Welcome. On this website you can find information about myself and my writings that seek to advance both academic and public understandings of, and commitments to, moral, social, and political pluralism.
Basic information about me is provided in ABOUT AUTHOR. The pluralist perspective that is central to my worldview and is the focus of this website is introduced in ABOUT PLURALISM.
Most of my work seeking to advance pluralism as a general theory of politics among political scientists and other academics can be found under ARTICLES. These are posted roughly in the chronological order in which they were written, presented as conference papers, and/or published. To orient readers, I provide brief introductions to each article regarding my motivations for writing the piece, the research on which the article is based, and its contribution to pluralist theory.
Though some of my BOOKS also target academic audiences, most were written for students. In these books I sought to make professional understandings accessible to those having few prior encounters with political theory. From my present perspective as a retired professor, I hope those still active in university teaching will continue to use these books, but now I think the audience for them includes the informed public. I simply want to make these works available to those who are interested in continuing their education on social and political topics and attaining better understandings of the diversity and complexity of our political world. I provide overviews of these works here and post some chapters of these books, but interested readers will have to acquire the full texts from the publishers or libraries.
The BLOGS are the least professional of my writings. Here you can find various shorter, more personal thoughts that develop and apply pluralist thinking, not only to politics but also to other moral and social concerns. Some of these blogs reflect conversations with colleagues and students over the course of my career. Others are provocations that I have shared with friends and family. Still others are simply my understandings of what is involved in living a good and responsible life.
Usually these are provided in reverse chronological order, with more recent reflections followed by matters that eventually go back to my childhood, and to other formative experiences in the development of my pluralist perspective. While these blogs are highly varied in the topics they address, I trust that the reader will detect a pluralist sensibility in each of them.
Paul Schumaker 