Communitarianism

by

Elizabeth Frazer

• LAST REVIEWED: 02 September 2022
• LAST MODIFIED: 26 July 2017
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0348

Introduction

Communitarianism, like other “isms,” is relational—worked out and articulated in distinction from rival philosophical positions and political ideologies. We could present a bibliography of avowedly communitarian references without explicitly including communitarianism’s rivals and antagonists. But communitarianism would then look more free-standing than it really is. So this bibliography presents works that contribute to communitarianism as a position and also some that are critical of and dissent from it. Communitarianism is a position with a history. Communitarian critiques of individualism and liberalism developed in response to a particular articulation, from the 1970s to the mid-1980s, of “liberal individualism.” As well as engaging with, diagnosing, and criticizing particular aspects of liberal individualism, communitarian critics made reference to a wide range of historical and philosophical precursors and antecedents. These included a diverse range of philosophical sources which were interpreted as congenial to contemporary communitarian concerns, and a range of sources from humanities and social sciences which focused on forms of community in human societies. The communitarian critiques of liberalism and individualism generated a sizeable critical literature, beginning with publications from the mid-1980s which individuated communitarianism as a specific, though ambiguous and contested, position in political philosophy and theory, and weighed up the respective merits of “liberalism,” “individualism,” and “communitarianism.” This critical literature is notable, first, for the contributions of a number of thinkers who had originally been grouped under the heading “communitarian” or “liberal,” who published rejoinder papers which considered the debate and the issues, distancing the author from the position ascribed to them by early commentators. Second, the critical literature complicated communitarianism, separating out questions of metaphysics or ontology, philosophical anthropology, epistemology, meta-ethics, ethics, and methodology in social science, ethics, and philosophy. Criticism of liberalism as a tradition in political philosophy was separated out from the political projects of liberal parties and broadly liberal societies. Most analyses attempt to show that positions on these various dimensions of the debate are independent: for instance, one can be communitarian metaphysically and individualist ethically, or vice versa; one’s commitments as an individualist in the one branch of philosophy—methodology of social science, for instance—do not commit one to an individualist stand in another—epistemology or philosophical anthropology. Further, such philosophical analysis is indeterminate regarding one’s attitude to communitarian, socialist, conservative, liberal, or other political and social programs, including policy aims, objectives, means, strategies, and tactics.

Communitarians and Liberals

Reference is made to critiques in the plural, because while some of the original so-called communitarian texts focused explicitly on liberalism, and in particular on the liberalism of John Rawls, others focused more generally on individualism (and not all liberals are individualist in the same way). Although the works of liberal thinkers such as J. S. Mill, F. A. Hayek, and Isaiah Berlin, and more lately Ronald Dworkin (Dworkin 1977) and Robert Nozick (Nozick 1974), are among the targets for communitarian criticism, Rawls’ Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971) with its discussion of methodology for political theory, its substantive prescriptive ethics and public policy, its focus on individual rights and duties, and its presumption of constitutional democratic liberal government and society, is clearly a key text and a trigger for this episode of communitarian thought. The main communitarian critics are conventionally identified as MacIntyre 1981, Sandel 1982, Taylor 1985, Taylor 1989, Walzer 1983, and Walzer 1987.

• Dworkin, Ronald. Taking Rights Seriously. London: Duckworth, 1977.

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  Dworkin emphasizes the centrality of individual rights as constraints on legal action and judgment, arguing that rights are independent of statute and case law.

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• Macintyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. London: Duckworth, 1981.

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  Argues, against the Rawlsian position, that the dominance of abstract theory in philosophy, and the presumption to a rational derivation of first principles, denies and sacrifices the idea of a whole life lived with integrity in the context of a tradition and standards of excellence.

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• MacIntyre, Alasdair. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? London: Duckworth, 1988.

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  Explores historical variations in standards of justice and rationality, from Aristotle, through the Aquinean tradition to Hume and beyond.

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• Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State and Utopia. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974.

