Community, Solidarity, and Belonging: Levels of Community and Their Normative Significance. By Andrew Mason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 246p. $59.95 cloth, $21.95 paper

Communitarianism has long suffered from vagueness: what is community? What about it, if anything, is necessary or good? What are the boundaries of morally relevant communities? Often those who attend to the claims of community tender these questions with too little rigor. Not so Andrew Mason. His new book has three main purposes: to map the meaning of community, to assess the claims of political community in relation to communities below the level of the state, and to evaluate the claims of political communities with respect to the global community. In addition to a number of rigorous and thoughtful clarifications and a comprehensive overview of recent debates between liberalism and its critics, the book offers arguments of its own which are often more bold than its judicious manner suggests. It deserves careful attention by all who have attempted to sort through the tensions between liberalism and community.