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Quoted on marriage in The Guardian
Rose Hackman quotes me in a long-form piece on marriage in The Guardian. You can read the whole article here. ” “Married men gained rights over women’s bodies, property and children,” confirms Clare Chambers, a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Cambridge who wrote a book arguing for an end to state-recognized marriage. “Traditionally [marriage] has maintained legal gender inequality, and it has done so to the benefit of men.” “Chambers concedes that many formal inequalities tied to marriage have been denounced and revoked. Marital rape was outlawed in the UK in 1991 and in the US in 1993 – hard to believe there was ever an exemption –…
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Against Marriage wins APSA’s David Easton Award
I am delighted and honoured to learn that Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State has won the 2018 David Easton Award of the American Political Science Association (APSA). APSA say: “The David Easton Award is given for a book that broadens the horizons of contemporary political science by engaging issues of philosophical significance in political life through any of a variety of approaches in the social sciences and humanities.” The citation for the Award is as follows: “Clare Chambers’ Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State and Barbara Arneil’s Domestic Colonies: The Turn Inward to Colony won recognition from our committee because these two books…
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Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State
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Danny Reviews Against Marriage
You can read the review here. “I found Chambers persuasive: Against Marriage compelled me to rethink some of my ideas on the subject and brought much greater precision to others. And even those who disagree with much more of it will have to engage with it, as an integrated and reasonably comprehensive analysis of how the state should approach marriage.”
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Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State
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The American Conservative on Against Marriage
They don’t like it. See here. Note that the article does not always read the argument of the book accurately.
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Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State
- all posts on culture and religion, all posts on liberalism, all posts on the body and beauty, liberalism, multiculturalism and religion, the body
Reasonable Disagreement and the Neutralist Dilemma
Chambers, Clare, “Reasonable Disagreement and the Neutralist Dilemma: Abortion and circumcision in Matthew Kramer’s Liberalism with Excellence” in The American Journal of Jurisprudence (May 2018). You can read the paper here. Abstract: This paper starts by investigating the idea of reasonable disagreement. It then considers Matthew Kramer’s argument that there is no neutral solution available to the disagreement over abortion. The paper argues that Kramer’s account has wider application, and identifies a neutralist dilemma. The neutralist dilemma applies when, of two policy options available to the state, one is unreasonable. It follows that the state should enact only the reasonable policy. However, in a neutralist dilemma the fact of reasonable disagreement due to the…
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Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice
- Against Marriage, all posts on feminism, all posts on liberalism, all posts on marriage, media, read
Fabian Society on Against Marriage
Andrew Harrop, General Secretary of the Fabian Society, reviewed Against Marriage in Fabian Review, May 2018. You can read the full review here. “Marriage makes me uncomfortable, whether the reason is political, historical, cultural or aesthetic. No matter how many married couples I see living modern equal relationships, for me, the whole concept is tainted by its patriarchal past. But I say ‘for me’ with good reason, as I have dozens of friends and comrades who disagree. This is a fault-line issue that divides socialists and feminists amongst themselves. In Against Marriage, Clare Chambers makes the case for why egalitarians and liberals should reject marriage. It is political philosophy at its…
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Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State
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Against Marriage reviewed in Political Theory
Against Marriage is reviewed by Tamara Metz, author of Untying the Knot, in Political Theory. You can read the full review here. An excerpt follows. “This is a distinct and important contribution to an increasingly crowded field of liberal political philosophy on marriage and the state and, perhaps most interestingly, to our understanding of the liberal project broadly. … Where other liberals seek more vigorously to balance competing demands of freedom and equality, or emphasize freedom, Chambers hews rigorously to an egalitarian position. You won’t find another book that does this so effectively or by way of such productive engagement with existing scholarship. Laying out the egalitarian case in such clear and compelling terms, Chambers highlights the…
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Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State
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Against Marriage on JHIB blog
My Aeon article “Against Marriage” was recommended by the Journal for the History of Ideas Blog here.
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Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State
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Books
I have written three books: Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State (Oxford University Press, 2017); Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice (Penn State University Press, 2008) and, with Phil Parvin, Teach Yourself Political Philosophy: A Complete Introduction (Hodder, 2013). For more information about each book, including contents and reviews, click the links in the menu above.
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Times of India on Against Marriage
The Times of India featured my Aeon article “Against Marriage” on 22 April 2018. You can read the coverage here.
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Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State
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Against Marriage at Aeon
I have a 3,300 word essay on “Against Marriage” at Aeon magazine. You can read the article here.
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Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State
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Neutrality at University of Edinburgh
I presented my paper “Reasonable disagreement and the neutralist dilemma: Abortion and circumcision in Matthew Kramer’s Liberalism with Excellence” at the University of Edinburgh in March 2018. You can read their account of the session on the Just World Institute blog here.
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Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice
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Edinburgh Just World Institute blog
The University of Edinburgh Just World Institute blogged about my paper “Reasonable disagreement and the neutralist dilemma: Abortion and circumcision in Matthew Kramer’s Liberalism with Excellence”. You can read the blog here.
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Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice
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Against Marriage at APT books
Against Marriage is featured in the New Books By Members section of the US Association for Political Theory. You can see the page here.
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Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State
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Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit
On 16 April I’ll be doing an AMA – Ask Me Anything! – for Reddit Philosophy. You can join in the fun at 12noon EST / 5pm GMT. Read the discussion here.