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  Nozick’s riposte to Rawls is premised on an account of natural rights which constrain absolutely what individuals and groups may do to individuals, preventing any compulsory participation or taxation. Nozick derives a justification of a minimal state from his premises, but this state’s taxation is confined to the function of policing and defending individual natural rights.

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• Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971.

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  Rawls’ work is widely received as transforming and reinvigorating the field of political philosophy, making a decisive break with the hitherto-dominant utilitarian and consequentialist model of justification. Rawls argues that institutions of justice are justified (and may justify coercive state measures such as legislatively mandated redistribution of income) if they are institutions that would be chosen by ideally rational persons in ignorance of their particular circumstances and position in the relevant society.

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• Sandel, Michael J. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

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  Explicitly criticizes Rawls’ method for the derivation of the principles of justice, arguing that the reasoning and judgment of the ideal parties in the Rawlsian model, because they lack social connectedness, cultural context, and an adequately reflexive relation to their own lives, cannot serve as a politically or socially serviceable standard of justice.

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• Taylor, Charles. Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers 1. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

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  Charles Taylor’s Philosophical Papers Vols. 1 and 2 (1985) include a number of papers that individually are key to the construction of “communitarianism” including “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man,” first published in the Review of Metaphysics in 1971, and a hitherto-unpublished critical review of Rawls, “The Nature and Scope of Distributive Justice,” which was drafted in 1976. Volume 2 is entitled The Taylor’s Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).

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• Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

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  The intellectual, philosophical, and psychological history of modern subjectivity.

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• Walzer, Michael. Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983.

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  Argues that there cannot be a single standard of justice for the distribution of social goods, because different goods need to be distributed according to different principles, depending on their meaning and role in the particular society in question, this meaning and role being forged in a particular tradition.

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• Walzer, Michael. Interpretation and Social Criticism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

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  Develops the argument that our engagement with the institutions of our society is a matter of interpretation over time, with room for critical interpretation and dissent.

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Antecedents to Communitarianism

There isn’t space here to set out in any detail the numerous philosophical antecedents of communitarianism that are cited, either in the original communitarian critiques or in subsequent commentary and criticism. Readers should examine the lists of citations in the works from this bibliography to get an idea of the range of “non-individualist” philosophers that communitarians, and their critics, identify. Some figures, only some of which are explicitly discussed or cited under this section, recur, including Hannah Arendt (b. 1906–d. 1975), Aristotle (b. 384–d. 323 BCE), Thomas Aquinas (b. 1225–d. 1274), Martin Buber (b. 1878–d. 1965), John Dewey (b. 1859–d. 1952), Emil Durkheim (b. 1858–d. 1917), Hans-Georg Gadamer (b. 1900–d. 2002), Jurgen Habermas (b. 1929), G. W. F. Hegel (b. 1770–d. 1831), Martin Heidegger (b. 1889–d. 1976), Emmanuel Levinas (b. 1906–d. 1995), Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) (b. 1135–d. 1204), Karl Marx (b. 1818–d. 1883), and Ludwig Wittgenstein (b. 1889–d. 1951). Specific strains in these philosophies—allusion to the idea of tradition, or the nature of face-to-face relations, or the general connectedness of human beings and their worlds—are identified as congenial to later communitarianism. Of course, these thinkers can also be cited for their influence on other systems of thought and ethics, such as religious thinking, existentialism, conservatism, or liberalism itself.

