Iris Marion Young 
On the Politization of The Social in 
Recent Western Political Theory 
Political theorists in the last quarter century have been primary custo-
dians of a conception of the political as an active, participatory, and rational 
activity of citizens. This conception contrasts with the concept of politics 
usually assumed by popular opinion, journalism, and much political science. 
By politics these often mean the competition of elites for votes and influ-
ence, and processes of bargaining and among those elites about the shape 
of policy. Hannah Arendt's work remains a milestone in twentieth century 
political theory because she gave us an inspiring vision of the idea of the 
political as active participation in public life that many political theorists 
continue to guard and preserve. 
In that vision the political is the most noble expression of human life, 
because the most free and self-determining. Politics as collective public life 
consists in people moving out from their private needs and sufferings to 
encounter one another in their specificity. Together in public they create 
and recreate through contingent words and deeds the laws and institutions 
that govern and frame their collective life, the resolution to their ever-re-
curring conflicts and disagreements, and the narratives of their history. 
Participation in such public life makes a world for people, where things and 
ideas are affirmed as real by virtue of appearing in that public affirmed by 
a plurality of subjects; that same public appearance affirms the reality of 
the individual person, who acts through speech. Social life is fraught with 
vicious power competition, conflict, deprivation, and violence, which always 
threaten to destroy political space. But political action sometimes revives, 
and through a remembrance of the ideal of the ancient polis we maintain 
the vision of human f reedom and nobility as participatory public action 
(Arendt, 1958). 
Arendt distinguished this concept of the political from the social, a 
modern structure of collective life which she believed increasingly eclipsed 
the political. In the modern world institutions, economic forces and mass 
movements collude to create a realm of need, production and consump-
tion outside the family. Government institutions increasingly define their job 
as managing, containing and attending to this social realm - through edu-
cation, public health policy, policing, public administration, and welfare. 
Filozofski vestnik, XVIII (2/1997), pp. 153-176. 153 
Iris Marion Young 
Political economy grows with a vengeance, the state as a giant housekeeper, 
with a massive division of labor and social science apparatus. As a result 
people's lives may be more or less well taken care of, and government more 
or less efficient in its administration, but genuine public life sinks into the 
swamp of social need. 
Despite wishing to preserve her vision of the political, for the most part 
political theorists have rejected Arendt's separation of the political f rom the 
social, and her backward looking pessimism about the emergence of mass 
social movements of the oppressed and disenfranchised. The more common 
judgement is that social justice is a condition of political freedom and equal-
ity (Bernstein, 1986; cf. Conovan, 1978), understood as the ability to par-
ticipate actively in public affairs thtough word and deed. If we rule out eco-
nomic issues and issues of social and cultural relations as appropriate to a 
genuine public discussion, moreover, it is not clear what active citizens have 
to talk about together (Pitkin, 1981). 
In this essay I construct an account of political theory in the last two 
decades as thinking through the implications not of the eclipse of the politi-
cal by the social, but rather of the politicization of the social. The story I tell 
is of course a construction, from my own point of view, which emphasizes 
some aspects of political theorizing in the last twenty-five years, and 
deemphasizes others. The theme of the politicization of the social, for ex-
ample, will lead me to say little about the massive literature in recent politi-
cal theory which takes some aspect of the historical canon of political theory 
as its subject. Likewise I will make little reference to recent political theory 
that makes use of the techniques of rational choice theory. My story partly 
seeks to construct recent political theory as a response to contemporary social 
movements. The trends in political theory I reflect on find mass social move-
ments of poor and working class people, movements concerning labor, civil 
rights, feminism, and environmentalism, as the primary sites of active and 
participatory politics in the late twentieth century. Most of my attention will 
be on English-language political theory, though I will refer to some French 
and German writers. 
My account divides the politicization of the social in recent political 
theory in to six sub-topics: social justice and welfare rights theory; demo-
cratic theory; feminist political theory; postmodernism; new social movements 
and civil society; and the liberalism-communitarianism debate. Recogniz-
ing that many works in recent political theory overlap these categories, I 
nevertheless try to locate most works in one of them. 
154 
On the Politization of The Social in Recent Western Political Theory 
I. Social Justice and Welfare Rights Theory 
In 1979 Brian Barry could look back on two decades of political theory 
and find the first nearly barren and the second producing bumper crops 
(Barry, 1989). With him I will locate the publication o f j o h n Rawls's A Theory 
of Justice (1971) as the turning point. It is no accident that the decade of the 
1960's intervened between the barren field of political theory and the ap-
pearance of this groundbreaking book. Despite its rhetoric of timelessness, 
A Theory of Justice must be read as a product of the decade that preceded it. 
Would civil disobedience occupy a central chapter in a basic theory of jus-
tice today? 
A Theory of Justice mapped a theoretical terrain from the thicket of 
demands and responses to the Black civil rights movement and journalistic 
attention to poverty: social justice. Whatever Rawls's insistence on the prior-
ity of the principle of equal liberty, most attention focused on Rawls's sec-
ond principle, which referred to social and economic equality. Whether 
Rawls intended so or not, moreover, most interpreted A Theory of Justice as 
recommending an activist and interventionist role for government not only 
to promote liberties, but to bring about greater social and economic equal-
ity. 
Hitherto principled political commitment to social equality and distribu-
tive economic justice were most associated with socialist politics. Insofar as 
commitment to such principles had made their way into public policy in liberal 
democratic societies, many understood this as a result of the relative suc-
cess and concessions f rom the dominant economic powers (Piven and 
Cloward, 1982; Offe, 1984). A Theory of Justice presented norms of social and 
economic equality within a framework that claimed direct lineage with the 
liberal tradition. 
A major issue of political conflict in the last two decades, as well as 
earlier, is about whether a liberal democratic state should legitimately aim 
to ameliorate social problems and economic deprivation through public 
policy. If Rawls supplied the philosophical framework for one side in this 
debate, Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia (Nozick,1974) supplied a 
framework for the other. Is a politicized commitment to more egalitarian 
patterns of distributive social justice compatible with liberty or not? Many 
articles and collections of essays over this period debate this issue (Arthur 
and Shaw, 1978; Kipnis and Meyers, 1985). 
Several political theorists continue the Rawlsian project of demon-
strating that liberty is not only compatible with greater social equality, but 
requires it. Amy Gutmann adds participatory democracy to the values that 
155 
Iris Marion Young 
egalitarian liberalism must promote (Gutmann, 1980). Contemporary nor-
mative arguments for welfare rights, or a welfare liberal conception of jus-
tice, similarly aim to systematize a social democratic political program con-
sistent with liberal values and explicitly refuting more libertarian interpre-
tations of those values (Wellman,1982; Goodin, 1988; Sterba, 1988). Kai 
Nielsen argues for the compatibility of liberty and equality in a more ex-
plicitly Marxist and socialist vein, devoting a large chunk of his argument 
to a refutation of Nozick (Nielsen, 1985). Even some Marxist inspired inter-
pretations of justice aim to make an anti-exploitation social and economic 
theory compatible with a Rawsian normative theory (Peffer, 1990; Reiman, 
1990). Others insist, however, that different social class positions generate 
different pictures of society, and different incompatible, conceptions of 
justice (e.g., Miller, 1976). Thus Milton Fisk argues that liberal egalitarian-
ism is a contradictory normative theory responding to the contradictory social 
formation of welfare capitalism, and that both are the outcome of an un-
easy class compromise (Fisk, 1989). I believe that there is considerable truth 
in the claim that both the liberal democratic welfare state and a normative 
theory that attempts to reconcile the liberal tradition with a commitment to 
radical egalitarianism are fraught with tensions. Perhaps the promised third 
volume of Brian Barry's Theories of Social Justice will fur ther clarify the re-
quirements of just economic distribution. 
