recalcitrant when it comes to self-reflection on their representational strat-
egies in respect of the non-western world’’ (Breckenridge and van der Veer
1993 , 16 ). This is one of the most substantial legacies of their joint past which
political theory and social theory have yet seriously to confront.
Given these fundamental commonalities between political theory and
social theory, it is hardly surprising that much contemporary political theory
relies on general accounts of society and sociality similar to those developed
by social theorists. Sometimes—too often, in fact—these accounts are impli-
cit or relatively undeveloped. John Rawls describes his analysis of justice as
fairness, for example, as founded on two ‘‘basic intuitive ideas’’ which are, in
his view, ‘‘embedded in the political institutions’’ of the culturally plural
societies of the modern West and in ‘‘the public traditions of their interpret-
ation’’ (Rawls 1985 , 225 ): the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation
between free and equal persons, and that of the person as a ‘‘citizen, that is, a
fully cooperating member of society over a complete life’’ ( 1985 , 225 , 233 ).
Rawls goes on to describe the institutions in which these ideas are embedded
as fitting ‘‘together into one unified system of social co-operation’’ (Rawls
1985 , 225 ). His argument thus goes beyond the uncontroversial claim that
these ideas permeate the public rhetoric of contemporary Western societies to
suggest that they also provide a reliable view of how these societies operate.
In effect, Rawls sees contemporary Western societies as institutionalizing the
interrelated ideas of the person as citizen and of the citizens themselves as free
and equal individuals. His discussion thus draws on an implicit and, partly for
this reason, rather simplistic, version of American sociological functionalism,
which understands society precisely as the institutionalization of central values.
Moreover, in locating these values in the area of citizenship, he effectively
endorses the claim of T. H. Marshall’sCitizenship and Social Class( 1950 ) that,
in spite of the divisive effects of market inequalities, the prosperous Western
states of the mid-twentieth century had finally secured an overall equality of
citizenship for their inhabitants. Both the image of society as organized around
central values and the Marshallian account of the successful realization of
citizenship have been widely debated in the sociological literature (e.g. Gould-
ner 1970 ; Bulmer and Rees 1996 ). Rawls’ normative analyses take no account of
these disputes. Instead, they invoke a contentious description/explanation of
contemporary Western societies, and present it as unproblematic.
Or again, the communitarian critique of liberalism draws on a particular
view of human sociality to argue that liberalism has an incomplete and,
in some respects, seriously misleading view of human individuals and the
820 christine helliwell & barry hindess