Philosophy of Community

The reference of “community” in communitarianism is often imprecise and negative—consisting in the rejection of individualism and assertion of the role of social context in the metaphysics or development of identity, in the grounding and philosophy of values, or in the realization of justice or ethical life. It is observed that in the 20th century in the West a number of social developments—in political economies with new patterns of urbanization, (de)-industrialization, and continuing changes in rural life—meant that “community” which had been a given pattern of social life and for individual lifecourses became a “loss” and in some contexts a professional project for community workers. The displacement of Marxism as an influential intellectual standpoint in the second half of the century meant that ideologies and standpoints premised on individualism, markets, and formal relations came into the ascendant. More abstractly, there is a recurring philosophical controversy between philosophers who can be interpreted as committed to “individualism,” metaphysical, epistemological, methodological, ethical, and logical (the “atomist tradition” that Charles Taylor analyzes), and a contrasting position which has gone variously under the headings “wholism” (or holism), collectivism, or (more contentiously) constructivism. A range of philosophical traditions refers to and draws on these ideas, including pragmatism, hermeneutics, and phenomenology. In social philosophy, and in the debates in political philosophy, communitarianism draws attention to the relations between individuals, atoms, or constituent parts, and further goes beyond the relations of individuals to each other to the relations between them and the whole of which they are part. Such ontological analysis points to the significance of sharing, and of collective properties—language, practices, taken-for-granted everyday assumptions, rules, norms, laws, institutions, and fates. This “significance” is metaphysical or ontological. In communitarian philosophy it is most frequently also taken to be ethical and/or methodological, epistemological, and logical. The ideals of connectedness, community, and transcendence of the everyday are central in numerous religious traditions including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, and these make their way into everyday practical philosophy and experience. The works of many philosophers are cited by the parties to the debate. It’s worth picking out a few who are mentioned most often as offering philosophical analyses that are constructive for the communitarian critiques (although whether they personally would be willing to be assimilated into communitarianism is doubtful).

• Habermas, Jurgen. The Theory of Communicative Action. 2 vols. Vol. 1, Reason and the Rationalisation of Society. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. London: Heinemann, 1984.

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  This and later works by Habermas were widely read in contrast to Rawls; see the further references in the section on the Rawls-Habermas Debate. First published in German (1981).

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• Putnam, Hilary. The Many Faces of Realism. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1987.

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  Putnam subsequently abandoned the “internal realism” that he developed in this short book, but also subsequently became more engaged with the ideas of the later Wittgenstein and the tradition of US pragmatism, traditions which emphasize practical agreement, and the negotiable authority of local norms and traditions.

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• Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

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  Rorty published three relevant articles in the London Review of Books in 1986: “The Contingency of Language,” “The Contingency of Self,” and “The Contingency of Community” which are included in this volume. Rorty’s point is that the lack of metaphysical foundations for values, for our ways of life, or for institutions such as language or morality, does not deprive us of reasons for commitment and passion. The particular nature of our ties to others makes the idea of “human solidarity” meaningful.

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• Rorty, Richard. “Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism.” In Objectivity, Relativism and Truth: Philosophical Papers. By Richard Rorty, 197–202. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

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  Argues that liberal social and ethical commitments do not need foundations of ahistorical moral justificatory principles.

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• Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory. 3 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

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  This three-volume work is by the key figure in the critical legal studies movement; it includes numerous themes, in particular with respect to methodology and also political strategy, that are in contention with the liberal and individualist traditions. Consequently he is sometimes mentioned as a communitarian philosopher, although the themes of human emancipation that are at the heart of Unger’s work are more pronounced than they are in the work of some of the other communitarians. See in particular Volume 1, False Necessity: Anti-necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy; and Volume 2, Social Theory: Its Situation and Task.

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• Williams, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.

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  In particular for themes that later crystallized into “virtue ethics.”

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“The Debate”: Commentary and Criticism on Liberalism, Individualism, and Communitarianism

