Equality, Citizenship, and Segregation: A Defense of Separation [Paperback]

Merry argues that most voluntary separation experiments in education are not driven by a sense of racial, cultural or religious superiority. Rather, they are driven among other things by a desire for quality education, not to mention community membership and self respect.  Table of Contents Foreword 1. Introduction 2. Integration 3. Foundational Principles 4. Voluntary Separation 5. Religious Separation 6. Cultural Separation 7. Social Class Separation Afterword

This book represents a highly original contribution to one of the most incendiary debates on education in our times, the voluntary separation of 'stigmatized groups' versus their compulsory 'integration' within pluralist liberal democracies. Supported and sustained by both extensive empirical evidence and context-sensitive moral theory, Merry impugns integration on the one hand as a liberal-democratic requirement and as an effective or even desirable policy on the other. His argument shows that whatever may be true for 'ideal worlds', imposed mixing in the real world often is morally indefensible and socially and politically counterproductive. A truly multidisciplinary approach combining moral philosophy, political theory, social science (particularly sociology and social psychology) and educational policy, Equality, Citizenship, and Segregation persuasively challenges the persistent myth of integration and shows why separation may be a more fruitful strategy, particularly for some of society's more vulnerable members. I highly recommend it. - Veit Bader, Professor Emeritus, Sociology and Political Theory, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Many people believe that integration is an attractive societal goal in racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse democratic societies. Merry's Equality, Citizenship, and Segregation shakes our faith in this view by arguing that voluntary separation is a better way to foster civic virtue and to secure self-respect for stigmatilĂ$