In an historically unprecedented way, democracy is now increasingly seen as a universal model of legitimate rule. This work addresses the key question: How can democracy be understood in theory and in practice?.
Terry Tempest Williams presents a sharp-edged perspective on the ethics and politics of place, spiritual democracy, and the responsibilities of citizen engagement. By turns elegiac, inspiring, and passionate, The Open Space of Democracy offers a fresh perspective on the critical questions of our time.
In an online, interconnected world, democracy is increasingly made up of wikis and blogs, pokes and tweets. Citizens have become accidental journalists thanks to their handheld devices, politicians are increasingly working online, and the traditional sites of democracy - assemblies, public galleries, and plazas - are becoming less and less relevant with every new technology. And yet, this book argues, such views are leading us to confuse the medium with the message, focusing on electronic transmission when often what cyber citizens transmit is pictures and narratives of real democratic action in physical space. Democratic citizens are embodied, take up space, battle over access to physical resources, and perform democracy on physical stages at least as much as they engage with ideas in virtual space. Combining conceptual analysis with interviews and observation in capital cities on every continent, John Parkinson argues that democracy requires physical public space; that some kinds of space are better for performing some democratic roles than others; and that some of the most valuable kinds of space are under attack in developed democracies. He argues that accidental publics like shoppers and lunchtime crowds are increasingly valued over purposive, active publics, over citizens with a point to make or an argument to listen to. This can be seen not just in the way that traditional protest is regulated, but in the ways that ordinary city streets and parks are managed, even in the design of such quintessentially democratic spaces as legislative assemblies. The book offers an alternative vision for democratic public space, and evaluates 11 cities - from London to Tokyo - against that ideal.
Published in Association with and We live in divisive and polarizing times, often remaining in comfortable social bubbles and experiencing few genuine interactions with people who are different or with whom we disagree. Stepping out and turning to one another is difficult but necessary. For our democracy to thrive at a time when we face wicked problems that involve tough trade-offs it is vital that all citizens participate fully in the process. We need to learn to listen, think, and act with others to solve public problems. This collaborative task begins with creating space for democracy. This book provides a guide for doing so on campus through deliberation and dialogue.At the most basic level, this book describes collaborative and relational work to engage with others and co-create meaning. Specifically, dialogue and deliberation are processes in which a diverse group of people moves toward making a collective decision on a difficult public issue.This primer offers a blueprint for achieving the civic mission of higher education by incorporating dialogue and deliberation into learning at colleges and universities. It opens by providing a conceptual framework, with leading voices in the dialogue and deliberation field providing insights on issues pertinent to college campuses, from free speech and academic freedom to neutrality and the role of deliberation in civic engagement. Subsequent sections describe a diverse range of methods and approaches used by several organizations that pioneered and sustained deliberative practices; outline some of the many ways in which educators and institutions are using dialogue and deliberation in curricular, co-curricular, and community spaces, including venues such as student centers, academic libraries, and residence halls. All of the chapters, including a Resource Section, provide readers with a starting point for conceptualizing and implementing their own deliberation and dialogue initiatives.This book, intended for all educators who are concerned about democracy, imparts the power and impact of public talk, offers the insights and experiences of leading practitioners, and provides the grounding to adopt or adapt the models in their own settings to create educative spaces and experiences that are humanizing, authentic, and productive. It is an important resource for campus leaders, student affairs practitioners, librarians, and centers of institutional diversity, community engagement, teaching excellence and service-learning, as well as faculty, particularly those in the fields of communication studies, education, and political science.Click here for more information on AAC&U and Campus Compact.
Moving from classical Greece to the present, Public Space and Democracy provides both historical accounts and a comparative analytical framework for understanding public space both as a place and as a product of various media, from speech to the Internet. These essays make a powerful case for thinking of modern technological developments not as the end of public space, but as an opportunity for reframing the idea of the public and of the public space as the locus of power.
The objective of this book is to outline how a radically democratic politics can be reinvigorated in theory and practice through the use of the internet. The author argues that politics in its proper sense can be distinguished from anti-politics by analyzing the configuration of public space, subjectivity, participation, and conflict. Each of these terrains can be configured in a more or less political manner, though the contemporary status quo heavily skews them towards anti-political configuration. Using this understanding of what exactly politics entails, this book considers how the internet can both help and hinder efforts to move each area in a more political direction. By explicitly interpreting contemporary theories of the political in terms of the internet, this analysis avoids the twin traps of both technological determinism and technological cynicism. Raising awareness of what the word ‘politics’ means, the author develops theoretical work by Arendt, Rancière, Žižek and Mouffe to present a clear and coherent view of how in theory, politics can be digitized and alternatively how the internet can be deployed in the service of trulydemocratic politics.
This is a bold new study of the recent emergence of democracy in Latin America. Leonardo Avritzer shows that traditional theories of democratization fall short in explaining this phenomenon. Scholars have long held that the postwar stability of Western Europe reveals that restricted democracy, or "democratic elitism," is the only realistic way to guard against forces such as the mass mobilizations that toppled European democracies after World War I. Avritzer challenges this view. Drawing on the ideas of Jürgen Habermas, he argues that democracy can be far more inclusive and can rely on a sphere of autonomous association and argument by citizens. He makes this argument by showing that democratic collective action has opened up a new "public space" for popular participation in Latin American politics. Unlike many theorists, Avritzer builds his case empirically. He looks at human rights movements in Argentina and Brazil, neighborhood associations in Brazil and Mexico, and election-monitoring initiatives in Mexico. Contending that such participation has not gone far enough, he proposes a way to involve citizens even more directly in policy decisions. For example, he points to experiments in "participatory budgeting" in two Brazilian cities. Ultimately, the concept of such a space beyond the reach of state administration fosters a broader view of democratic possibility, of the cultural transformation that spurred it, and of the tensions that persist, in a region where democracy is both new and different from the Old World models.
This volume takes a global view of the emergence of public protest movements over the last decade, asking whether such movements contribute to the globalization of civil society. Through a variety of studies, organised around the themes of public agency, public norms, public memory and public art, it considers the tendency of political contestations to move beyond national boundaries and create transnational connections. Departing from the approaches of social movements perspectives, it focuses on public space as a site of social "mixity" and opens up a new field for the study of politics and cultural controversies. An analysis of the paradigmatic change in the way in which society is made and politics is conducted, this study of the new enactment of citizenship in public space will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, geography and politics with interests in protest movements and contentious politics, citizenship and the public sphere, and globalization.
A multidisciplinary array of experts explore the issues related to globalisation and democracy. They focus on federalism, multi-cultural societies, the European Union and potential agents for the democratisation of global institutions.
In Cybering Democracy, Diana Saco boldly reconceptualizes the relationship between democratic participation and spatial realities both actual and virtual. She argues that cyberspace must be viewed as a produced social space, one that fruitfully confounds the ordering conventions of our physical spaces.