Hundreds of millions of tenants live in Third World cities; in many cities they constitute the majority of households. Despite their numerical importance, we remain ignorant of this large mass of people and the conditions in which they live. We are even more ignorant about those who provide rental accommodation, even if we have inherited strong prejudices about the characteristics of the typical landlord. This book attempts to summarize what we know about rental housing in Latin America, and compares this with other areas in the developing world.

This ambitious and sweeping book presents a powerful argument against moral relativism and in favor of the objectivity of a theory of democratic individuality. Unlike much recent work in this field, the book does not simply adumbrate such a view. Rather, it develops the parallels between various versions of scientific and moral realism, and then reinterprets the history and internal logic of democratic theory, maintaining, for example, that the abolition of slavery represents genuine moral progress. The book also recasts the clashes between Marxist and Weberian, radical and liberal...