Kevin OlsonAssociate Professor, Political Science |
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Research Interests |
Popular Sovereignty, Citizenship, Politics of Diversity, Cultural Politics, Contemporary European Political Theory, 19th and 20th Century Political Theory | |
| URL | Reflexive Democracy @ MIT Press | |
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Academic Distinctions | Erasmus Mundus Scholar, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, 2006-7. | |
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Research Abstract |
Kevin Olson is a political theorist who has written on issues of popular sovereignty, citizenship, the cultural and material bases of democracy, the welfare state, governmentality, and democratic justice. He is author of Reflexive Democracy: Political Equality and the Welfare State (MIT, 2006), and editor of Adding Insult to Injury: Nancy Fraser Debates Her Critics (Verso, 2008). His work has also been published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Constellations, and the Journal of Political Philosophy. In 2006-7 he was an Erasmus Mundus Scholar at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Olson is currently extending his research in the direction of global politics, examining the ways that basic assumptions about the nation-state limit our understanding of democracy. This work explores the conceptual architecture of popular sovereignty, ranging over themes of political identity, nationalism, constitutional patriotism, constituent power, the construction of public spheres, and dynamic conceptions of democracy. It connects insights about democratic self-determination with important problems of globalization, grassroots politics, and transnational democracy. |
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| Publications | BOOKS | |
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| Adding Insult to Injury: Nancy Fraser Debates Her Critics (London: Verso, 2008). Edited and introduced by Kevin Olson. Nancy Fraser, principal author, with additional contributions by Elizabeth Anderson, Judith Butler, Leonard Feldman, Rainer Forst, Joseph Heath, Nikolas Kompridis, Kevin Olson, Anne Phillips, Ingrid Robeyns, Richard Rorty, Iris Marion Young, and Christopher Zurn. Chinese translation, trans. Zhou Suiming (Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing, 2009). Italian translation (Lecce, Italy: Pensa) forthcoming. Korean translation (Seoul: Greenbee Publishing) forthcoming. | ||
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| Reflexive Democracy: Political Equality and the Welfare State (MIT Press, 2006). | ||
| ARTICLES | ||
| "Reflexive Democracy as Popular Sovereignty," in New Waves in Political Philosophy, ed. Boudewijn de Bruin and Christopher Zurn (London: Palgrave, 2009), 125-142. | ||
| "Constructing Citizens," Journal of Politics 70:1 (2008): 40-53. | ||
| "Governmental Rationality and Popular Sovereignty," Current Perspectives in Social Theory 25 (2008): 329-352. | ||
| "Participatory Parity and Democratic Justice," in Nancy Fraser, Adding Insult to Injury: Nancy Fraser Debates Her Critics, ed. Kevin Olson (London: Verso, 2008), 246-272. Chinese translation, trans. Zhou Suiming (Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing, 2009), 244-270. Italian and Korean translations forthcoming. | ||
| "Reflexivni Obcanstvi a Paradoxy Participace," trans. Michael Hauser, Filosoficky Casopis 56:1 (2008): 77-100. ["Reflexive Citizenship and the Paradoxes of Participation," Prague: Journal of Philosophy.] | ||
| "Adding Insult to Injury: An Introduction," in Nancy Fraser, Adding Insult to Injury: Nancy Fraser Debates Her Critics, ed. Kevin Olson (London: Verso, 2008), 1-8. Chinese translation, trans. Zhou Suiming (Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing, 2009), 1-9. Italian and Korean translations forthcoming. | ||
| "Paradoxes of Constitutional Democracy," American Journal of Political Science 51:2 (2007): 330-343. | ||
| "Welfare, Democracy, and the Reflexive Legitimacy of the Law," Studies in Law, Politics and Society 29 (2003): 97-122. | ||
| "Do Rights have a Formal Basis? Habermas’s Legal Theory and the Normative Foundations of the Law," Journal of Political Philosophy 11:3 (2003): 273-294. | ||
| "Liberalism, Risk, and the Welfare State," Philosophy and Social Criticism 29:3 (2003): 351-7. | ||
| "Recognizing Gender, Redistributing Labor," Social Politics 9:3 (2002): 380-410. | ||
| "Distributive Justice and the Politics of Difference," Critical Horizons 2:1 (2001): 5-32. | ||
| "Democratic Inequalities: The Problem of Equal Citizenship in Habermas’s Democratic Theory," Constellations 5:2 (1998): 215-233. | ||
| "Habitus and Body Language: Towards a Critical Theory of Symbolic Power," Philosophy and Social Criticism 21:2 (1995): 23-49. | ||
| BOOK REVIEWS | ||
| Review of Bert van den Brink and David Owen, eds., Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Theory. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=12203. Posted 19 Jan 2008. | ||
| Review of Steven Hicks, International Law and the Possibility of a Just World Order. Ethics 111:2 (2001): 452. | ||
| Review of William Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization. Ethics 108:2 (1998) 449-50. | ||
| Review of Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics. Ethics 107:2 (1997): 401-2. | ||
| Review of Axel Honneth, The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy. Ethics 107:1 (1996): 189. | ||
| Review of Peter Bachrach and Aryeh Botwinick, Power and Empowerment: A Radical Theory of Participatory Democracy. Ethics 106:2 (1996): 499-500. | ||
| Link to this profile | http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5030 | |
| Last updated | 07/09/2009 | |