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9780190087845

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A searching exploration of both the value and the dangers of non-conformity in democratic societies. In this smart and insightful book, Ikuta helps us think critically about our culture's headlong embrace of individual idiosyncrasy and self-reliance. She does this by offering fresh, perceptive readings of three nineteenth-century philosophers whose insights remain powerfully relevant in our time. * Alex Zakaras, Professor of Political Science, University of Vermont * American culture in general and democratic theory in particular love non-conformity. This book effectively complicates our assessment of the outsider in a democracy. While non-conformity can inject innovative experiments in living into a democracy, too much creativity can challenge the very basis and coherence of democratic life. Ikuta defends this argument through first-rate interpretations of Tocqueville, Mill, and Nietzsche. Highly recommended. * Jeffrey Church, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Houston * Everyone thinks they love non-conformity; who could be against it? Ikuta's marvelous Contesting Conformity develops skeptical perspective through careful, thoughtful studies of Mill, Tocqueville, and Nietzsche. Each worried about the democratic tendency to follow the herd, yet Ikuta shows thatthey offer no comfort to lazy contrarianism. She draws on them to help us see the value of shame, the need for social support of dissenters, and the problem for democratic equality when the arrogance of the powerful is dressed up as heroic individuality. * Jacob T. Levy, Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory, McGill University *

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Jennie C. Ikuta is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Tulsa.

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