Around the globe, democracy appears broken. With political and socioeconomic inequality on the rise, we are faced with the urgent question of how to better distribute power, opportunity, and wealth in diverse modern societies. This volume confronts the dilemma head-on, exploring new ways to combat current social hierarchies of domination.

Using examples from the United States, India, Germany, and Cameroon, the contributors offer paradigm-changing approaches to the concepts of justice, identity, and social groups while also taking a fresh look at the idea that the demographic make-up of institutions should mirror the make-up of a populace as a whole. After laying out the conceptual framework, the volume turns to a number of provocative topics, among them the pernicious tenacity of implicit bias, the logical contradictions inherent to the idea of universal human dignity, and the paradoxes and problems surrounding affirmative action. A stimulating blend of empirical and interpretive analyses, Difference without Domination urges us to reconsider the idea of representation and to challenge what it means to measure equality and inequality.

Danielle Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. The recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, she is the author or coeditor of many books, including Education and Equality, From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in a Digital Age, and Education, Justice, and Democracy, all published by the University of Chicago Press. Rohini Somanathan is professor of economics at the Delhi School of Economics.