A good deal of critical comment on the debates with communitarianism consists of reservations about both sides—critics distance themselves from aspects of liberalism and individualism, and also from aspects of communitarianism. (This is particularly so in the case of feminist critics, who are listed in a separate section, Feminist Critique of the Debate). As has been mentioned, in getting to grips with what’s at stake in the controversies, critical commentators separate out questions about ontology (what there is; fundamental entities); about methodology in political philosophy (how, according to individualists and to communitarians ethical and political values, principles, commitments, and understandings are derived, and by what route they can be endorsed or condemned); and about epistemology (the basis for knowledge and knowledge claims). A good deal of the argument consists either of commentators claiming that communitarians can properly endorse or respect “liberal” values such as the value of individual and human rights or concern for liberty and equality, or of commentators claiming that liberals can endorse communitarian values such as membership, community itself, tradition, and the ontological, methodological, epistemological, or ethical significance of preexisting social context and relations. The debate shifts, then, from the ground of what liberals have or have not said, to what they might permissibly say; and from what communitarians were thought to have said, to what they (say they) meant. There is also much further exploration of the ideas that the philosophical and political virtues, or shortcomings, of liberalism lie not so much in its avowed principles and arguments about liberty and equality, but in the underlying philosophical anthropology and methodology, and that these are connected to shortcomings in liberalism as an effective political theory which can contribute also to the realization of its commitments.

Feminist Critique of the Debate

Feminist philosophy questions the phenomenology of sex and gender, and asks how sex and gender justice might be realized. Feminism is a complex field, and most feminist philosophers didn’t engage directly with the “liberal-communitarian” debate as that was set out in sections Communitarians and Liberals and the “The Debate”: Commentary and Criticism on Liberalism, Individualism, and Communitarianism, but feminist philosophy and theory invariably bears on the questions how we should think about self and other, individual and “community,” and universalism and particularism. The upshot of feminist critique is that both liberal and communitarian analyses offer insufficient accounts of power and authority, in relation to self, subjectivity and identity, and persons’ negotiation, alone or in concert with others, of a livable place in the world. Kymlicka 1993 was included in Daniel Bell’s dialogic work Communitarianism and Its Critics (Bell 1993, cited under “The Debate”: Commentary and Criticism on Liberalism, Individualism, and Communitarianism: Books). Kymlicka’s objection to Bell was that it was inappropriate to figure the communitarian as female, as feminist political philosophers had overwhelmingly been critical of communitarianism, on grounds that were quite distinct from liberal criticisms. (We might add that feminist philosophy was consistently critical of liberalism, and other “isms” too—hence the idea of “autonomous feminism”). Kymlicka mentions Friedman, Okin, Young, and also Marilyn Frye, as feminist critics; among others he might also have included Pateman.

• Benhabib, Seyla, and Drucilla Cornell, eds. Feminism as Critique. Oxford: Polity, 1987.

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  The essays in this volume address the issues raised by the communitarian critiques of liberalism and individualism—for instance, questions of the nature of community, and the relationship between individual, norm, and social power.

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• Frazer, Elizabeth, and Nicola Lacey. The Politics of Community: A Feminist Critique of the Liberal-Communitarian Debate. New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993.

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  A systematic analysis of the disputes between liberal individualists and communitarians, from the perspective of feminist politics and philosophy.

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• Friedman, Marilyn. “Feminism and Modern Friendship: Dislocating the Community.” Ethics 99.2 (1989): 275–290.

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  An important article setting out feminist dissent from traditional community values.

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• Frye, Marilyn. The Politics of Reality. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing, 1983.

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  A feminist account of the concepts of oppression and sexism, emphasizing their embeddedness in taken-for-granted practices and structures of power.

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• Kymlicka, Will. “Appendix I: Some Questions about Justice and Community.” In Communitarianism and Its Critics. Edited by Daniel Bell. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.

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  Kymlicka cites Frye 1983 along with Friedman 1989, Okin 1989, and Young 1990 as representative feminist critiques of liberalism and communitarianism.

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• Okin, Susan Moller. Justice Gender and the Family. New York: Basic Books, 1989.

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  Critical chapters on Walzer, MacIntyre, Nozick, and Rawls, arguing that none of them can answer the feminist case for gender justice.

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• Pateman, Carole. The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1989.

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  Engages in sustained criticism of liberal political thought, making points about the pursuit of justice for women and for men who do not comply with dominant norms of masculinity which cannot be met by a communitarian approach.

