Multiculturalism Without Culture and Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism

Extract

Multiculturalism Without Culture. By Anne Phillips. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 216p. $29.95.

Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism. By Sarah Song. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 212p. $85.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

These latest contributions to the multiculturalism literature have much to recommend them, and—in light of their many affinities—they are particularly rewarding to read as a pair. Both Sarah Song and Anne Phillips start with the same preoccupation, namely, the apparent tension between the importance of respecting cultural diversity on the one hand, and the feminist project of achieving gender equality, on the other. Both are absolutely committed to the latter, of course, but both are also concerned that the feminist backlash against multiculturalism—posed most forcefully and famously by Susan Moller Okin—might have been carried too far. Accordingly, both aim to recover and reconstruct what is worthwhile from the multiculturalism program in a manner that can be reconciled with a commitment to gender equality.