, so that the metaphysical is situated in ‘culture’ and ‘aesthetics’, since continuity is what ‘differentiates the cultural and the aesthetic from the objectivity of science and capital’ (p. 4). He relies heavily upon Bergson's thought in order to show that ‘duration’ and ‘continuity’ are more adequate categories to approach the complex environment we live in, and he particularly criticizes Daniel Dennet's neo-Darwinism. On the other hand, he refers to Marx's philosophy in analysing the problem of commodification and the identification between ‘civilization’ and ‘capitalist democracy’.

Some interesting points notwithstanding, Adamson's account does not convince, principally because he seems to forget that science and capitalism developed in close connection with modern philosophy, in the sense that ‘traditional’ philosophy and the two ‘objective’ powers followed the same path, at the aim to dominate the world theoretically (through the models elaborated by an almighty human reason) and practically (through the by-products of science and capitalism). But the weakest point of his argumentation is his implicitly taking for granted that if we are to check the power of the two products of ‘western’ modernity who spread out all over the world without any apparent reaction by the part of ‘the rest’, we must unavoidably resort to ‘western’ philosophy. This occidentalistic attitude is what makes his theoretical proposal insufficient to solve the problems confronting today's philosophers, called to elaborate their theories in a multicultural environment.

STORIES, IDENTITIES, AND POLITICAL CHANGE by Charles Tilly

Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. 273, £22.95, ISBN 0 7425 1882 5

Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research, professional

Rating: *****

Reviewer: JEFFREY ROBERTS (University of Kent)

Reading work by Charles Tilly is a pleasure and this book is no exception. True to its title, it offers his unique and insightful interpretation of stories, political identities and social change. Of the fifteen chapters, thirteen have been published elsewhere, with the addition of a new introduction and conclusion. As such, the book serves as a progress report, presenting a review to date of his work on two central theoretical themes – relations and mechanisms.

Employing a myriad of examples, including Catholic emancipation in Britain, Muslim–Hindu conflict in India, nationalism across the globe, and European state-building across the last 500 years, Tilly skilfully explicates his position described as relational realism. In contrast to the individualism and holism that dominate so much of the discussion on these issues, he presses researchers to focus on dynamic interactions and relations as the foundations of the social world. Arguing for a more dynamic understanding of stories, identities and political change, he advocates a focus on mechanisms, such as boundary construction, category formation and coalition-building and dissolution, as the building blocks of a process-driven ontology. In contrast to static, covering law models that posit the same set of necessary and sufficient conditions operating identically across settings, he advocates mechanisms as generalisable elements of political processes, interacting in diverse settings, often with completely different effects. With a keen eye for time and space, he explains that these mechanisms are inextricably tied to specific places and shaped by past histories.

Although there is repetition of some points, it seems to me that this is appropriate given the counterintuitive nature of many of Tilly's arguments. My hope is that others in the field will heed his call, investigating, applying and perhaps in even refuting his well-argued and provocative claims.

POLITICS AND RELIGION by Steve Bruce

Cambridge: Polity, 2003. 292, £15.99, ISBN 0 7456 2820 6

Readership: Advanced undergraduates

Rating: ****

Reviewer: JOSEPH M. KNIPPENBERG (Oglethorpe University, Georgia)

Bruce sets out to rescue his topic from the limbo to which it has been consigned by most social scientists. He argues that religion is an independent variable whose features – albeit in conjunction with other factors – have a distinctive influence on the political order. He makes his case with immense learning, discussing topics as disparate as the millet system in the Ottoman Empire; the interaction of religion and nationalism in places like Ireland, Syria and India; the varieties of Christian Democracy in Europe; the American New Christian Right; and the political authoritarianism that seems to accompany Islam. His most interesting claims center on his comparison of the cultural influences and political programs of Islamic and Christian fundamentalism. Whereas in Islam groups embracing repression and violence operate close to the mainstream, almost all Christian fundamentalists embrace liberal democracy. Although many explain this difference in terms of the secular histories of the regions in which these religions are practiced, Bruce insists that we cannot overlook its religious sources.

Few readers will be in a position to challenge in detail all of Bruce's analyses and assertions. But I am given pause by his discussion of one case I know well. His dismissal of the American New Christian Right follows from his confidence that, in the US as elsewhere, the trend is toward secularization and liberalism. This seems oversimplified. How would he explain the growth, apparently at the expense of the liberal and individualistic ‘mainline’ Protestant denominations, of their more theologically and morally conservative evangelical counterparts? And although it is true that some of the biggest American churches feel something like shopping malls, their theological and moral teachings are often close to their conservative roots. Although it might be that they are doomed by the current of secularization (to which they inadvertently contribute), it seems equally plausible to argue that their adaptations are a sign of health.

DEMOCRACY AND GLOBAL WARMING by Barry Holden

London: Continuum, 2002. 194, £25.00, ISBN 0 8264 5070 9

Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research

Rating: **

Reviewer: STEWART DAVIDSON (University of Strathclyde)

In this short but densely argued book, Holden uses the issue of global warming as a platform from which to examine tensions within green political theory regarding the extent to which greens should be committed to democracy and the form of democracy to be advocated.

The first three chapters defend the ability of democracy as a decision-making mechanism to generate effective responses to global warming. Holden rejects ‘guardianship’ arguments calling for the rule of expert knowledge, and also counters claims that ordinary people are unable to recognise their own long-term interests and prioritise them above short-term ones. Indeed, for him, democracy is also able to adequately represent the interests of future generations. After this, he moves onto the problem that, although global warming requires global action, democracy largely operates only within nation states. He argues that, as globalisation has disempowered nation states but has not empowered them collectively, the construction of a transnational or global democracy has become essential. In an attempt to do this, he explores possibilities for the democratisation of existing international organisations such as the EU. He advances the idea that INGOs, as part of an emerging global civil society, may provide opportunities for popular participation in much the same way as pressure groups do at the national level.