With the publication of Charles Beitz's Political Theory and International 
Relations, (Beitz, 1979), these issues of social justice came to be extended to 
relations between peoples globally. Beitz argued that Rawls's principles of 
justice could be used as the basis for evaluating and criticizing the distribu-
tive inequality between developed societies of the North and less developed 
societies of the South. Political theorizing about social and economic inequal-
ity across national boundaries remains underdeveloped. Some important 
work has begun, however, on immigration issues and international justice 
(Carens, Whalen, 1988); environment and international justice (Goodin, 
1990); hunger and obligations to distant peoples (Shue, 1980; O'Neill, 1986). 
II. Democratic Theory 
Literature on social justice and welfare politicizes the social by asking 
whether government ought explicitly to try to ameliorate social oppression 
and inequality. But Arendt's critique of such expanded attention to the so-
cial as conceiving public life as social housekeeping might apply to much of 
this literature. With some exceptions, this literature tends to conceive citi-
156 
On the Politization of The Social in Recent Western Political Theory 
zens as rights bearers and receivers of state action, rather than as active par-
ticipants in public decision-making. 
Nurtured by social movement calls for participatory democracy in the 
1960's and 70's, in the last two decades normative theorizing has flowered 
that takes speech and citizen participation as central. Carole Pateman's still 
widely cited Participation and Democratic Theory (Pateman, 1970), set much 
of the agenda for contemporary participatory democratic theory. That work 
criticized a plebiscite and intergroup pluralist conception of democracy, and 
reart iculated an ideal of democracy as involving active discussion and 
decisonmaking by citizens. It argued that social equality is a condition of 
democratic participation, and that democratic participation helps develop 
and preserve social equality. This means that the sites of democratic partici-
pation must include social institutions beyond the state in which people's 
actions are directly involved, particularly the workplace. 
C. B. Macpherson articulated a framework for critique of the passivity 
and utilitarianism of dominant conceptions of liberal democracy, and for 
an alternative more active conception of democracy. It is a measure of how 
much intellectual discourse has changed in the last twenty years that today 
reflection on conceptions of human nature seems quaint. Yet Macpherson's 
analysis of political theories according to whether they assume the nature 
of human beings as primarily acquisitive consumers of goods or primarily 
as developers and exercisers of capacities remains a useful way to orient 
democratic political theory. The perspective of possessive individualism will 
inevitably regard the political process as a competition for scare goods, where 
the competitors' desire for accumulation knows no limits. If one redefines 
the human good as the development and exercising of capacities, however, 
then democratic theory takes a wholly different turn. Distributive justice 
becomes only a means to the wider good of positive freedom, which is itself 
a social good because realized in cooperation with others. Freedom is the 
opportunity to develop and exercise one's capacities, and actively engaged 
citizen democracy is both a condition and expression of such freedom 
(Macpherson, 1973; 1978; cf. Carens, ed., 1992). 
Several recent political theorists take as a basic values such an expanded 
notion of freedom, as an absence of domination and positive capacity for 
self-realization and self-determination. Equality can be best understood as 
compatible with freedom in this sense, rather than in the narrower, usually 
property-based sense of f reedom as liberty from interference. Thus one 
aspect of contemporary democratic theory concerns articulation of the con-
ditions of genuine democratic citizenship. People who are deeply deprived 
cannot be expected to exercise the virtues of democratic participation, and 
157 
Iris Marion Young 
are seriously vulnerable to threats and coercion in the political process. Too 
often wealth or property function as what Michael Walzer (1982) calls 
"dominanat" goods: inequalities in these economic relations will generate 
inequalities in opportunity, power, influence, and the abilities to set one's 
own ends. So serious commitment to democracy presupposes social meas-
ures that limit the degree of class inequality and guarantee that all citizens 
have their needs met (Bay, 1981; Green, 1985; Cunningham, 1987; Cohen 
and Rogers, 1983). Most of those who theorize this relation of social and 
political equality to democracy concentrate on issues of class. Influenced by 
feminist analyses, however, a few notice the need to address issues of the 
gender division of labor to support political equality and participation 
(Green, 1985; Walzer, 1982; Mansbridge, 1991). 
Participatory approaches to democratic theory hold that democracy is 
a hollow set of institutions if they only allow citizens to vote on representa-
tives to far away political institutions and protect those citizens from govern-
ment abuse. A fuller democracy in principle means that people can act as 
citizens in all the major institutions which require their energy and obedi-
ence. As I will discuss in a later section of this paper, this conclusion has 
opened both contemporary political practice and theory to interest in civil 
associations outside both state and corporate life as the most promising sites 
of expanded democratic practice. Following Pateman's lead, however, con-
temporary democratic theory has also shown a renewed interest in workplace 
democracy. Though practices of workplace democracy, several writers ar-
gue, citizens can both begin to realize the social and economic equality that 
they find a condition for democratic participation in the wider polity, and 
at the same time live the value of creative self-governance in one of the most 
regular and immediate aspects of modern life (Schweickart, 1980; Dahl, 1978, 
Gould, 1988). The relative impotence of political theory in setting the agenda 
of political debate may be revealed by the fact that such thoroughly articu-
lated arguments have little influence on discussion of workplace practices. 
At the beginning of the period I am reviewing, the theory of political 
democracy was largely identified with a theory of interest group pluralism. 
Inspired by contemporary participatory democratic experiments and insti-
tutions, important critiques of this interest group pluralism emerged with 
well developed alternative conceptions of democracy based on active dis-
cussion. In Beyond Adversary Democracy, Jane Mansbridge (1980) argued that 
conceptualizing the democratic process as the competition among interests 
is too narrow, and she offered a model of 'unitary' democracy as one in 
which participants aim at arriving at a common good through discussion. 
Wisely, she also argued that unitary democracy has limits, and suggested that 
158 
On the Politization of The Social in Recent Western Political Theory 
both adversary and unitary democracy are necessary in a robustly demo-
cratic polity. 
Benjamin Barber took up the impulse of this classification and critique, 
but argued in Strong Democracy (Barber, 1984) that an ideal of unitary de-
mocracy in too conformist and collectivist. He proposed a model of strong 
democracy instead, as a participatory model in which citizens form together 
a public commitent to a common good but where social pluralities of inter-
est and commitment remain. It is not clear to me, however, that Barber's 
and Mansbridge's models are all that different. 