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• Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

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  Critical feminist theory, tangential to the core debate, but directly addressing questions of justice, welfare, impartiality and public reason, equality, and identity that are treated in a distinctive way by liberal thinkers such as Rawls and Dworkin.

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Community and Imagination

A key theme articulated by numerous commentators on the communitarian debates, particularly those who were not directly engaged in the anglophone political theory “debate with Rawls,” is that the idea of community, in modern times at least, is invariably a work of imagination. In Antecedents to Communitarianism we met the idea of “loss” of community. In the literature we see three distinct responses to such an idea—first, the individualist, or liberal, view that “society” rather than “community” now is the basis for our social and ethical life, and we need to build on and develop the ethics of individualism; second, the communitarian view that we need to rediscover and recover, and revalue, community relations; and third, a more skeptical view—represented in this section—which emphasizes the ever-present but ever-elusive nature of community—as a loss, as a fantasy—in modern life and culture. The works listed are tangential to the main communitarianism debate, are very influential for the feminist commentators, and also constitute a significant strain of comment on the communitarianism critiques.

• Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. Edited by Michael Hardt, Brian Massumi, and Sandra Buckley. Translated by Michael Hardt. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1993.

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  Agamben’s essays meditate on our lack of community, and the ethical and indeed metaphysical need to anticipate a coming community, a possible stability in relatedness. First published in Italian (1990).

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• Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

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  Argues that the possibility and stability of modern nations have involved the representation of populations as communities—in print, in visual art and products, in discourses of spirituality—that construct for individuals an experience or understanding of community despite the absence of face-to-face encounter.

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• Cohen, Anthony P. The Symbolic Construction of Community. London: Tavistock, 1985.

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  Cohen’s book argues that there can never be any definite referent to an alleged community, because boundaries are always symbolically marked, and therefore subjective and contested.

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• Esposito, Roberto. Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community. Translated by Timothy Campbell. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010.

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  Like other works cited under this section, this book begins with the observation that we long for community at the point when it is impossible; and that our time is one which joins “the failure of all communisms with the misery of new individualisms” (p. 1). First published in Italian (1998).

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• Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Inoperative Community. Translated by Peter Connor, et al. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.

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  The eponymous essay traces the articulation of loss of community in Christianity and other systems of thinking, and argues that any experience of community must be bound up with myth. First published in French (1985–1986).

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• Rose, Gillian. “Athens and Jerusalem: A Tale of Three Cities.” Social and Legal Studies 3 (1994): 333–348.

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  In this inaugural lecture Rose argues that any binary thinking—e.g., individual versus community—must always be shadowed by a third, that taking up either side in a binary will always mean loss. It is notable that this lecture adverts to the religious aspect of thinking community: as well as Jerusalem the three cities include Auschwitz (the original village, and the monument and museum). This paper could equally have been listed in the section Feminist Critique of the Debate, as Rose also discusses women’s problematic relationship to the authority either of an individualistically based impartial state, or of a traditionally based community.

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New Communitarianism

A philosophical bibliography inevitably centers on academic texts, and the communitarianism debates were highly academic. This in itself was considered to be a weakness by some, for whom the issues of alienation and individualism in modern societies were a pressing political and practical problem. Sandel’s early criticism of Rawls was based in part on the argument that if individuals were situated and related as they were in Rawls’ methodology, then there would be little hope of such individuals actually endorsing and practically supporting justice for those worse off. That is, the theme of the “realizability” or otherwise of normative positions in political philosophy came onto the agenda. This philosophical theme resonated with questions about the way institutions of employment, contract, and the impartial and bureaucratic state, in modern societies like those of the United Kingdom and the United States, were combining to undermine the patterns of solidarity and commitment that allow individuals and families to be sustained without direct state intervention—thus, so-called liberal states would have to give way to authoritarianism. Communitarianism, then, was understood by many of those engaged in academic argument about it to be also a practical political program, with a history distinct from projects of state socialism and laissez-faire liberalism, not to mention fascism and other forms of authoritarianism. Amitai Etzioni presented communitarianism in this light, as a practical political project around which a social and political movement could coalesce, one with principled philosophical foundations, and a history, a tradition. The “old communitarianism”—social and political systems based on personal relations, with limited individual mobility and freedom, and established authority relations such as patriarchy—is rightly criticized by 20th-century thinkers; but new community can be possible without oppression. The arguments made by contributors to this position clearly contrast with those philosophers cited under Community and Imagination, who emphasize the elusive or mythical nature of community: for these political actors and thinkers community can be, and is, quite concrete.

