Editor George McKay claims that popular protest today is characterized by a culture of immediacy and direct action. Gathered here is a collection of in-depth and reflective pieces by activists and other key figures in Britain's DiY culture. From the environmentalist to the video activist, the raver to the road protester, the neo-pagan to the anarcho-capitalist, Britain's youth forge a new kind of politics. 16 photos.
How social media and DIY communities have enabled new forms of political participation that emphasize doing and making rather than passive consumption. Today, DIY—do-it-yourself—describes more than self-taught carpentry. Social media enables DIY citizens to organize and protest in new ways (as in Egypt's “Twitter revolution” of 2011) and to repurpose corporate content (or create new user-generated content) in order to offer political counternarratives. This book examines the usefulness and limits of DIY citizenship, exploring the diverse forms of political participation and “critical making” that have emerged in recent years. The authors and artists in this collection describe DIY citizens whose activities range from activist fan blogging and video production to knitting and the creation of community gardens. Contributors examine DIY activism, describing new modes of civic engagement that include Harry Potter fan activism and the activities of the Yes Men. They consider DIY making in learning, culture, hacking, and the arts, including do-it-yourself media production and collaborative documentary making. They discuss DIY and design and how citizens can unlock the black box of technological infrastructures to engage and innovate open and participatory critical making. And they explore DIY and media, describing activists' efforts to remake and reimagine media and the public sphere. As these chapters make clear, DIY is characterized by its emphasis on “doing” and making rather than passive consumption. DIY citizens assume active roles as interventionists, makers, hackers, modders, and tinkerers, in pursuit of new forms of engaged and participatory democracy. Contributors Mike Ananny, Chris Atton, Alexandra Bal, Megan Boler, Catherine Burwell, Red Chidgey, Andrew Clement, Negin Dahya, Suzanne de Castell, Carl DiSalvo, Kevin Driscoll, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Joseph Ferenbok, Stephanie Fisher, Miki Foster, Stephen Gilbert, Henry Jenkins, Jennifer Jenson, Yasmin B. Kafai, Ann Light, Steve Mann, Joel McKim, Brenda McPhail, Owen McSwiney, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Graham Meikle, Emily Rose Michaud, Kate Milberry, Michael Murphy, Jason Nolan, Kate Orton-Johnson, Kylie A. Peppler, David J. Phillips, Karen Pollock, Matt Ratto, Ian Reilly, Rosa Reitsamer, Mandy Rose, Daniela K. Rosner, Yukari Seko, Karen Louise Smith, Lana Swartz, Alex Tichine, Jennette Weber, Elke Zobl
The emergence of social media in the early 21st century promised to facilitate new "DIY" cultural approaches, emphasizing participation and democratization. However, in recent years these platforms have been criticized as domineering and exploitative. For DIY musicians in scenes with lengthy histories of cultural resistance, is social media a powerful emancipatory and democratizing tool, or a new corporate antagonist to be resisted? DIY Music explores the significant challenges faced by artists navigating this fraught cultural landscape. How do anti-commercial musicians operate in the competitive, attention-seeking world of social media? How do they deal with a new abundance of data and metrics? How do they present their activity as "cultural resistance"? This book shows that a platform-enabled DIY approach is now the norm for a wide array of cultural practitioners; this "DIY-as-default" landscape threatens to depoliticize the call to "do-it-yourself."
Protracted economic crises, accelerating inequalities, and increased resource scarcity present significant challenges for the majority of Africa's urban population. Limited state capacity and widespread infrastructure deficiencies common in cities across the continent often require residents to draw on their own resources, knowledge, and expertise to resolve these life and livelihood dilemmas. DIY Urbanism in Africa investigates these practices. It develops a theoretical framework through which to analyze them, and it presents a series of case studies to demonstrate how residents invent new DIY tactics and strategies in response to security, place-making, or economic problems. This book offers a timely critical intervention into literatures on urban development and politics in Africa. It is valuable to students, policymakers, and urban practitioners keen to understand the mechanisms and political implications of widespread dynamics now shaping Africa's expanding urban environments.
Authenticity is much sought after; being described as inauthentic is an insult or an embarrassment. Being authentic suggests that a given behaviour or performance is reflective of a ‘trueness’ or ‘genuineness’ to one’s identity. From a social science perspective there is sometimes scepticism expressed about the historical faithfulness of purported behaviours - such as when something is referred to as an ‘invented’ tradition. However, what can be overlooked in such criticisms is an array of sociological and existential dynamics that are at play when authenticity is striven for. Likewise able to be overlooked is where the location of that authenticity is ostensibly founded; sometimes the trueness of the behaviour is located in local traditions that reach back into time immemorial, sometimes in a universal human and shared sameness, and sometimes with regard to a global phenomenon. Punks, Monks and Politics explores the idea of authenticity as enacted in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. The collective contributions reveal the sometimes contradictory ways in which the dynamics of authenticity – its pursuit, its deployment, its politics – play out in very different contexts. Whether authenticity inheres in the local or the global, amongst the majority or within a subculture, on the outside of or within people, or in the past or the present, authenticity is nevertheless valued.
