Culture, Citizenship, and Community A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness

Winner of the Canadian Political Science Association C.B. MACPHERSON PRIZE 2002 for best book published in the field of political theory. This book contributes to contemporary debates about multiculturalism and democratic theory. It reflects upon the ways in which claims about culture and identity are actually advanced by immigrants, national minorities, aboriginals, and other groups in a number of different societies. Carens advocates a contextual approach to theory that explores the implications of theoretical views for actual cases, reflects on the normative principles embedded in practice, and takes account of the ways in which differences between societies matter. He argues that this sort of contextual approach will show why the conventional liberal understanding of justice as neutrality needs to be supplemented by a conception of justice as evenhandedness. He concludes that claims about culture and identity appear in many forms in politics. There is no master principle that enables us to determine when we should respect such claims and when we should deny them, although the idea of evenhandedness often points us in the right direction.