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Gli Stati Generali on the “Me Too” movement
I was interviewed by Valentina Saini for her piece “È L’ALBA DI UN’INTERNAZIONALE FEMMINISTA?” on the Italian news site Gli Stati Generali. You can read the piece, in Italian, here. For those who don’t speak Italian I don’t have a translation of the full article, but here are the answers I gave to Valentina Saini’s questions. VS: In many countries and regions of the world, sexual harassment in the form of a “pat” on a woman’s “butt”, for example, is seen as something innocent and harmless, nothing one should be especially offended by – many women think so too. Why is that? Is women’s body still something that does not belong…
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The Reading Lists
Want to know what books I like? You can read an interview with me by Phil Treagus of The Reading Lists blog here. His questions were fascinating to think about and very hard to answer!
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Full list of publications
This page gives a simple list of publications. For more information about each work, including abstracts and clickable links, view publications by theme from the drop-down menu above. * = peer-reviewed Books *Chambers, Clare, Freedom & Equality: Essays on Liberalism and Feminism (Oxford University Press, in press) Chambers, Clare, Intact: The Unmodified Body (Allen Lane / Penguin, 2022). *Chambers, Clare, Brian D. Earp, and Lori Watson (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Sex and Sexuality (Routledge, 2022). * Chambers, Clare, Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State (Oxford University Press, 2017). 226 pages. Winner of the 2018 David Easton Award of the American Political Science Association (APSA). Chambers, Clare…
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Cosmetic procedures: ethical issues
Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2017 This report was written by the Working Party on Cosmetic Procedures, of which I am a member. There has been increasing demand for invasive cosmetic procedures in the UK, prompting questions about potential risks to users and the lack of regulation and professional standards in this area. This report explores ethical issues in cosmetic procedures with a particular focus on the role and responsibilities of health and scientific professionals and others in responding to demand for invasive non-reconstructive procedures that aim to enhance or normalise appearance. It engages in detailed ethical analysis and makes recommendations affecting all parts of the sector. You can read the report…
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Against Marriage on BMJ blog
Richard Smith writes in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) blog that he is persuaded by the arguments of Against Marriage. You can read the full article here. “Chambers is against marriage on the grounds of equality and liberty. Women are not equal with men within marriage, and the state by attaching a bundle of rights and duties to marriage creates a hierarchy of relationships with marriage at the top, making unmarried couples and single people inferior. Much of the population, including my wife and I, thinks that “common law wives” have similar rights to married women, but in fact they have none. By bundling rights and duties together, marriage (and…
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Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State
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The Politics of Marriage at LSE Forum
Marriage is an odd mix of sex, religion, and politics. Our speakers ask what marriage is and whether there is there any distinctive moral value in it. Should the state promote it? Is it possible to have an ‘equal’ marriage, or is marriage fundamentally an oppressive institution? Should marriage be rejected in favour of civil partnerships, or something else, or perhaps nothing else? You can watch a video of the event and listen to the podcast here. Speakers Clare Chambers Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Cambridge Sir Paul Coleridge Former high court judge and Chairman, The Marriage Foundation Peter Tatchell Activist and Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation Chair Sarah…
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Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State
- all posts on culture and religion, all posts on feminism, all posts on the body and beauty, media, watch
Dress codes at work for the BBC
Can your employer demand that you go to work naked? In this short video and article for the BBC I tell David Edmonds why not.
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Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice
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Seminar in Contemporary Political Thought
Seminar in Contemporary Political Thought Convened by Dr Clare Chambers (Philosophy) and Dr Duncan Bell (POLIS) University of Cambridge Michaelmas Term 2017 All sessions are held on Fridays at 1 – 2.30pm in the Bawden Room of Jesus College. This is in West Court, which can be accessed either via the main entrance of Jesus College or directly from Jesus Lane. Refreshments will be served at the close of formal proceedings. There are no precirculated papers and all are welcome. 6 Oct: Tom Shakespeare, University of East Anglia: “The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: making use of the stilts?” 20 Oct: Avia Pasternak and Jeff Howard,…
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Blackwells Festival of Philosophy
I’ll be launching and speaking about Against Marriage at Blackwell’s bookshop, Oxford on 16th November 2017, as part of the Oxford University Press Festival of Philosophy. Register for the event here.
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Freedom & Equality: Essays on Liberalism and Feminism
My next book is in press with Oxford University Press. Freedom & Equality investigates the contours of feminist liberalism: a philosophical approach that is appealing but elusive. Its hallmark is a liberalism that prioritises equality and individual autonomy, while offering a rigorous critique of using individuals’ choices as the measure of justice. Liberalism without feminism prioritises individual choice, a strategy that has played a crucial role in the liberal defence of freedom against authoritarianism and conformity. However, as feminism shows, relying on individual choice is insufficient to render an outcome just, because people often choose things that harm or disadvantage themselves. From beauty norms to the gendered division of labour,…
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Royal Society of Medicine
I spoke on “The ethics of cosmetic surgery” at the Royal Society of Medicine event “Changing the image of cosmetic surgery: patients before profit” in October 2017. Find details here.
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Alumni Festival
I am speaking on “Should the State Recognise Marriage?” at the University of Cambridge Alumni Festival on 22nd September 2017. Details are here.
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Joint Session 2017
I’m a Symposiast at the 2017 Joint Sessions of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association in Edinburgh. My paper is called “Ideology and Normativity” and it responds to Sally Haslanger. You can find details here and read my paper here.
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Association for Social and Political Philosophy
I was a keynote speaker for the Annual Conference of the ASPP at the University of Sheffield in June 2017, talking about my book Against Marriage. You can find details of the conference here.
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Freedom and Autonomy Conference
I am giving the keynote lecture at the conference on Freedom and Autonomy at Birkbeck College, University of London in June 2017. My lecture is titled “Marriage and Freedom.”
