Beskrivning

The demand for equality is central to modern politics. But what exactly do we mean by equality? Does it threaten other important values? Is it a demand we should support or question? This highly accessible book provides an engaging introduction to the concept of equality and to the debates, historical and contemporary, that surround it. It explains and critically considers how the demand for equality arises in different spheres. In the political sphere, it explores the relationship between equality and democracy. In the economic and social spheres, it explores the ideal of meritocracy and more radical theories of egalitarian justice developed in the works of John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. In the legal sphere, the book discusses the challenges that feminism and multiculturalism pose to conventional conceptions of equal citizenship. It concludes with an examination of whether equality should go global, and by analyzing contemporary arguments for and against the continuing