Following these important texts, recent years have seen an explosion 
of theorizing about democracy as a discussion based form of practical rea-
son. Ideals and practices of democratic decisionmaking that emphasized rea-
soned discussion have received important further development and refine-
ment (Cohen, 1989; Spragens, 1990; Sunstien, 1988; Michelman, 1988; 
Dryzek, 1990; Fishkin, 1991). Though I consider this an extremely impor-
tant trend in contemporary political theory, as currently articulated the 
notion of deliberative democracy has at least two problems. On the whole 
the models too much assume the need for a unity of citizens as either a start-
ing point or goal of deliberation (Young, forthcoming). Theories of delib-
erative democracy, moreover, have for the most part not grappled with the 
facts of modern mass democracy that led to the development of a theory of 
interest group pluralism. On the whole they have not considered the ques-
tion of democratic representation in large-scale mass polities. John Burnheim 
has put forward some creative ideas about a system of participatory based 
representation (Burnheim, 1985), and Charles Beitz (1989) and Norberto 
Bobbio (1984) have also given central consideration to this question. Fu-
ture work on the question of theorizing of structures of representation in a 
participatory and deliberative democracy would do well to build on the 
recent magnum opus of the patriarch of liberal pluralism himself, Robert 
Dahl (Dahl, 1989). 
III. Feminist Political Theory 
Civil rights and poor people's movements provide a context for theo-
rizing social justice and welfare rights. Experiments in participatory demo-
cratic practices in cooperatives, communes, and neighbourhood organisa-
tions fuel reconsideration of ideals of participatory and deliberative democ-
racy. The contemporary feminist movement has inspired perhaps the most 
sweeping reconceptualizations of political theory. As in every other discipline 
159 
Iris Marion Young 
in the humanities and social sciences, feminist scholarship in political theory 
has questioned basic assumptions in the canon discourse itself, and proposed 
considered reconceptualizations of central ideas in the field. Feminist po-
litical theory involves politicizing the social by questioning a dichotomy of 
public and private and thereby proposing that family relations, sexuality, 
and the gendered relations of street school and workplace are properly 
political relations. That gender relations are political implies that they are 
structured by power, and that they are relations whose institutionalization 
ought to be subject to discussion, rather than emerging from tradition. 
In other disciplines bringing gender into focus meant first making 
women visible - a historical actors, as writers, artists, and scientists, and as 
persons with sex and gender specific problems and experiences that merit 
both empirical and normative study. Whole concern to make women vis-
ible has not been absent from feminist political theory, from the beginning 
the primary direction of gendering political theory has been to make its 
maleness visible. 
Since the groundbreaking publication of a collection of paper by 
Lorrenne Clark and Lynda Lange (1978) and Susan Okin's Women in West-
ern Political Thought (1979), a large and sophisticated literature has grown 
analyzing and evaluating ideas of the canon writers of Western political theory 
from a feminist perspective. Most of this has concentrated on classic mod-
ern theorists, but some feminist critique has examined ancient writers as 
well (Saxonhouse, 1976). 
Feminist political theory deconstructs the public-private dichotomy that 
runs through the canon story in the following way. The public realm of 
politics can be so rational, noble, and universal only because the messy 
content of the body, meeting its needs, providing for production, caretak-
ing, and attending to birth and death, are taken care of elsewhere. Male 
heads of households derive their power to make wars, laws and philosophy 
from the fact that others work for them in private, and it is no surprise that 
they would model nobility on their own experience. But a modern reflex-
ive political theory should recognize that the glory of the public is dialecti-
cally entwined with the exploitation and repression of the private, and the 
people restricted to that sphere so they can take care of people's needs. 
However the analysis proceeds, feminist political theory concludes that twen-
tieth century politics requires a basic rethinking of this distinction and its 
meaning for politics (Elshtain, 1981; Nicholson, 1984; Young, 1987). 
Much feminist political theory analyzes the masculinism of a universal 
reason that abhors embodiment and honors the desire to kill and risk life 
(Hartsock, 1983; Brown, 1989). Beginning with the ancients, courage tops 
160 
On the Politization of The Social in Recent Western Political Theory 
the list of citizens virtues, which promotes the solders as the paradigm citi-
zen. Machiavelli is celebrated as the father both of modern realpolitik and 
republicanism because he fashions the account of political man so clearly 
relying on images of risk, danger, winning, and the competition of sport and 
battle. Hannah Pitkin's brilliant study of Machiavelli relies on feminist psy-
choanalysis as well as critiques of the public-private dichotomy to expose 
the grounds of this masculinist citizen in a psychic opposition between self 
and other (Pitkin, 1984). 
Many feminist critics focus on the idea of the social contract to uncover 
different assumptions about human nature, action and evaluation that ex-
hibit masculine experience and develop a one-sided account of the possi-
bilities of political life and political change. Several have focused on the 
assumptions of individualism, atomistic autonomy and independence that 
structure the image of this rational citizen in modern political thought. 
Carole Pateman argues that the idea of the individual assumed by social of 
individual assumes an independence from bodily caretaking that can only 
obtain if someone else is doing it for one (Pateman, 1988). Other feminist 
critics argue that the concept of the rational autonomous individual of so-
cial contract theory carries an image of the person as self-originating, with-
out birth and dependence. If the original dependence of all human beings 
on others were to replace this assumption of self-generation, then the en-
tire edifice that constructs social relations as effects of voluntary bargains 
would collapse. Some writers have explored alternative starting points for a 
concept ion of society and the political, which begins with premises of 
connectedness and interdependence rather than autonomy and independ-
ence. 
Feminist arguments about individualism, the public-private dichotomy, 
contract theory, and the implicitly bias in Western ideas of reason and uni-
versality have influenced some work of male political theorists concerned 
with contemporary issues (e.g., Smith, 1991). But this work has had little 
influence on scholarship on ancient or modern political theory. Consider-
ing the scope and analytic depth that many feminist scholars have brought 
to examination of some of the most central ideas of the most central think-
ers, it is puzzling why other scholars apparently fell obliged neither to re-
vise their approaches in light of these critiques nor give arguments against 
them. 
Feminist theorists have devoted at least as much scholarly energy to 
contemporary political theory and practice. Feminists have subjected many 
of the important terms of political discourse to searching analysis, includ-
ing power (Hartsock, 1983), authority (Jones, 1993), political obligations 
161 
Iris Marion Young 
(Hirschmann, 1992), citizenship (Dietz, 1985; Bock and James, ed., 1992), 
privacy (Allen, 1989), democracy (Phillis, 1991), and justice (Okin, 1989). 
The question and conclusions in this conceptual literature are extremely 
diverse, but the arguments tend to cluster around two projects. First, femi-
nist analysis argues that theories of justice, power, obligation, and so on, 
reflect male gendered experience, and must be revised if they are to include 
female gendered experience. Often the criticism takes the form of arguing 
that the generality that political theorists claim for their concepts and theo-
ries cannot in fact be general because the theories do no notice the fact of 
gender difference and take these into account in formulating their theories. 