• Communitarian Network. “The Responsive Communitarian Platform: Rights and Responsibilities.” The Responsive Community 1 (1991).

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  A manifesto for a new communitarian political program, to be carried forward by a new communitarian movement, distinct from traditional parties of left and right.

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• Etzioni, Amitai. The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda. New York: Crown, 1993.

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  Based on the principle that modern societies have enshrined too many rights formally and have neglected our responsibilities to one another; an analysis of new communitarian principles to order family, school, neighborhood, political representation, and citizenship.

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• Etzioni, Amitai. The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society. New York: Basic Books, 1996.

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  A further book-length account of how order and autonomy can be maintained in a society and state which has a proper place for “the moral voice” and the correct balance between individual rights and collective responsibilities.

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• Etzioni, Amitai, ed. New Communitarian Thinking: Persons, Virtues, Institutions and Communities. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995a.

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  Etzioni’s edited reader includes older published papers by Selznick, Walzer, Sandel, and Taylor, together with contributions from “new communitarians” which focus on public policy matters, especially at the local level, and political projects to generate a communitarian movement. The cultural references and vernacular in this book are notably United States focused, although Etzioni has built bridges to Europe and other continents via the Communitarian Network].

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• Etzioni, Amitai, ed. Rights and the Common Good: The Communitarian Perspective. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995b.

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  An extensive reader, including essays by Christopher Lasch, Robert Dahl, and Robert Goodin, on aspects of the tension between rights, governmental action, and social responsibility.

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• Tam, Henry Benedict. Communitarianism: A New Agenda for Politics and Citizenship. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1998.

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  A UK-focused prescription of communitarianism as a new political project.

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Communitarianism Applied

In the 21st century communitarianism as a distinct philosophical position endures, but rather than being argued about in its own philosophical right, it is more argued about in relation to specific disciplines and cases, whether fields of philosophy such as philosophy of education, or other fields of humanities and social sciences such as law or area studies. These works frequently make reference back to the original works cited under previous sections. Any search of journal articles which feature a communitarian standpoint in recent years also shows that communitarianism in the early 21st century has an assured place in the pantheon of “isms.” For many contributors to journals such as Journal of Medical Ethics, Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Strategic Management Journal, European Psychiatry, Environmental Politics, Business Ethics Quarterly, Journalism, and Journal of Rural Studies, as well as sociology journals, “communitarianism” is a framework for analysis to be applied in diverse fields of social study and science, and we see a steady output of such articles in the 2010s. It is notable that a key philosophical reference here seems to be Deweyan pragmatism, picking up the idea that getting things done involves meeting people where they are, taking into account their existing contexts and networks, appealing to values and practices that are already habitual for them. There are pleas for localism, for respecting subjects’ understanding, and respecting community values and meanings.

• Breslin, Beau. The Communitarian Constitution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.

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  A historical and jurisprudential analysis of the relationship between principles of a constitution of a polity and community values.

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• Eisenstadt, Todd A., Michael S. Danielson, Moisés Jaime Bailón Corres, and Carlos Sorroza Polo, eds. Latin America’s Multicultural Movements: The Struggle between Communitarianism, Autonomy, and Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

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  A collection of essays on the ways that the tension between group rights and liberal autonomy of individuals plays out in a range of Latin American activist and political settings.