The book's faults stem more from glaring omissions than from what is actually discussed. The suitability of the current economic system is treated almost as axiomatic, with Holden avoiding discussions regarding its relationship to any democratic system. This leads him to mistakenly blame collective action problems solely on the spatial configuration of the states system. In addition, the absence of a defence of his explicit anthropocentrism is also glaring. The book may appeal to those with an unquestioning faith in liberal capitalism. However, others will find its premises unacceptable.

A DELICATE BALANCE: what philosophy can tell us about terrorism by Trudy Govier

Boulder CO: Westview Press, 2002. 186, £14.99, ISBN 0 8133 6585 6

Readership: Undergraduates, advanced undergraduates, professional

Rating: ****

Reviewer: STEPHEN de WIJZE (University of Manchester)

Govier offers careful and nuanced ‘ethical reflections on the events of September the 11, 2001, and their aftermath’ (p. vii), which come through a careful logical analysis of ethical and political claims primarily to fight against manipulative and superficial accounts that have proliferated in recent political speeches and commentaries. The book's structure is simple but effective – fifteen loosely connected essays dealing with topics more usually associated with a political theory or an applied ethics text. The first five focus on vulnerability, victims, evil, hatred and revenge, and the next four discuss the classical political theory questions concerning power, justice, violence and responsibility. The virtues of kindness and courage are also examined, with the book finally exploring issues concerning perspective, life, vindication and hope.

I very much like the motivating idea behind the book, and Govier has made the text accessible for a general audience without ‘dumbing-down’ the important and difficult theoretical issues. As with all of her work, these essays are well written, easy to read and admirably cover a wide range of scholarship. My one concern is that, although she offers a corrective to polemics from all sides on the issues of 9/11, she doesn't do enough to tackle certain crucial questions surrounding the very different nature of the enemy faced since 9/11. The US (and the Western liberal democracies in general) now face an enemy that behaves in a way that precludes negotiations, compromise solutions and non-violent methods. This renders the usual ethical arguments difficult, if not impossible, to apply. Just War Theory, for example, on the rights of combatants fails to explain what to do with enemies who do not fight in uniform, deliberately target civilians, adopt suicide bombing as a method of war, and uphold a fanatical ideology that seeks the utter destruction of its enemy.

To be fair, Govier is sensitive to some of these difficulties, especially concerning those on agreeing about concepts such as ‘Terrorism’, but she doesn't sufficiently focus on those specific difficult moral issues arising from the 9/11 events. Nevertheless, her main theme is important and well taken. There is no substitute for careful analysis of key moral issues and a carefully crafted sophisticated strategy to combat those who seek to destroy our way of life. We must steer clear of simplistic knee-jerk reactions that needlessly erode our most cherished values and principles.

THE LIBERAL ARCHIPELAGO: a theory of diversity and freedom by Chandran Kukathas

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 292, £30.00, ISBN 0 19 925754 X

Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research

Rating: ****

Reviewer: STEPHEN DE WIJZE (University of Manchester)

What is the principled basis of a free society marked by cultural diversity and group loyalties?’ This is the primary question that motivates Kukathas's project, and his answer can be simply stated. A free society is a liberal open society, underpinned by the fundamental principle of freedom of association. This implies that individuals respect a principle of mutual toleration coupled with the freedom to associate or disassociate with others as they see fit. The key measure of this free society is the extent to which its members are prepared to accept practices and views that differ from those found in its standard or normal forms of association. Given this, he then argues that, by implication, political society is no more than one association among other associations which make a truly free society. Political society cannot have a special status, nor does it hold regulatory power over other associations. Rather, in a free society, the best metaphor to describe the relationship between the various associations or communities is as an archipelago of competing and overlapping jurisdictions in a sea of mutual tolerance – hence the title of the book.

Kukathas's approach is intriguing, if rather difficult to imagine in practice. Perhaps the most radical difference between his approach and that of fellow liberals is his complete rejection of the nation state as a legitimate unit within which to theorise about justice. This liberal nationalism, as he calls it, seriously distorts any discourse on justice, as it is an unrealistic assumption and, moreover, it undermines the crucial and central issue of whether and how the existence of national boundaries affects power relations between groups and the pattern of distribution for social and material goods. However, he does adopt key strategies from his liberal rivals. He agrees with Kymlicka that liberal theory needs to be more sensitive to cultural diversity, and as a consequence he adopts Rawls's ‘political’ approach in order to reject theorising about justice from within one conception of the good.

I remain unpersuaded that Kukathas has offered a compelling answer to his original question. In particular, two concerns about the coherence of his approach seem insurmountable. First, a liberal state as he understands it cannot survive, let alone flourish, with a politics of ‘benign neglect’ if too many illiberal communities within it refuse to school their children in the values of liberal tolerance. These values do not magically arise and they need to be fostered and passed on from generation to generation, yet he rejects the idea that the state needs to be the legitimate purveyor of such values. As a result, this undermines the one truly essential precondition for his approach to succeed – a citizenry reasonable and mutually tolerant of behaviour they find objectionable or repugnant. Second, given the centrality of mutual tolerance, or reasonableness, in the architectonics of his theory, he says very little about why different communities or associations will agree about the boundaries of this liberal notion. In short, liberals might see the need to tolerate others as an ideal central to their worldview, but there is no guarantee that non-liberals will feel the same way once there is no pragmatic need to do so.

Political Theory