Is there such a thing as American honor, or is honor simply incompatible with modern liberal democracy and capitalism? Tocqueville's Democracy in America is particularly well suited as a means of exploring these questions. Through an in-depth analysis of Tocqueville's views on aristocratic versus American democratic honor, this book explores what honor might mean in the modern Western context. Its aim is to strengthen citizens' moral obligations and understandings of community in the face of forces within democracy and capitalism that naturally erode these binding and stabilizing influences....

This volume explores some of the tensions and pressures of citizenship in Western liberal democracies. Citizenship has adopted many guises in the Western context, although historically citizenship is attached only to some variant of democracy. How democracy is configured is thus at the core of citizenship. Beginning in ancient Greece, citizenship is attached to the notion of a public sphere of deliberation, open only to a small number of males. Nonetheless, we take from these origins an understanding of citizenship that is attached to friendship, preservation of a distinct community, and...

This book brings together some of the foremost researchers of honor to debate honor's meaning and its compatibility with liberalism, democracy, and modernity. Contributors examine honor past to present, from masculine and feminine perspectives, and in North American, European, and African contexts.