Making Citizens: Rousseau's Political Theory of Culture

Rousseau's theory of the effect of culture on politics is critical to his philosophy. In Making Citizens, Zev M. Trachtenberg takes Rousseau's theory as a model of how considerations of culture can be incorporated into a wider account of political life. He critically evaluates Rousseau's account and finds it inadequate. Using techniques from the theory of collective action to devise a new interpretation of Rousseau's concept of the general will, Trachtenberg identifies the ways culture conditions politics and examines the attitudes individuals can adopt that facilitate or impede social cooperation.