Multiculturalism, Liberalism, and PhilosophyBrian Barry. Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth. Redistribution or Recognition? A Political–Philosophical Exchange. New York: Verso, 2003.Amy Gutmann. Identity in Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Abstract

Many scholars now take it as a truism that identity politics has replaced the politics of class and wealth. Even political philosophy cannot miss such massive changes, and the field has had a number of new issues placed on its agenda. The old questions of politics as who gets what, so central to political philosophy from Marx to the early Rawls, have been at least somewhat displaced. A number of factors contributed to this change. New social movements, such as feminism and various raceand ethnicity-based groups, have become increasingly important over the past few decades, and not just in the West. These groups have often questioned whether the universal ideals, which underpin the politics of redistribution, are truly universal. The dissolution of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War unleashed a wave of nationalist conflicts. Migration has added to the already multicultural nature of societies, especially in Western Europe and North America. Hence, political life is increasingly driven by competing claims about how various groups can live together, or if they even should, since some argue for secession and desire to form their own state. While the rise of identity or recognition politics has been less violent in the West than in, say, Eastern Europe, it has still proven contentious.