Arguing in the tradition of pragmatists, such as John Dewey and Charles Peirce, Benjamin Gregg proposes that sociotheoretic critique, legal judgment, and public policy should find “criteria of critical judgment this side of universal validity” (p. 8). By this he means that while norms are always relative to particular interpretative traditions, which, in turn, are necessarily open-textured and indeterminate, normative indeterminacy does not preclude the possibility of singular norms that adjudicate between different local traditions (p. 86). Contra postmodernists (and certain adherents of Critical Legal Studies), Gregg rejects the claim that the indeterminacy of norms correlates with the loss of autonomy, on the one hand, and universality, on the other (pp. 78–82).

In the course of distinguishing pragmatism from postmodernism, the author rejects as incoherent recent attempts (by Jacques Derrida and Stanley Fish) to articulate a postmodern concept of agency and law. To his mind, these attempts simply fail. To my mind, the author's critique of the latest statement of postmodernism is too glib. Yet I appreciate the basic point: Deconstructing transcendental norms to get at the local and particular brings with it a duty to construct an alternative concept of universal validity, and postmodernism fails on this score. The great virtue of Coping in Politics with Indeterminate Norms is that it poses with clarity the question of our historical moment, namely, how we, the inheritors of a democratic tradition, can construct a concept of universal validity that takes account of difference without falling into the trap of incommensurability. In short, how can “we” develop normative criteria for adjudicating difference?

Gregg's enlightened localism “begins with cognitive and normative standards immanent to a society's cultures but then transcends them,” not by fusing horizons or imposing an imperialist order (as in the Soviet Union) but by revising procedural democracy. Specifically, Gregg takes deliberative democracy in a pragmatic direction. In contrast to liberals, he emphasizes rights concerned with fair and egalitarian participation as opposed to substantive autonomy (pace John Hart Ely) (p. 104). In contrast to discourse theorists, like Seyla Benhabib, he rejects the claim that fair proceduralism is linked to a “moral-transformative process” that invariably changes the substantive values of participants (p. 105). Rather than seeking moral transformation (oriented by the substantive value of autonomy or substantive values that emerge dialogically), Gregg recommends a more modest aim, a coping strategy that “facilitate(s) cooperation among people who continue to disagree” (ibid.). Yet despite advocating the minimum goal of coping with disagreement (in lieu of moral transformation aimed at consensus formation), he is reliant upon the deep-seated consensus that actually permeates democratic societies. He admits that enlightened localism is not really possible in illiberal polities (p. 130). His version of deliberative democracy (like all forms of deliberative democracy) is uniquely associated with substantive egalitarian achievements that steer “us” to reject hierarchy, totalitarian centralization, and traditionalism (ibid.). Moreover, even when he is concerned with public policy issues like local control of education and immigration, he frames these issues as foremost a matter of rights interpretation. That is, he assumes that all democratic participants accept what Jürgen Habermas refers to as the thoroughgoing juridification (or rights centrism) of mature forms of political legitimacy.

I agree with the implicit assumption that what is at stake is rights interpretation (however indeterminate the interpretative edifice). Yet the author needs to say more about this point since the immigration example, in particular, forces us to encounter a form of difference that not only invokes radical disagreement about rights interpretation but also (potentially) rejects the idea of linking political legitimation to rights discourse. While there are certainly interesting comparisons between demarcating local (municipal) boundaries to decide how democratic citizens are educated and demarcating the borders of the nation-state to decide the identity of the citizen in a different sense, there is also an important distinction that the author misses: Immigrants threaten/promise to introduce fundamental shifts in democratic pedagogy and, hence, identity.

In thematizing the indeterminacy of democratic membership criteria, Gregg is really pointing beyond the procedures of democracy to a substantive question. Assuming that we can agree on how we decide controversial questions (in relation to which there will always be a remainder in terms of value agreement), how do we determine who qualifies as a member of the relevant interpretative community? Qualification here must assume a certain competence, whether it is the competence acquired by democratic education or demonstrated by those who, in a different sense, “become” citizens. In both cases, it seems to me, that what “we” are precisely risking is moral transformation (albeit to differential degrees). Whatever the source of value differences, civic education is transformative: It teaches us to recognize democracy's moral horizon as the interpretative framework that allows us to reconcile ourselves to indeterminacy and make reasonable decisions despite it.

While Gregg's own position on the civic education of schoolchildren remains ambivalent, he suggests that the Yoder decision is problematic. Of course, in the case of immigration policy, the Yoder “problem” is writ large. Do we, in one form or another, forcibly acculturate all citizens-in-training so that they can take up their role as participants in a “pragmatic” form of procedural democracy? The author studiously avoids this question, not really admitting the extent to which even a minimalist (pragmatic) procedural democracy relies upon the internal transformation of worldviews, a transformation that has in fact only occurred as a consequence of intersubjective/intercultural contact in societies governed by a particular sociocultural, institutional logic.

In its various forms, democratic pedagogy threatens/promises to change us; it precisely counters the idea that what it means for government to be “respectful of the divergent conceptions of the good held by its many constituents” is to take people “as they are, not as they might be” (p. 104). In Gregg's text, the problem of democratic pedagogy, and its various coping mechanisms, is dealt with most cogently when the author takes up the one example to which he consistently returns: race consciousness and racial justice in America. From the outset, he defends the progressive potential of segregation. Citing Patricia Williams, he points out that “black” is a “culture” in the sense of a “shared heritage of language patterns, habits, history and experience” (p. 24). Cultural practitioners, on his account, quite reasonably deploy a strategy of identity preservation that seeks to resignify, instead of abandon, “a marginalized social location” (p. 25). This strategy of “making the most” of one's racial locality fully acknowledges the contingency and indeterminacy of racial identity, without either transcending or deconstructing race. Furthermore, this strategy coincides with particular controversial policies, such as Afro-centric schools and race-conscious districting for congressional voting. In both cases, what is at stake is not the (census-like) recording of an ascriptive trait but the recognition of a shared identity, “born of experience and interests, of social status and history” (p. 56).

While the author appears to be persuaded that Afro-centric schools (more so than Amish “un-schooling”) can be a part of the democratic experiment, he is most interested in defending race-conscious districting. Geographic localities, which also represent local identity constellations, provide the perfect illustration for his model of proceduralism. On his account, “racial gerrymandering” (as it is pejoratively known) strengthens legislative deliberation by widening participation and including “more relevant viewpoints” (p. 55). In keeping with the logic of minimum proceduralism, it includes self-identifying racial groups (taking them as they are, even potentially transforming a “group-in-itself” into a “group-for-itself”); yet this group consciousness “need not be socially divisive if its raison d'etre is the group members' inclusion in larger society” (p. 54). I find all this persuasive, except I imagine that interaction under conditions of fair procedural democracy (which may well include some form of group representation) will more likely produce the waning of group consciousness than the emergence of a “group-for itself.” In our context, I suspect that only “sovereignty” (as it is understood in Native American studies) will allow strong local identities to exist in perpetuity alongside democratic cultures. And this type of strong localism (again on my view) is antidemocratic—it is in fact precisely the type of unreconstructed localism that Gregg rejects.

I applaud the author's efforts to blend the insights of pragmatism and procedural democracy in order to cope with difference and better include “marginalized social locations.” However, even if his minimum proceduralism aspires to take groups as they are (even to shore up group identity), I suspect that deliberative democracy (in any form) is more inherently transformative than he realizes.