Thus Susan Okin argues, for example, that Walzer's arguments about jus-
tice become inconsistent when the facts of male domination within commu-
nities are taken into account. 
Second, these conceptual analyses often claim that political theory too 
often tends to disembody these central political concepts. Thus Nancy 
Hartsock argues, for example, that dominant theories of power repress the 
relation childhood experience of vulnerability, and presume a rigid self-other 
dichotomy that reduces power to competition and control. Thinking power 
in terms of embodiment would draw the attention of political theorists to 
power as power-to and not simply power-over (cf. Wartenberg, 1990). Much 
feminist discussion about the concept of equality, to take another example, 
has questioned whether equal respect for women should imply identical 
treatment to men, because women experience pregnancy and childbirth, 
and suffer other vulnerabilities because of sexist society (Bacchi, 1990). 
IV. Post modernism 
Most of the humanities and social science disciplines have been deeply 
rattled in the last two decades by the style of th inking usually called 
postmodernism. Political theory has been affect by this current, though the 
challenges and questions posed by postmodernism seem to nibble at the 
edges of the discipline rather that being felt at the core. Much would be gained 
and little lost, in my opinion, by a more sustained engagement by more 
political theorists with the implications of postmodern critiques of modern 
norms and ideals of subjectivity. 
The work of Michel Foucault stands perhaps most directly as a tower-
ing contribution to political theory, at the same time as it challenges many 
of its traditional assumptions. Foucault thinks that political theory and dis-
course continue to assume a paradigm of politics derived from a pre-mod-
162 
On the Politization of The Social in Recent Western Political Theory 
ern experience, and that since the eighteenth century a new structuration 
of power has operated. The old paradigm still assumed by most political 
theory conceives power as sovereignty: the titular unity of the state, which 
hands down decrees to its subject that say what is allowed and forbidden. In 
this regime power is experienced as negative, the repressive force of prohi-
bition and punishment. 
Modern political institutions have shifted from a regime of sovereignty 
to governmentality: the application of principles and techniques of (patri-
archal) household management to public institutions. Now the king and his 
agents do not reach out from the center to control the unruly subjects with 
fear. Instead ruling institutions percolate up from the ground, in the outly-
ing capillaries of society, which discipline bodies to conform with norms of 
reason, order and good taste, for their own good. Power proliferates and 
becomes productive in the emergence of disciplinary institutions that organ-
ize and manage people in a complex division of labor: hospitals and clin-
ics, schools, prisons, welfare organizations, police department. Contrary to 
its self-conception, the scientific mood of Enlightenment rationality does not 
generate a world of freedom beyond power, but a new set of microprocesses 
of power, which engage as well as constrain. Scientists and professionals 
themselves, rather than kings and presidents, are primary agents of this 
power, exercised through social scientific and managerial knowledge. Power 
operates less as juridical rules and more as scientifically and professionally 
defined codes of normal and deviant (Foucault, 1979; 1980; Burchell, et. 
al., 1991). 
Foucault certainly theorizes the politicization of the social. He describes 
strategies of power throughout the social body, in mundane corners of in-
stitutional life such as settlement houses or therapists' offices. His account 
of how principles of governmentality transfer techniques of home economy 
to public life has striking echoes with Arendt's story of the emergence of the 
social; it also resonates with Habermas's notion of the colonization of the 
lifeworld, that I will discuss below. Political theory has yet fully to absorb 
and evaluate their picture of power as the productive and proliferating proc-
ess of disciplinary institutions. William Connolly has taken a leading role in 
showing Foucault's ideas as a challenge to political theory's uncritical reli-
ance on Enlightenment ideas. He argues that norms are always double-sided 
and ambiguous, and that we should resist the bureaucratic impulse to disci-
pline ambiguity (Connolly, 1982). A few political theorists have examined 
the concept of power in light of Foucault's work (Philip, 1983; Smart, 1983; 
Wartenberg, 1990; Spivak, 1992; Honneth, 1991). More engagement with 
163 
Iris Marion Young 
Foucault's ideas will require rethinking the concept of state, law, authority, 
obligation, freedom, and rights, as well. 
The critical force of Foucault's analyses is apparent. But this theoriz-
ing cries out for normative ideals of freedom and justice by means of which 
to evaluate institutions and practices. Several political theorists make impor-
tant arguments that Foucault's theorizing is implicitly contradictory because 
he refuses to articulate such positive ideals (Taylor, 1984; Fraser, 1989; 
Habermas, 1990, Chap 9 and 10). 
Several other French writers associated with postmodernism have been 
impor t an t for political theory, i nc lud ing Lacan, Der r ida , Lyotard , 
Baudrillard, and Kristeva. I will discuss only a few other themes that arise 
for political theory out of the work of these writers. 
Postmodern thinkers have questioned an assumption that unified indi-
vidual subject are the units of society and political action. Subjectivity is a 
product of language and interaction, not its origin, and subject are as inter-
nally plural and contradictory as the social field in which they live. This 
ontological thesis raises serious questions for political theory about the 
meaning of moral and political agency. Interpreting Merleau-Ponty along 
with some of the others I have mentioned above, Fred Dallmayr offers a 
vision of political process where a desire to control dissipates (Dallmayr, 
1981). 
Several writers take up the Derridian critique of a metaphysics of proc-
ess to argue that a desire for certainty and clear regulatory principles in 
politics has the consequences of repressing and oppressing otherness, both 
in other people and in oneself (Young, 1986; White, 1991). In Identity/Dif-
ference William Connolly gives a twist to this thesis by claiming that such 
unifying politics produces a resentment too quick to blame and not open 
enough to ambiguity (Connolly, 1991). Bonnie Honig applies these sorts of 
arguments to the texts of political theorists such as Kant, Rawls and Sandel; 
she argues that their desire for a unifying theoretical center in political theory 
oppressively expels subject who deviate from their models of rational citi-
zen and community (Honig, 1993). 
I find the most important consequence of postmodern critiques of iden-
tifying thinking to lie in a reinterpretation of democratic pluralism. Demo-
cratic politics is a field of shifting identities and groups that find affinities 
and contest with one another (Yeatman, 1994). Ernesto Laclau and Chantal 
Mouffe's book, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, (1985) has been influential 
along these lines. They argue that the Marxist concept of the revolutionary 
agency of the working class is a metaphysical fiction inappropriate to the 
contemporary period of proliferating radical social movements defined by 
164 
On the Politization of The Social in Recent Western Political Theory 
multiple identities and interests. Radical democratic politics should be un-
derstood as the coalescing of plural social movements in civil society, to 
deepen democratic practice both in the state and society. I heartily endorse 
a political theory that appreciates social heterogeneity and is suspicious of 
efforts to unify (see Young, 1990). Much of this writing, however, seems ei-
ther to identify normative standards of justice and freedom as themselves 
suspicious, or not to refer to issues of freedom and justice at all. The task 
for a political theory sensitive to the repressive implications of identifying 
logic and exclusionary normalization is to develop methods of appealing to 
justice less subject to these criticisms. 
