Ethnic groups are dangerous, yet they are a part of our world. The result is that we should try to minimize the harm they do. A multiculturalism of fear, directly inspired by the late Judith Shklar's liberalism of fear, focuses our attention on the ways in which groups are victims of cruelty and humiliation because of their ethnicity. For example, Levy argues that when India changed the name of Bombay to Mumbai, it was done to reassert the city's Hindu identity in a way that was meant to taunt the city's many non-Hindu residents. A multiculturalism of rights may have little to say about name changes like this, since this change of names did not violate anyone's rights. The multiculturalism of fear, however, is attentive to the tensions between ethnic groups and can tell us why seemingly innocuous name changes should be resisted. This is an important insight on the usefulness of a multiculturalism of fear.

Related to the multiculturalism of fear (though exactly how is never spelled out) is Levy's negative consequentionalist argument. Levy cites Montesquieu as teaching us that laws are often a bad way to change customs; that rewards and incentives are better ways to do so. Outlawing a long-standing custom may have worse consequences than allowing it unaltered or perhaps in a modified form. For example, some immigrant women from Africa recently asked their doctors in the Seattle area to perform a mild version of female circumcision on their daughters. Levy argues that the doctors were right to agree to do so (though they changed their minds under public pressure), because this incision would not have harmed sexual intercourse, sexual pleasure, or childbirth. In a perfect world the question of such an incision would never arise. But we must, Levy warns us, deal with the cultural and religious realities as they do exist. The alternative to the incision performed in the Seattle hospital was, for many of these families, to return to their country of origin to have the cutting under the control of their traditional grandmothers. Surely it is better to have the cutting performed by the Seattle doctors.

This is an insightful argument, but it is underdeveloped. Levy is not willing to allow all cultural practices to exist. When the rights of women are violated, then direct intervention is called for. This leaves the reader wanting to hear more. What if stopping these rights violations has terrible consequences? Or if we can successfully stop the violations of women's rights in certain cultures, why not also directly stop patriarchal norms?

Just as the negative consequentionalist argument is not spelled out enough, so too the contours of the multiculturalism of fear are left unfilled. Levy's argument on name changes is one of few examples of how the multiculturalism of fear works. In fact, Levy's fear argument is prominent only in the first two chapters and then a little in the last one; it is rarely mentioned in the five chapters in between. While the theoretical framework tying the book together is uneven, this book has considerable insights into multicultural arguments. Levy is an incisive critic, with an extraordinary command of cases from throughout the world and a firm grasp on the many arguments for nationalism and cultural rights. Levy is a fox, not a hedgehog. The reader will not learn one big thing from this book, but she will learn many smaller (and worthwhile) things. Levy's book travels through arguments against liberal nationalism and liberal arguments for cultural rights, land, indigenous law, and official apologies.

Levy is particularly insightful when he dissects the categories used in a variety of cultural rights arguments. His description of the different kinds of indigenous laws, and their uses and abuses, and his discussion of the several possible approaches to ethnic symbolism are first rate; so too is the powerful chapter on classifying cultural rights. This chapter, already well known in a previously published form, is a grand tour through the different kinds of cultural rights available and can be used a basic starting point in the cultural rights debates. Yet the normative implications of this chapter are too briefly discussed, and its relationship to the multiculturalism of fear is left unclear.

The relationship between theories of rights and theories of fear is also underexplored. In Levy's well-argued chapters against liberal nationalism and cultural rights, he appears to be against the multiculturalism of rights. Levy is willing to allow group rights only when the alternative is worse; he does not think that cultural membership in itself has much moral worth. Yet sometimes it seem like the liberalism of rights trumps the multiculturalism of fear. Levy gently argues that giving territorial self-government rights to indigenous peoples causes a problem with local minorities, raises concerns about the individual rights of tribal members, creates boundaries problems, and restricts the mobility of nonmembers (which Levy counts as a liberal right). While Levy briefly invokes the multiculturalism of fear argument to justify this position, one might think that the fear argument works the other way: That it is cruel and humiliating to take away or withhold territorial self-government from indigenous peoples. And there is, of course, substantial evidence that doing so has negative consequences for indigenous peoples.

Nonetheless, Levy's chapter on indigenous law, like his chapter on land, pushes political theorists in directions in which we normally do not go. Land, in particular, is a difficult subject that few political theorists have tackled, and Levy's argument provides an excellent juxtaposition of liberal and nationalist views on territory. Here and elsewhere, Levy's willingness to take on a broad range of subjects and arguments will provide readers with many occasions to pause and ponder as they read this richly rewarding book.