Benjamin Gregg

Biography

Research Interests
Social integration in complex modern societies; problems and prospects of contemporary forms of justice, including human rights; coping with value pluralism within democratic societies but also in non-liberal polities around the world; “enlightened localism” and “thin norms” as practical strategies for accomplishing social integration and legal justice in both liberal and hierarchical societies; deploying contemporary sociological theory to solve problems in political philosophy

Recent Publications

\"Anti-Imperialism: Generating Universal Human rights out of Local Norms,\" forthcoming in Ratio Juris (2010)

“Deploying Cognitive Sociology to Advance Human Rights,” Comparative Sociology 9 (2010): 1-19

“Familiendämmerung in Amerika?” in S. Caspar und C. Gehrke, ed. Familien-Bande. Tübingen: Konkursbuch Verlag (2009): 321-329

“Translating Human Rights into Muslim Vernaculars,” Comparative Sociology 7 (2008): 415–433

“In Lieu of Writing a Life: Twenty-Six Views,” in R. Louis, ed., Orange Britannia. Austin: University of Texas Press (2006): 624-635

Thick Moralities, Thin Politics: Social Integration across Communities of Belief (Duke University Press, 2003)

Coping In Politics with Indeterminate Norms: A Theory of Enlightened Localism (SUNY Press, simultaneously in two series: Political Theory: Contemporary Issues, edited by P. Green, and Radical Social and Political Theory, edited by R. Gottlieb, 2003)

“Proceduralism Reconceived: Political Conflict Resolution under Conditions of Moral Pluralism,” Theory and Society 31 (2002): 741-776

“The Law and Courts of Enlightened Localism,” Polity 35 (2002): 283-309
 

Current Book-Length Projects

Title: Human Rights as Cultural Construction: Develops a conception of human rights as social constructions whose validity can be developed locally and freely embraced as indigenous, in diverse cultures and political communities, rather than imposed from outside.

Title: Political Solidarity without Nationalism: Shows how a state-based polity can achieve political solidarity without nationalism, and that it needs to if legal rights and legal justice – and not simply market economics – are to attain global status.

Recent Awards

Research fellowship from the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung, Berlin-Babelsberg, Germany, undertaken at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (2008)

College of Liberal Arts 1999 Silver Spurs Fellowship for outstanding scholarship and teaching

Recent Guest Professorship

Europa Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany (2009)

 Recent Graduate Seminars
Early Cosmopolitan Political Thought
Early Modern Political Theory
Global Justice
State Sovereignty and Human Rights
Kant and Hegel
Critical Social Theory
Hegel: The Politics of Recognition

Forthcoming Collection of Essays
titled “Enlightened Localism in Comparative Perspective” (applying various aspects of the theory I develop in Coping in Politics with Indeterminate Norms: A Theory of Enlightened Localism) with contributions from
▪ Lea Ypi (Oxford University, UK): “Basic Rights and Cosmopolitan Justice from an Enlightened Localist Perspective”
▪ Jonathan White (London School of Economics, UK): “Responding to Norm Indeterminacy beyond the Nation-State Frame”
▪ Junmin Wang (University of Memphis, USA): “Enlightened Localism in Contemporary China: Political Change in Property-Rights Institutions of Township and Village Enterprises”
▪ Ko Hasegawa (Hokkaido University, Japan): “Integrating a Racial and Ethnic Minority into Dominant Society from the Perspective of Enlightened Localism: The Case of the Japanese Ainu”

▪ Manu Ahedo Santisteban (University Rovira Virgili, Spain): “Enlightened Localism and Local Experimentalism in Public Policy: Schooling Policies of Children with Immigrant Backgrounds in Denmark and Spain”