A Evaluating Culture Well-being, Institutions and Circumstance

From which evaluative foundation should we develop public policies designed to promote wellbeing among different cultural groups in different circumstances? This book seeks to advance an objective, universal theory of cultural evaluation grounded in a eudaemonic account of human wellbeing. The approach brings together a 'thick vague' conception of the good; a determinate, particularist conception of circumstance; an egalitarian moral philosophy with concessions to sufficientarianism, and a normative functionalist view of culture, to assess the value of cultural institutions to those that they affect. Engaging closely with needs and capabilities paradigms, the approach seeks to identify and explain cultural deficits in given circumstances. The applicability of the theory is illustrated through analysis of the effect of settler-indigenous relations on Aboriginal Australian people. This book is ideal for students and scholars of cultural theory and public policy.

Matthew Johnson is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of York, UK working in political philosophy on issues of cultural diversity and human wellbeing, specifically with regard to physically invasive practices. He has written on such topics as contemporary Marxism, circumcision, and the thought of John Gray, and has previously taught at Newcastle University, the University of Queensland and the University of Iceland.

List of Illustrations
Note on the Author
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Case Against Cultural Evaluation: Relativism, Culturalism and Romanticism 
2. Needs, Goods and Self-actualization 
3. Capabilities, Zero-sum Choices and Equality 
4. What is Culture? What does it do? What should it do? 
5. Circumstance, Materialism and Possibilism
6. Applying the Theory: Sources of Harm in Aboriginal Australian Communities
Conclusion
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index