V. New Social Movements and Civil Society 
I have suggested that we might understand many of the important de-
velopments of contemporary political theory as expressions of and responses 
to contemporary political movements that focus critical reflection on social 
relations not traditionally though of as political. I have mentioned some of 
these already, particularly the women's movement. In the last twenty years 
movements have proliferated whose style and demands go beyond claims 
for rights or welfare: environmentalism, peace movements, group based 
movements of national resistance and cultural pride, gay and lesbian lib-
eration. Some recent social and political theory conceptualizes the political 
styles and implications of these sorts of movements, often called "new social 
movements" (Melucci, 1989; Boggs, 1986; West, 1990, Moors and Sears, 
1992). 
These movements are called "new" for at least two reasons. First, on 
the whole their issues do not primarily concern inclusion in basic citizen-
ship rights nor the enlargement of economic rights. Their issues are more 
specifically social - respect and self-determination for cultural difference, 
responsibility and pluralism in everyday lifestyle, reflection on power in social 
interaction, participation in decisions in social and economic, as well as 
political, institutions. Secondly, the from of organization of these movements 
does not replicate the mass movement from of political party or union, a 
unified bureaucracy seeking power though resource mobilization. Instead, 
these new social movements tend to be networks of more local groups, each 
with their own principles and style, that nevertheless act in concern en masse 
in some protest actions. 
Some important political theory reflects systematically on the norma-
tive political principles embodied in some of these movements. The envi-
165 
Iris Marion Young 
ronmental movement, for example, provides substance for reflection on 
basic normative issues of value, social rationality, and democratic participa-
tion (Sagoff, 1989; Goodin, 1991; Dryzek, 1988; Ekersley, 1993). 
Despite the importance of anti-racist social movements emphasizing self-
determination, cultural pluralism and reparations for past injustice, there 
has been surprisingly little work by political theorists about race and rac-
ism. In this connection, Cornel West's work must count as making impor-
tant contributions to political theory (West, 1982; 1992), along with the work 
of philosophers such as Bernard Boxill (1984), Howard McGary and Bill 
Lawson (1992). Andrew Sharp's carefully argued book, Justice and the Maori, 
stands as a model of theorizing of indigenous people's movement in the 
context of advanced industrial society. Some political theorists in Australia 
and Canada have begun to take up the challenge of normative theorizing 
about indigenous peoples issues (Carens, 1994; Kymlicka, 1993). Though 
there is significant work on indigenous peoples issues by legal theorists in 
the United State (e.g., Williams, 1990), I see few signs that U.S. philosophers 
and political theorists are reflecting on the specific normative issues con-
cerning Native Americans. 
Some recent theorizing about the role of state and bureaucracy in ad-
vanced industrial societies helps set a context for understanding the new 
social services holds that such operations of disciplinary social power also 
create their own resistances. Along somewhat different lines, Claus Offe gives 
an account of the modern welfare state as having depoliticizied processes of 
social control and public spending. The state has become an arena where 
officials conduct their real business more or less behind closed doors, and 
experts administer policies with a technical know-how that does not bring 
normative ends into view. Social movements politicize some of this activity 
from a positions outside state institutions (Offe, 1984). 
In his concept of the "colonization of the lifeworld",Jurgen Habermas 
offers a theoretical context for conceptualizing the meaning of new social 
movements. State and corporate institutions in the twentieth century, he 
claims, develop complex production and administrative activities that are 
guided by technical reason, and increasingly "uncoupled" from the every-
day life context of meaningful cultural interaction. The activities and affects 
of these tehnicized economic and administrative system, further, come back 
to regulate and restructure the everyday lifeworld in accordance with its own 
imperatives (Habermas, 1983). The natural wilderness is restructured to a 
theme park, or everyday consumption is rules by spatial and packaging 
decisions that serve the interests of profit rather than consumer desire. This 
theory interprets many new social movements as a reaction to this coloniza-
166 
On the Politization of The Social in Recent Western Political Theory 
tion of the lifeworld. People seek through their political action to open 
greater space for collective choice about normative and aesthetic ends, and 
to limit the influence of the systemic imperatives of power and profit. 
If it is true that state activity is largely technicized, then state institutions 
cannot function as the site of deliberative politics in advanced capitalist so-
ciety. Rather, politics, in the sense of people meeting together to discuss their 
collective problems, raise critical claims about action, and act together to 
alter their circumstances, happens more in critical public spheres outside 
the state and directed at its action. Habermas's major work of the early 1960's 
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas, 1962; 1989), 
has received new attention by political theorists interested in participatory 
politics and critical normative discourse in late twentieth century society 
(Calhoun, 1991). 
For the purpose of such theorizing, a concept of civil society as the locus 
of free and deliberative politics has been emerging. The concept of civil 
society was used in the opposition movements of Eastern Europe through-
out the 1980's, and this usage has influenced some of these theoretical de-
velopments. The concept has also been influential in opposition movements 
in South Africa and Latin America. 
Leading proponents of the theory of civil society are John Keane (1984; 
1988), Jean Cohen (1985) and Andrew Arato (Arato and Cohen, 1992). 
These theorists draw on Habermas's analyses of late capitalism to argue that 
the sphere of civil society, as distinct from both state and corporate economy, 
as the primary locus of politics, in the sense of people deliberating together 
about their collective life and raising normative issues about how things ought 
to be. Civil society consists in voluntary associative activity - the array of civil 
associations, non-profit service organizations, and so on, in which people 
participate that are only loosely connected to state and corporate economy. 
Civil society is the arena in which social movements flower. Activities of civil 
society do require a strong liberal state that protest the liberties of speech, 
association and assembly. But the activities of civil society are more directly 
participatory than the way citizens relate to state decisionmaking appara-
tus. 
Both Cohen and Arato and Keane thus look to civil society as the arena 
for deepening and radicalizing democracy. The public spheres of civil soci-
ety can and should be enlarged by pushing back the bureaucratized func-
tions of the state and structuring more areas of social life in terms of volun-
tary participatory organizations. These civil organizations can also serve as 
the stage from which to launch criticism of state policy and action. The pro-
gram of radical democracy can be furthered, finally, by the creation within 
167 
Iris Marion Young 
corporate institutions of workplace democracy, which have the voluntary and 
participatory character of civil association. Thus the vision of social change 
embodied in the theory of civil society sees a proliferation of groups and 
activities, with somewhat different issues and concerns, promoted limited 
goals of social transformation all of which involve expanding the possibili-
ties for democratic participation. Such a vision coincides with the ideas of 
some of the contemporary theorists of participatory democracy and with 
postmodern theorists like Laclau and Mouffe. 
I find the social theory of bureauratization and commodification that 
the theory of civil society relies on useful. Thus I find attractive the idea that 
institutions and movements of civil society are the primary arena for poli-
tics in the Arendtian sense of people moving out from preoccupation with 
their private lives to meet and discuss their collective issues. Looking to civil 
activity as the place where active deliberation and democratic egalitarian-
ism can be promoted and deepened, moreover, is important. 