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• Johnson, W. Brad, Jeffrey E. Barnett, Nancy S. Elman, Linda Forrest, Rebecca Schwartz-Mette, and Nadine J. Kaslow. “Preparing Trainees for Lifelong Competence: Creating a Communitarian Training Culture.” Training and Education in Professional Psychology 8 (2014): 4.

  DOI: 10.1037/tep0000048Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  A representative journal article which attempts to do what it announces in the title.

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• Jordaan, Eduard. “Including the Excluded: Communitarian Paths to Cosmopolitanism.” Review of International Studies 37.5 (2011): 2365–2385.

  DOI: 10.1017/S0260210510001233Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Like much of the critical commentary cited under the section “The Debate”: Commentary and Criticism on Liberalism, Individualism, and Communitarianism, this paper argues that we can take communitarianism as the normative and methodological starting point for reasoning about justice, and derive normative arguments for universal values and cosmopolitan institutions of redistribution.

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• Keeney, Patrick. Liberalism, Communitarianism and Education: Reclaiming Liberal Education. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007.

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  An application of the debate between Rawls, MacIntyre, and Taylor to the field of philosophy of education.

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• Kusch, Martin. Knowledge by Agreement: The Programme of Communitarian Epistemology. Oxford: Clarendon, 2002.

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  An application of the work of MacIntyre, Sandel, and Taylor to the field of epistemology.

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• Shapcott, Richard. Justice, Community and Dialogue in International Relations. Cambridge Studies in International Relations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

  DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511491672Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  An application of the philosophical problems of the communitarian criticism of justice to the field of international relations.

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• van Seters, Paul. Communitarianism in Law and Society. Rights and Responsibilities. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.

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  This volume is published in the “Rights and Responsibilities” series edited by Etzioni.

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Philosophy from Asia and Africa

So, in the 21st century, “communitarianism” has faded from the field of political philosophy and ethics and made its way into research fields where it can be applied as a framework. It is also in evidence in political philosophy and ethics in Asia and Africa. The Asia connection is long established. Early on, the idea was articulated that “Asian values,” centered on family authority and village or equivalent solidarity, all legitimated by tradition, had a particular affinity with the communitarian critique of liberalism and individualism. It is mentioned in the works of the “new communitarians,” for instance, and Daniel Bell’s analysis of communitarianism (Bell 2000; and see Bell 1993, cited under “The Debate”: Commentary and Criticism on Liberalism, Individualism, and Communitarianism: Books) also notes the affinity.

• Bell, Daniel A. East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

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  A book-length analysis of the “Asian values debate.”

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• Chua, Beng Huat, ed. Communitarian Politics in Asia. London: Routledge Curzon, 2004.

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  This volume engages with the way the idea, and rhetoric, of community has become a strategic resource for elite politicians in Asian states, as well as offering critical analyses of the place of Confucianism, familism, etc. in Asian societies.

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• De Bary, William Theodore. Asian Values and Human Rights: A Confucian Communitarian Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

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  Argues that the Confucian conception of the person is not incompatible with human rights.

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• Metz, Thaddeus. “The Western Ethic of Care or an Afro-Communitarian Ethic? Specifying the Right Relational Morality.” Journal of Global Ethics 9.1 (2013): 77–92.

  DOI: 10.1080/17449626.2012.756421Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Metz develops the idea that in African thought and practice individuals are not as separated from their local communities as they are in Western and liberal ideology into a specifically African communitarianism.

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• Metz, Thaddeus. “How the West Was One: The Western as Individualist, the African as Communitarian.” Educational Philosophy and Theory 47.11 (2014): 1175–1184.

  DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2014.991502Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  In this article the author develops the argument from the previous paper.

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• Oyowe, Oritsegbubemi A., and Olga Yurkivska. “Can a Communitarian Concept of African Personhood Be Both Relational and Gender Neutral?” South African Journal of Philosophy 33.1 (2014): 85–99.

  DOI: 10.1080/02580136.2014.892682Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  A critical evaluation of the idea of African communitarianism from a feminist perspective.

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