At a time when the legitimacy of democracies is in question, calls to improve the quality of public debate and deliberative democracy are sweeping the social sciences. Yet, real deliberation lies far from the deliberative ideal. Theorists have argued that linguistic and cultural differences foster inequality and impede democratic deliberation. In this empirical study, the author presents the collective practices of political translation, which help multilingual and culturally diverse groups work together more democratically than homogeneous groups. Political translation, distinct from linguistic translation, is a set of disruptive and communicative practices developed by activists and grassroots community organizers in order to address inequities hindering democratic deliberation and to entreat powerful groups to work together more inclusively with disempowered groups. Based on ten years of fieldwork, Political Translation provides the first systematic comparative study of deliberation under conditions of linguistic difference and cultural misunderstandings.
The famed political advisor to Uber, FanDuel, Lemonade, Tesla and other startups reveals what really happens at the intersection of politics, tech and business Most new startups today are in highly regulated industries with strong incumbents - transportation, hotels, drones, energy, gaming, education, health care, cannabis, finance, liquor, insurance. The more startups try to snatch a piece of the establishment's pie, the more they risk running into a political wall. That's where Bradley Tusk comes in. Described as "Silicon Valley's Political Savior" (Fast Company) "Uber's Political Genius" (Vanity Fair) and "Silicon Valley's Favorite Fixer" (TechCrunch) Tusk deploys the skills and knowledge he developed working with Chuck Schumer, Michael Bloomberg, Rod Blagojevich, and other political and business legends to help startups fight back. This book goes behind the scenes on how he helped stop the taxi industry from killing Uber in its infancy, how he held insurance companies at bay while startup Lemonade launched in each state, and how he helped online sports betting sites FanDuel and Draft Kings escape the regulatory death grip casinos tried to put on them. As Tusk writes, "Every new company is essentially a tech startup. And when you disrupt someone in any industry, they don't say thank you. They punch you in the nose. These are the lessons startups need to learn to punch back and survive the clutches of politics." Combining a firsthand glimpse behind the curtain with tangible advice for how any new venture can play the political game, THE FIXER is a must-read for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Debates about multi-level governance have led to a profound restructuring of regional and local government. The second level of local government is under review in most European countries, with the aim to strengthen the institutional capacity of municipalities or to develop appropriate institutional structures for governing fragmented urban areas. This book provides a thematic and cross-national analysis of the key actors in local government that form the crucial components of effective and democratic policy making. Focussing on the second tier of local government, it examines new empirical data on councillors from this level of government in 15 European countries and integrates important variables such as party politics, notions of democracy, finance, multi-level settings. Divided into five parts, it addresses: Attitudes of county/provincial councillors towards administrative and territorial reforms; Their role perceptions and role behaviour; Their political orientation; Actor constellations and governance arrangements; Political socialization and recruitment, professionalization and career patterns of county/provincial councillors. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of local government, urban studies, regional studies, political science, sociology and geography.
Over the last 30 years referendums have played an increasingly important role in determining government policy. Recent high profile referendums in Scotland, Catalonia and Ukraine have continued the movement towards independence referendums following decolonization and the end of the Cold War. The Greek bailout referendum and Britain’s vote on membership of the EU reflect a tradition of European states giving their people a direct say in the transfer of sovereign powers to the European Union seen through the ratification of key treaties such as Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon. This Routledge Handbook covers key aspects and issues of direct democracy and referendums throughout the world including: •their history; •when, why, where, how and on which issues referendums are held; •why some referendums are more democratic than others; •how referendums are won; •whether they produce good policies; •if referendums increase participation and improve the quality of representative democracies; •do referendums increase trust in democracy and the political actors; •the impact of new technology on the possibilities, methods and frequency of direct public political participation; •how they should be regulated. Covering other related areas such as recall, citizen juries and random selection, this compendium is an indispensable guide to referendums and the workings of modern democracy.
Focusing on the semiotics, poetics, and rhetoric of album covers, Coverscaping gives a serious study of this neglected art form. Working from the assumption that record sleeves may be found to represent a visual genre in its own right, the essays in this book engage in various ways with the analysis of what one might call the pictorial component of recorded music. The contributions, from scholars in many different fields, run the whole gamut from close readings of individual covers to more theoretical or philosophical explorations of the aesthetic nature and artistic value of album covers.