The political theory of civil society, however, seems to have occluded 
some concerns that are more apparent when theorizing focuses on what state 
policy ought to do, namely concerns about economic inequality. New social 
movement theorizing retains these concerns to same degree. But in their 
emphasis on cultural issues and the politics of identity, concerns about ac-
cess to and power over resources seem less salient. 
The concept of civil society is also ambiguous about issues of economic 
justice. Not all theorizing about civil society and political theory distinguishes 
between the economy and civil society as Cohen and Arato do. Often the 
theorizing that does identifies the freedom of civil society also with the free-
dom of the market (see, e.g., Kukathas and Lovell, 1991). Then the theory 
of civil society emerges as a new form of anti-state liberalism, particularly 
arguing that state intervention in economic activity for the purposes of re-
distribution or responding to social needs unjustifiably interferes with free-
dom. Since all civil society theorizing agrees that modern welfare state bu-
reaucracies tend to be undemocratic and dominative, there is a real ques-
tion of how a commitment to the active promotion of social justice can be 
made compatible with this view of politics and democracy (Young, forthcom-
ing)-
VI. Liberalism and Communitarianism 
Michael Sandel's Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982) levelled an 
ontological critique at the concept of self Sandel claimed Rawls presupposed 
168 
On the Politization of The Social in Recent Western Political Theory 
in his theory of justice. Rawls's account presupposes a moral self prior to 
social relationships guided by principles of justice, Sandel argued, a self 
"unencumbered" by particular culture and commitments into which he or 
she is thrown. Principles of justice generated from such an abstract notion 
of self can serve only to regulate public relations among strangers in the 
most formalistic way. For a robust political theory of social union, Sandel 
suggested, justice must be supplemented by recognition of particular com-
munity bonds and commitments that constitute selves. 
In After Virtue, Alistair Maclntyre (1983) levelled a more historically 
oriented challenge to liberalism. The economic and ideological changes of 
modern society create a modern dilemma of relativism. Religious and moral 
questions - questions about the good, the just, the virtuous - have become 
matters of private conscience or contesting political opinion. Liberalism is 
a system of formal adjudication among such competing and incommensu-
rate opinions among which there is no means of deciding some are right 
and others wrong. In this modern world-view moral agents are released onto 
the landscape as disconnected, commodified and often cynical atoms. The 
late modern malaise can best be treated by looking for living communities 
of shared values and virtues that can serve as contemporary analogues of 
medieval guild communities, and other traditional self-ruling communities 
bound by common commitment to particular excellences. 
Communitarianism can be interpreted as a form of politicizing the 
social. It claims to anchor political values like justice, rights, freedom, in 
particular social and cultural contexts. Thus it interprets the social as prior 
to and constitutive of the political. Its ontological critique of liberalism 
rejects abstract individualism. Its political critique suggests that liberal norms 
and values implausibly claim to transcend and bracket particular cultural 
contex ts , a n d to apply to all societies in the same way. But some 
communitarian discussion suggested that culture shapes moral norms, and 
that these culturally based values may sometimes conflict with liberal norms. 
Liberals then wondered whether it wasn't communitarian which sent us down 
a road of normative relativism coupled with intolerant particularism. 
By the mid 1980's the so-called liberalism-communitarian debate was 
flooding the pages of journals and books in political theory. But the debate 
was both too abstract and founded on a false dichotomy. Despite the fact 
that the aim of communitarians was to situate moral and political norms in 
the particular social contexts of full blooded agents, they rarely discussed 
any particular communities (cf. Wallach, 1987). It was difficult to find, moreo-
ver, any communitarian who would reject liberal values of equal respect, 
freedom of action, speech and association, or tolerance (cf. Gutman, 1985). 
169 
Iris Marion Young 
Few self-proclaimed liberals, on the other hand, were ready to deny the 
power of particular cultural commitment in individual lives, though they 
might disagree with communitarians about the normative significance of 
these facts. 
The liberalism-communitarianism debate did expose how much con-
temporary liberal political theory abstracts from social group affiliation and 
commitment to consider individuals only as individuals. In thus posed indi-
viduals. It thus posed an important challenge of whether and how liberal 
theory ought to include recognition of particular contexts of social and cul-
tural group difference. Will Kymlicka's Liberalism, Community and Culture 
(1989) represents a turning point in this debate. Unlike many writings in 
this discussion, Kymlicka is not abstract about community and culture, but 
rather discusses the particular cultural and political situations of Native 
peoples in relation to the liberal state of Canada. Staunchly adhering to the 
values of modern political liberalism, Kymlicka argues that these are not 
only compatible with, but require, the constitutions of cultural rights that 
may sometimes imply special rights for endangered or oppressed cultural 
minorities. The key to his argument that such cultural rights follow from 
liberalism is his construction of individual rights as including an individual 
right to cultural membership, and thus to the maintenance of the culture of 
which one is a member. 
Another Canadian contributor to this more contextualized discussion 
of cultural rights, Charles Taylor, is less certain that a principle of cultural 
recognition is compatible with at least some versions of liberalism (Taylor, 
1992). If we understand liberalism to require a universality to the statement 
of rights, such that laws and rules should apply equally to all in the same 
way, then politically recognizing and maintaining particular cultures sits 
uneasily with liberalism. The recognition and preservation of minority cul-
tures may require special treatment and special rights for which there are 
good moral arguments, but arguments beyond the liberal individualist tra-
dition (cf. Young, 1989; 1990, especially Chapter 6). 
A different set of recent works has also aimed to produce a reconcilia-
tion between the stances of liberalism and communitarianism that were 
posited in the early 1980's. Liberalism has typically been interpreted as neutral 
among values and equally accepting of ways of life as long as their activities 
leave one another alone. Communitarianism, on the other hand, especially 
in Maclntyre's version, takes the good, as the ends of action, and virtue, as 
the disposition to bring about these good ends, as the moral commitment 
that liberalism has abandoned to relativism. Some writers have rejected 
the characterization of liberalism as neutral among ends and virtues, and 
170 
On the Politization of The Social in Recent Western Political Theory 
have argued that liberalism itself implies particular cultural values, norma-
tive ends, and behavioral virtues (Macedo, 1990; Galston, 1991). 
It is fitting to end my story of two decades of political theory by refer-
ring to the same writer with whom I began: John Rawls. The arguments of 
Political Liberalism (1993) are, to a significant degree, attempts to respond 
to the liberalism-communitarianism debate and the social context of multi-
culturalism in liberal society. Rawls moves in the opposite direction from 
Kymlicka and some of the other writers who aim to reconcile the values of 
political liberalism with public recognition for particular cultural norms and 
ways of life. Freedom and respect for particular "comprehensive doctrines," 
as he calls them, instead requires that they all agree on a set of principles 
guiding the interaction of distinct communities, but transcending them all. 
Multiculturalism is possible in a liberal society only if we re-draw a fairly 
clear border between what is properly public, the business of the constitu-
tional and legal rules governing the whole society, and what is private, in 
the sense of matters of individual and community conscience and commit-
ment. 
