Avigail Eisenberg and Will Kymlicka, Eds.: Identity Politics in the Public Realm: Bringing Institutions Back In

Avigail Eisenberg and Will Kymlicka, eds. Identity Politics in Public Realm: Bringing Institutions Back In. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2011. 293 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $34.95 sc. This volume is part of an Ethnicity and Democratic Governance series, which engages timely question: How can societies respond opportunities and challenges raised by ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural differences and do so in ways that promote democracy, social justice, peace, and stability? The book's title references Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol's classic Bringing State Back In (1985), which pulled states out from theoretical/empirical background which they had been relegated in social sciences and presented them as actors whose organization/interests have independent effects on political processes/outcomes. In a similar vein, Eisenberg and Kymlicka focus on how public institutions mediate (or fail mediate) of identity. The introduction frames research at intersection of two analytical streams. A more normative approach addresses potential for expand scope of freedom and equality within a political community. A more empirical approach delineates how political mobilization of can distort rather than reflect group identity/interests. The book promotes a normative approach that attends these latter concerns, to identify some of factors that either sustain or subvert emancipatory potential of politics (8) and thereby understand better the scope for a progressive of identity (9). The editors hold that if has no preordained political effects, then a significant degree, the risks and dilemmas of signal not a failure of per se but a failure of states democratize their political (25). They find this be especially true of liberal democracies, where open political space for an engaged citizenry requires public institutions that possess capacity/determination to develop procedures and guidelines for addressing [identity] claims in ways that are compatible with rule of law, constitutional principles, and public reason (9). Such processes are not, editors stress, simply domestic but can be influenced by international actors and norms. The ten well-written and clearly argued chapters that follow can be divided roughly into two sets. The majority address implications of group classification and enumeration by public institutions (through censuses and other mechanisms) on grounds of race, ethnicity, religion, and/or indigeneity. They explore how such processes, while central acquisition of certain resources (e.g., equal/privileged access goods/services) as well as less material forms of recognition/inclusion within body politic, also confuse, distort, limit and even exclude group identities/interests. These are not, therefore, neutral/objective exercises but rather are freighted with power struggles, competing interests and inequalities between/within groups. The second set explores evolving uses of laicite/secularism in France and Canada, tracing how concept of neutrality has been shifted from issues of race/ethnicity religion, and from state broader public space. …

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