Avigail Eisenberg

Personal Website

Avigail Eisenberg Research interests: Democratic theory including pluralism, feminism and minority rights; Canadian politics including constitutional law and politics, minority groups, human rights and civil liberties.

Contact Dr. Eisenberg

Office Hours: On leave until June 30th, 2012
Office: SSM A349
Phone: 250-721-7499
Email: avigaile@uvic.ca

Bio

Avigail Eisenberg is a professor in the Department of Political Science and a Faculty Associate in the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria.

In 2009, she completed a book entitled Reasons of Identity (Oxford UP, 2009) which examines the ways in which public institutions interpret the identities of religious, indigenous, linguistic and ethnic minority groups in their decision making. She has put together numerous conferences and workshops on the topics which have resulted in four collections of research papers: Minorities within Minorities co-edited with Jeff Spinner-Halev (Cambridge 2005); Diversity and Equality (UBC Press 2006); and Sexual Justice / Cultural Justice, co-edited with Barbara Arneil, Monique Deveaux and Rita Dhamoon (Routledge, 2007) and Painting the Maple (UBC, 1998) co-edited with Sherrill Grace, Veronica Strong-Boag and Joan Anderson. A forthcoming collection, entitled How Institutions Assess Identity , co-edited with Will Kymlicka, will be published by UBC Press in 2010.

Her contributions also include co-founding the Victoria Colloquium on Legal and Political Thought, and the Consortium on Democratic Constitutionalism based in the University of Victoria.

Publications

Books (monographs and edited)

Reasons of Identity: A normative guide to the political and legal assessment of identity claims, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Sexual Justice / Cultural Justice, co-edited with Barbara Arneil, Monique Deveaux and Rita Dhamoon, London: Routledge, 2007.
Diversity and Equality: The Changing Framework of Freedom in Canada edited, Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2006.
Minorities within Minorities, edited with Jeff Spinner-Halev, Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Painting the Maple: Essays on Race, Gender and the Construction of Canada, co-edited Veronica Strong-Boag, Sherril Grace and Joan Anderson. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998.
Reconstructing Political Pluralism, Albany, New York: SUNY, 1995, pp. ix, 211.

Chapters and Journal Articles (selected)

2007 "Identity, multiculturalism, and religious arbitration: the debate over shari'a law in Canada," Sexual Justice/Cultural Justice, Barbara Arneil, Monique Deveaux, Rita Dhamoon and Avigail Eisenberg, eds. London: Routledge, 211-30.
2007 ‘Equality, trust and multiculturalism' in Social Capital and Social Diversity, Fiona Kay and Richard Johnston eds. Vancouver: UBC Press, 67-94.
2007 ‘Reasoning about the identity of Aboriginal people' in Accommodating Cultural Diversity: Contemporary Issues in Theory and Practice, Stephen Tierney ed., London: Ashgate, pp. 79-97.
2006 ‘Reasoning about identity: Canada's Distinctive Culture Test,' in Diversity and Equality, Avigail Eisenberg ed., Vancouver: UBC Press, pp. 34-53.
2006 ‘New approaches to fundamental freedom in Canada' in Diversity and Equality, Avigail Eisenberg ed., Vancouver: UBC Press, pp. 1-14.
2006‘Pluralism and the Politics of Diversity' in Pluralism: Developments in the Theory and Practice of Democracy, Rainer Eisfeld ed., World of Political Science Series, Germany: Barbara Burdich, 2006, 59-80.
2006 ‘The Normative Dimensions of Equality' co-written with Colin Macleod; Dimensions of Inequality in Canada, David Green and Jon Kesselman eds., Vancouver: UBC Press, pp. 33-64.
2006 "Education and the Politics of Difference," Educational Philosophy and Theory, Special Issue on the Politics of Iris Marion Young, Jan 38(1): 7-23.
2006 "Is Trust a Multicultural Concept?" Social Capital and Social Diversity, Fiona Kay and Richard Johnston eds., Vancouver: UBC Press, (in press)
2006 with Colin Macleod, "The Normative Dimensions of Equality," Dimensions of Inequality in Canada, David Green and Jon Kesselman eds., Vancouver: UBC Press, forthcoming 2006 (in press)
2005 "The Distinctive Culture Test," Human Rights Dialogue, Special Issue on Cultural Rights, Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, 12:2 (Spring) 26-7.
2005 "The Limits of Liberal Multiculturalism: A Response to Patrick Loobyck." Ethnicities 5:1 (March): 123-7.
2005 with Jeff Spinner-Halev, "Introduction" Minorities with Minorities: Equality, Rights and Diversity, Avigail Eisenberg and Jeff Spinner-Halev eds. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press,pp. 1-18.
2005 "Identity and Liberal Politics: The Problem of Minorities within Minorities," Minorities with Minorities: Equality, Rights and Diversity, Avigail Eisenberg and Jeff Spinner-Halev ed. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 249-270.
2004 "Are Referendum on Minority Rights Every Justified?" Representation and Democratic Theory, David Laycock ed., Vancouver: UBC Press, pp. 3-22.
2003 "Diversity and Equality: Three Approaches to Cultural and Sexual Difference," Journal of Political Philosophy 11; 1 (March) 41-64.
2002 "Context, Difference, Sex and Social Justice,"Canadian Journal of Political Science. 35:3 (September) 613-28.
2002 "Pluralism, Consociationalism, Group-Differentiated Citizenship and the Problem of Social Cohesion," in Chang Shiyin ed., Collected Works on Sino-Western Political Culture , Tianjin People's Press, Tianjin, pp. 235-62. (Published in Mandarin).

