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Contributors here explore the nation's pluralistic framework as a historical creation, looking at group relations in the United States and how they have been conceptualized in the past. This volume attempts to bridge the gaps that have developed between various pluralist, multiculturalists, ethnic, academics, and other groups.
At its founding, the United States was one of the most religiously diverse places in the world. Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Quakers, Dutch Reformed, German Reformed, Lutherans, Huguenots, Dunkers, Jews, Moravians, and Mennonites populated the nations towns and villages. Dozens of new denominations would emerge over the succeeding years. What allowed people of so many different faiths to forge a nation together? In this richly told story of ideas, Chris Beneke demonstrates how the United States managed to overcome the religious violence and bigotry that characterized much of early modern Europe and America. The key, Beneke argues, did not lie solely in the protection of religious freedom. Instead, he reveals how American culture was transformed to accommodate the religious differences within it. The expansion of individual rights, the mixing of believers and churches in the same institutions, and the introduction of more civility into public life all played an instrumental role in creating the religious pluralism for which the United States has become renowned. These changes also established important precedents for future civil rights movements in which dignity, as much as equality, would be at stake. Beyond Toleration is the first book to offer a systematic explanation of how early Americans learned to live with differences in matters of the highest importance to them --and how they found a way to articulate these differences civilly. Today when religious conflicts once again pose a grave danger to democratic experiments across the globe, Beneke's book serves as a timely reminder of how one country moved past toleration and towards religious pluralism.
Rejecting current arguments that international law should be 'constitutionalized', this book advances an alternative, pluralist vision of postnational legal orders. It analyses the promise and problems of pluralism in theory and in current practice - focusing on the European human rights regime, the European Union, and global governance in the UN.
We live in a world of legal pluralism, where a single act or actor is potentially regulated by multiple legal or quasi-legal regimes imposed by state, substate, transnational, supranational and nonstate communities. Navigating these spheres of complex overlapping legal authority is confusing and we cannot expect territorial borders to solve all these problems. At the same time, those hoping to create one universal set of legal rules are also likely to be disappointed by the sheer variety of human communities and interests. Instead, we need an alternative jurisprudence, one that seeks to create or preserve spaces for productive interaction among multiple, overlapping legal systems by developing procedural mechanisms, institutions and practices that aim to manage, without eliminating, the legal pluralism we see around us. Global Legal Pluralism provides a broad synthesis across a variety of legal doctrines and academic disciplines and offers a novel conceptualization of law and globalization.
Value pluralism is the idea, most prominently endorsed by Isaiah Berlin, that fundamental human values are universal, plural, conflicting, and incommensurable with one another. Incommensurability is the key component of pluralism, undermining familiar monist philosophies such as utilitarianism. But if values are incommensurable, how do we decide between them when they conflict? George Crowder assesses a range of responses to this problem proposed by Berlin and developed by his successors. Three broad approaches are especially important: universalism, contextualism, and conceptualism. Crowder argues that the conceptual approach is the most fruitful, yielding norms of value diversity, personal autonomy, and inclusive democracy. Historical context must also be taken into account. Together these approaches indicate a liberal politics of redistribution, multiculturalism, and constitutionalism, and a public policy in which basic values are carefully balanced. The Problem of Value Pluralism: Isaiah Berlin and Beyond is a uniquely comprehensive survey of the political theory of value pluralism and also an original contribution by a leading voice in the pluralist literature. Scholars and researchers interested in the work of Berlin, liberalism, value pluralism, and related ideas will find this a stimulating and valuable source.
This is the first work in political theory to bring together IR, comparative politics and political theory approaches to analyze the post-sovereign state and develop a new interpretative scheme for social and political scientists
For more than a century Christian theologians have attempted to construct "theologies of religion" that would be recognized as authentically Christian and authentic in relation to the historical and social reality of many religions. This attempt usually ends in an impasse in which either only one religion is portrayed as holding the true path to salvation, or that many do. Neither the exclusivist nor the pluralist position is completely satisfactory in integrating the two goals of an authentically Christian and historically viable theology of religions. In calling this book Salvations author S. Mark Heim moves the theology of religions project beyond taking sides on exclusivist and pluralist views. The crux of his argument is this: that it makes more sense to speak of salvation in the plural, to maintain that the ends of various religions are indeed varied and significantly constituted by the paths taken to reach them. At the same time, all paths - Christianity included - can and must make or require exclusive commitments on the part of those that hold them. One of the most intriguing features of Salvations is its careful critique of the pluralist assumption of a single religious end to the many religions. Heim's careful analysis of the writings of John Hick, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and Paul Knitter points out a central weakness in the pluralist argument: by insisting that different religions point to the same "ultimate", pluralism fails its own test of plurality. Heim points out that exclusivists should note that in hypothesizing the many ends of different religions, Salvations contradicts neither the finality of Christ, nor the authentic, independent validity of other religions.
Americans often believe that the First Amendment and free speech are synonymous and that all restrictions on speech can be addressed by the legal framework of the First Amendment. Political theorist Samuel P. Nelson argues that the current legal framework for free speech actually undermines attempts to resolve many of these issues and that the law of the First Amendment has supplanted the vital politics of free speech. To cut through the confusion, Nelson takes a step back from the First Amendment framework to understand the social nature of speech, moving toward a more pluralistsic and value-based understanding. He examines three philosophies commonly used to justify speech protection—libertarianism, expressivism, and egalitarianism—and finds none of them sufficiently responsive in today's contemporary political landscape. Advocating an approach grounded in value pluralism—which describes a wider variety of free speech claims than the First Amendment allows—Nelson pushes the debate beyond constitutional and legal questions.
In this book, Gregor McLennan examines developments in two of the most central traditions of social and political theory - Marxism and pluralism - and asks whether the relation between them is one of progressive convergence. McLennan begins by considering conceptual and empirical shifts in each tradition since their more orthodox or classical formulations. In a closely interwoven argument, he then traces the sociological, philosophical and political debates between these perspectives. The issue of class, for instance, highlights the challenges which the Marxist tradition has had to face, as the pivotal role of the proletariat has increasingly come into question. Equally, pluralists have had to accept that pervasive structural divisions - including class, race and gender, for example - shape political and social interaction. A further major issue is considered: in the current climate of `postmodern' thought is the entire debate between Marxism and pluralism now outmoded? In a series of critical assessments of positions which attempt to go `beyond' Marxism/pluralism, McLennan argues that the central tensions and positions within this classic dialogue have not yet been superceded.
Constitutional pluralism has become immensely popular among scholars who study European integration and issues of global governance. Some of them believe that constitutionalism, traditionally thought to be bound to a nation state, can emerge beyond state borders - most importantly in the process of European integration, but also beyond that, for example, in international regulatory regimes such as the WTO, or international systems of fundamental rights protection, such as the European Convention. At the same time, the idea of constitutional pluralism has not gone unchallenged. Some have questioned its compatibility with the very nature of law and the values which law brings to constitutionalism. The critiques have come from both sides: from those who believe in the 'traditional' European constitutionalism based on a hierarchically superior authority of the European Union as well as from scholars focusing on constitutions of particular states. The book collects contributions taking opposing perspectives on constitutional pluralism - some defending and promoting the concept of constitutional pluralism, some criticising and opposing it. While some authors can be called 'the founding fathers of constitutional pluralism', others are young academics who have recently entered the field. Together they offer fresh perspectives on both theoretical and practical aspects of constitutional pluralism, enriching our existing understanding of the concept in current scholarship.