In The Good Citizen, some of the most eminent contemporary thinkers take up the question of the future of American democracy in an age of globalization, growing civic apathy, corporate unaccountability, and purported fragmentation of the American common identity by identity politics.

Introduction: What Does it Mean to be an American?; 1. The Moral Obligations of Living in a Democratic Society, Cornel West; 2. The Ethics of Polarization in the United Staes and the World, Robert N. Bellah; 3. Virtually Democratic: Twenty Essentials for the Citizen in a Network Society, David Batstone; 4. The Crime of Innocence, Barbara Christian; 5. The Crisis of Values in America: Its Manipulation by the Right and its Invisibility to the Left, Michael Lerner; 6. Race at the End of History, Ronald Takaki; 7. Latina/o Identity Politics, Linda Martín Alcoff; 8. Becoming Citizens, Becoming Hispanics, Eduardo Mendieta; 9. Contagious Word: Paranoia and Homosexuality in the Military, JudithButler; Acknowledgments; Contributors; Index of Names

David Batstone, Eduardo Mendieta