Although the overlapping consensus that Rawls believes is produced 
by the willingness of different cultures and communities of conscience to set 
fair terms of cooperation retains attention to social and economic inequal-
ity as well as liberty, I find this work to constitute a retreat from the social. 
Rawls thinks that conflicts and ambiguities produced by the being together 
of concrete communities, about issues of sexuality, family, video content, 
religious dress in public, and countless other issues, are best handled by 
reestablishing a legal and political discourse that only admits into its realm 
issues already framed in terms of generalizable norms. Many today believe 
that the demands of social need, social context, value conflict, and conflict 
over public recognition for minority cultures and ways of life, have over-
loaded political institutions. They thus think that the only solution is for the 
political institutions to restrict themselves to enforcing the criminal law, 
protecting constitutional liberties, and organizing small bits of aid for the 
very needy. The boundary of the political should be redrawn to exclude the 
social. 
While Rawls himself continues to say that the difference principle is 
important, the emphasis in Political Liberalism is on the procedural mecha-
nisms for arriving at and maintaining committed consensus on civil rights 
and liberties. Proposals to redistribute wealth and income so as to maxi-
mize the expectations of the least advantaged are much more controversial 
today than they were twenty years ago, even as the ranks of the least advan-
taged have been swelling. Being less advantaged overlaps significantly, 
171 
Iris Marion Young 
moreover, with social positioning in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, and 
culture. Thus political claims about family values or recognition for cul-
tural minorities have much to do with claims of social justice. Even where 
less tied to issues, of economic disadvantaged, the "politics of identity," 
whereby groups make claims for public recognition of the specificity of their 
cultural values, are not going away. For all these reasons the current temp-
tation of political theory to retreat from the social threatens to make it even 
more irrelevant to politics than usual. Fortunately, there are signs that many 
political theorists will continue engaging these fiercely difficult political is-
sues of the late twentieth century. 
References 
Allen, Anita (1989). Uneasy Access, Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Litdefield. 
Arendt, Hannah (1958). TheHuman Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
Arato, Andrew, and Jean Cohen (1992). Civil Society and Political Theory, Cambridge: 
The MIT Press. 
Arthur, John and William Shaw, (eds.) (1978). Justice and Economic Distribution, 
Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 
Baier, Annette (1987). "The Need for More than Justice", in Marsha Hanen and Kai 
Nielson, (ed.), Science, Morality and Feminist Theory, Calgary: University of Calgary 
Press. 
Barber, Benjamin (1984). Strong Democracy, Berkeley: University of California Press. 
Barry, Brian (1989). "The Strange Death of Political Philosophy", in Barry, Democracy 
Power andJustice: Essays inPolitical Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 
Barry, Brian (1989). Theories of Social Justice, Vol. I, Berkeley: University of California 
Press. 
Bay, Christian (1981). Strategies for Political Emancipation, Notre Dame: University of 
Notre Dame Press. 
Beitz, Charles (1979). PoliticalTheory and International Relations, Princeton: Princeton U. P. 
Beitz, Charles (1989). Political Equality, Princeton: Princeton U. P. 
Bernstein, Richard (1986). "Rethinking the Social and the Political", in Philosophical 
Profiles: Essays in a Pragmatic Mode, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 
Bobbio, Noberto (1984). The Future of Democracy: A Defence of the Rules of the Game, 
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 
Bock, Giesela and Susan James, (eds.) (1992). Beyond Equality and Diference: Citizenship, 
Feminist Practice, and Female Subjectivity, London: Routledge. 
Boggs, Carl (1986). Social Movements and Political Power, Philadelphia: Temple U. P. 
Boxill, Bernard (1984). Blacks and Social Justice, Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allenheld. 
Burnheim, John (1985). Is Democracy Possible'?: An Alternative to Electoral Politics, 
Cambridge: Polity Press. 
172 
On the Politization of The Social in Recent Western Political Theory 
Burchell, Graham, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller, (eds.) (1991). TheFoucaultEffect-
Studies in Governmentality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
Calhoun, Craig (1991). Habermas and the Public Sphere, Cambridge: The MIT Press. 
Carens,Joseph H. (1993). Democracy and Possessive Individualism: The Intellectual Legacy 
ofC.B. Macpherson, Albany, NY: SUNYPress. 
Carens, Joseph H. (1987). "Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders", The 
Review ofPolitics, Vol. 49 (Spring): pp. 251-76. 
Carens, Joseph H. (1993). "Citizenship and Aboriginal Self-Government", Prepared 
for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. 
Cohen, Jean (1983). Class and Civil Society, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts 
Press. 
Cohen, Joshua, andjoel Rogers (1983). On Democracy, New York: Penguin. 
Cohen, Joshua (1989). "Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy", in Alan Hamlin 
and Philip Pettit, (eds.), The Good Polity: pp. 17-34. 
Connolly, William (1991). Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations ofPower Parados, 
Ithaca: Cornell U. P. 
Conovan, Margaret (1978). "The Contradictions of Hannah Arendt's Political 
Thought", Political Theory & (February): pp. 5-26. 
Cunningham, Frank (1987). Democratic Theory and Socialism, Cambridge: Cambridge 
U. P. 
Dahl, Robert (1989). Democracy and Its Critics, New Haven: Yale U. P. 
Dallmayr, Fred (1981). Twolight of Subjectivity: Contributions to a Post-Individualist Theory 
of Politics, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. 
Dietz, Mary (1985). "Citizenship with a Feminist Face: The Problem with Maternal 
Thinking", Political Theory 13, no. 1 (February): pp.19-37. 
Dryzek,John (1990). Discursive Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. 
Elshtain,Jean (1981). Public Man, Private Woman, Princeton: Princeton U. P. 
Fishkin, James (1991). Deliberative Democracy, New Haven: Yale U. P. 
Fisk, Milton (1989). The State and Justice: An Essay in Political Theory, Cambridge: 
Cambridge U. P. 
Foucault, Michel (1979). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Alan Sheridan, 
trans., New York: Vintage Books. 
Foucault, Michel (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writing's, 1972-
77, Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mephan, Kate Soper, (eds.), New York: 
Pantheon Books. 
Fraser, Nancy (1989). "Foucault on Modern Power: Empirical Insights and Normative 
Confusions", in Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power Discurses and Gender in 
Contemporary Social Theory, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 
Galston, William (1991). Liberal Purposes, Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. 
Goodin, Robert (1988). Reasons for Welfare: The Political Theory of the Welfare State, 
Princeton: Princeton U. P. 
Goodin, Robert (1990). "International Ethics: Justice and the Environmental Crisis", 
Ethics and International Affairs 4. 
173 
Iris Marion Young 
Goodin, Robert (1991). Green Political Theory, London: Polity Press. 
Gould, Carol (1988). Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, 
Economy and Society, Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. 
Green, Philip (1985). Retrieving Democracy, Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allenheld. 
Gutmann, Amy (1980). Liberal Equality, Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. Gutmann, Amy 
(1985). "Communitarian Critics of Liberalism" Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 
(Summer): pp. 308-22. 
