Public and Private: Legal, Political and Philosophical Perspectives

This collection provides a fresh and wide-ranging assessment on the changing nature of the public-private debate. For the first time, eight essays by scholars provide insight into this issue from a number of disciplinary perspectives. The focus of recent debates on this topic has been the delineation of acceptable boundaries between the public and the private in the economic, social and cultural spheres of modern societies. Tough questions are raised pertaining to the nature and scope of citizenship, privacy rights, the implications of new reproductive technologies, and the fate of state sovereignty in the context of a globalized world economy. All of these issues discussed in this book bring serious concerns about the distinction between public and private to light.

Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves is a Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Manchester.