Web Publications

2006 "Reasoning about the identity of Aboriginal people" with Martin Blanchard, Document de Travail/Working Papers 1:1 Spring 2006, 9 pp.http://www.creum.umontreal.ca/IMG/pdf/ATELIERS_VOL1N1_07_103_111.pdf
2005 "The Distinctive Culture Test" Human Rights Dialogue, Special Issue on Cultural Rights, Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, 2005, http://www.cceia.org/viewMedia.php/ prmTemplateID/8/prmID/5131
2001 "Ought there to be a Referendum on the BC Treaty Process?' Policy.ca: A Non-Partisan Resource of the Political Analysis of Canadian Policy Issues,http://ww.policy.ca/ 2001, 12 mss pp.
2001 "Diversity and equality: Three approaches to cultural and sexual difference," Constitutionalism Web-Papers (C onWEB), http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/conweb/, 2001, 24 mss pp.
2000 ‘Citizenship and the Recognition of Cultural Diversity' website of the Canadian Policy Research Network, http://www.cprn.com/family/files/crcd-3_e.htm , 5 mss pp. 2000

Podcasts

Ethnic and Democratic Governance, LearnOutLoud.com, Download

Courses

Poli 201: Canadian Institutions of Government:
- Introduction to the Canadian system of government; the constitutional framework; parliamentary and federal political structures; institutional change and major constitutional developments and debates.
- 2010 Fall Course Outline

Poli 305: Diversity, Pluralism and Difference:
- Why is human diversity a problem for democratic politics and what are the main political approaches to diversity in the contemporary era? This course examines the challenges that different kinds of diversity (ethnic, religious, racial, national, gendered) pose for democracy. In the first part, we look at the four leading approaches to diversity - multiculturalism, recognition, difference, and agonistic pluralism – and the strengths and limits of each approach in relation to ethnic and religious diversity, indigenous rights, gender differences, and other forms of social inequality. The second part focuses on the main challenges to these approaches which have become especially important in the last 30 years: the problem of unity (or solidarity) vs difference, different interests vs different identities (and what difference this makes), the role of the state in managing (or manipulating) diversity, and the problem of inclusion. The final question is whether any of the approaches examined offers a convincing post-imperialist understanding of diversity and democracy.
- 2010 Fall Course Outline