Habermas, Jürgen (1985). The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. II, System and 
Lifeworld, Boston: Beacon Press. 
Habermas, Jürgen (1989). (1962) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 
Cambridge: The MIT Press. 
Habermas,Jürgen (1990). The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Cambridge: The 
MIT Press. 
Harris, Leonard and Hartsock, Nancy (1983). Money, Sex and Power, New Long: 
Longmon. 
Hirschmann, Nancy (1992). Rethinking Obligation: A Feminist Methodfor Political Theory, 
Ithaca: Cornell U. P. 
Honig, Bonnie (1993). Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics, Ithaca: Cornell 
U.P 
Honneth, Axel (1991). The Critique ofPower: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, 
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 
Lawson, Bill and Howard McGary (1992). Between Slavery and Freedom: Philosophy and 
American Slavery, Indiana University Press. 
Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, London: 
Verso. 
Jones, Kathleen (1993). Compassionate Authority: Democracy and the Representation of 
Women, New York: Routledge. 
Keane, John (1984). Public Life in Late Capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. 
Keane, John (1988). Democracy and Civil Society, London: Verso. 
Kukathas, Chandran and Lovel, David W., "The Significance of Civil Society", in 
Chandran Kukathas, Davis W. Lovell and William Maley, (eds.) The Transition 
from Socialism: State and Civil Society in the USSR, Sydney: Longman Cheshire. 
Kymlicka, Will (1989). Liberalism, Community and Culture, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 
Kymlicka, Will (1993). "Group Representation in Canadian Politics" Prepared for 
IRPP Project on Communities, the Charter and Interest Advocacy. 
Macedo, Stephen (1990). Liberal Virtues, Cambridge: Harvard U. P. 
Maclntyre, Alistair (1983). After Virtue, South Bend: Notre Dame U. P. 
Mansbridgejane (1980). Beyond Adversary Democracy, New York: Basic Books. 
Mansbridge, Jane (1991). "Feminism and Democratic Community", in John W. 
Chapman and Ian Shapiro, (eds.), Democratic Community Nomos XXXV, New York: 
New York U. P. 
Melucci, Alberto (1989). Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in 
Contemporary Society, London: Hutchinson Radius. 
174 
On the Politization of The Social in Recent Western Political Theory 
Miller, David (1976). Socialjustice, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 
Mooers, Colin and Alan Sears (1992). "The New Social Movements and the Withering 
Away ofState Theory", in William K Carroll (eds.), OrganizingDissent: Contemporary 
Social Movements in Theory and Practice, Toronto: Garamond Press. 
Nicholson, Linda (1986). Gender and History, New York: Columbia U. P. 
Nielsen, Kai (1985). Equality and Liberty: A Defence of Radical Egalitarianism, Totowa, 
NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. 
Nozick, Robert (1974). Anarchy State and Utopia, New York: Basic Books. 
Offe, Claus (1984). Contradictions of the Welfare State, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 
Okin, Susan (1979). Women in Western Political Thought, Princeton: Princeton U. P. 
Okin, Susan (1989) .Justice, Gender and the Family, NewYork: Basic Books. 
O'Neill, Onora (1986). Faces of Hunger, London: Allen and Unwin. 
Pateman, Carole (1970). Participation and Democratic Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge 
U.P. 
Pateman, Carole (1988). The Sexual Contract, Stanford: Stanford U. P. 
Peffer, Rodney (1990). Marxism, Morality, and SocialJustice, Princeton: Princeton U. P. 
Phillips, Ann (1991). Engendering Democracy, State College, PA: Penn State Press. 
Piven, Frances Fox and Richard Cloward (1982). The New Class War, NewYork: 
Pantheon. 
Pithin, Hannah (1981). 'Justice: On Relating Public and Private", Political theory 9 
(August): pp. 327-52. 
Pithin, Hannah (1984). Fortune is a Woman, Berkeley: University of California Press. 
Rawlsjohn (1971). A Theory offustice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P. 
Rawls,John (1993). Political Liberalism, NewYork: Columbia University Press. 
Reiman, Jeffrey (1990).Justice and Modern Moral Theory, New Haven: Yale U. P. 
Sagoff, Mark (1990). The Economy of the Earth, Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. 
Sandel, Michael (1982). Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. 
Schweickart, David (1980). Capitalism or Worker Control'?, NewYork: Praeger. 
Smart, Barry (1983). Foucault, Marxism and Critique, London: Routledge and Kegan 
Paul. 
Smith, Rogers (1989). " 'One United People': Second-Class Female Citizenship 
and the American Quest for Community", YaleJournal of Law and Humanities 1, 
no. 2 (May): pp. 229-293. 
Sharp, Andrew (1990) Justice and the Maori, Oxford: Oxford U. P. 
Spivak, Giuatry Chakravorty (1992). "More on Power/Knowledge", in Thomas E. 
Wartenberg, (eds). lie thinking Power, Albany: SUNYPress. 
Spragens, Thomas (1990). Reason and Democracy, Durham, NC: Duke U. P. 
Sterba, James (1988). How to Make Peoplefust; A Practical Reconciliation of Alternative 
Conceptions offustice, Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. 
Taylor, Charles (1984). "Foucault on Freedom and Truth", Political Theory 12, no. 2 
(May): pp. 152-183. 
Taylor, Charles (1992). Multiculturalism and the "Politics of Recognition" Princeton: 
Princeton U. P. 
175 
Iris Marion Young 
Wallach, John (1987). "Liberalism, Communitarians and the Tasks of Political 
Theory", Political Theory 15 (November): pp. 581-611. 
Walzer, Michael (1982). Spheres of Justice, New York: Basic Books. 
Wartenberg, Thomas (1990). Forms of Power: From Domination to Transformation, 
Philadelphia: Temple U. P. 
Wellman, Carl (1982). Welfare Rights, Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allenheld. 
West, Cornel (1982). Philosophy Deliverance!: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity, 
Philadelphia: Westminster Press. 
West, Cornel (1993). Race Matters, Boston: Beacon Press. 
Williams, Robert A. (1990). The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: Discourses of 
Conquest, Oxford: Oxford U. P. 
White Stephen (1991). Political Theory and Postmodernism, Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. 
Yeatman, Anna (1994). Postmodern Revisionings of the Political, NewYork: Routledge. 
Young, Iris Marion (1986). "Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of 
Feminist Critiques of Moral and Political Theory", in Benhabib and Cornel 
(eds). Feminism as Critique, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 
Young, Iris Marion (1990). Justice and the Politics ofDifference, Princeton: Princeton U. P. 
Young, Iris Marion (1989). "Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of 
Universal Citizenship", in Cass Sunstein, ed. Feminism and Political Theory, 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
Young, Iris Marion (forthcoming). "Communication and the other: Beyond 
Deliberative Democracy" in Seyla Benhabib, (eds.), Democracy and Difference, 
Princeton: Princeton U. P. 
Young, Iris Marion (forthcoming) ."Civil Society and Social Change", Ted Shadsky 
and Wolfgang (eds.), Essays inDemocratic Theory. 
176