Democratic Subjects
Author: Patrick Joyce
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1994-10-06
Total Pages: 260
ISBN-13: 9780521448024
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A controversial study of class and social identity in nineteenth-century England.
Author: Patrick Joyce
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1994-10-06
Total Pages: 260
ISBN-13: 9780521448024
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A controversial study of class and social identity in nineteenth-century England.
Author: Ella Myers
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2013-02-26
Total Pages: 227
ISBN-13: 0822353997
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →What is the spirit that animates collective action? What is the ethos of democracy? Worldly Ethics offers a powerful and original response to these questions, arguing that associative democratic politics, in which citizens join together and struggle to shape shared conditions, requires a world-centered ethos. This distinctive ethos, Ella Myers shows, involves care for "worldly things," which are the common and contentious objects of concern around which democratic actors mobilize. In articulating the meaning of worldly ethics, she reveals the limits of previous modes of ethics, including Michel Foucault's therapeutic model, based on a "care of the self," and Emmanuel Levinas's charitable model, based on care for the Other. Myers contends that these approaches occlude the worldly character of political life and are therefore unlikely to inspire and support collective democratic activity. The alternative ethics she proposes is informed by Hannah Arendt's notion of amor mundi, or love of the world, and it focuses on the ways democratic actors align around issues, goals, or things in the world, practicing collaborative care for them. Myers sees worldly ethics as a resource that can inspire and motivate ordinary citizens to participate in democratic politics, and the book highlights civic organizations that already embody its principles.
Author: Anna S. Ochoa-Becker
Publisher: IAP
Published: 2006-12-01
Total Pages: 362
ISBN-13: 1607525836
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In the first edition of this book published in 1988, Shirley Engle and I offered a broader and more democratic curriculum as an alternative to the persistent back-to-the-basics rhetoric of the ‘70s and ‘80s. This curriculum urged attention to democratic practices and curricula in the school if we wanted to improve the quality of citizen participation and strengthen this democracy. School practices during that period reflected a much lower priority for social studies. Fewer social studies offerings, fewer credits required for graduation and in many cases, the job descriptions of social studies curriculum coordinators were transformed by changing their roles to general curriculum consultants. The mentality that prevailed in the nation’s schools was “back to the basics” and the basics never included or even considered the importance of heightening the education of citizens. We certainly agree that citizens must be able to read, write and calculate but these abilities are not sufficient for effective citizenship in a democracy. This version of the original work appears at a time when young citizens, teachers and schools find themselves deluged by a proliferation of curriculum standards and concomitant mandatory testing. In the ‘90s, virtually all subject areas including United States history, geography, economic and civics developed curriculum standards, many funded by the federal government. Subsequently, the National Council for the Social Studies issued the Social Studies Curriculum Standards that received no federal support. Accountability, captured in the No Child Left Behind Act passed by Congress, has become a powerful, political imperative that has a substantial and disturbing influence on the curriculum, teaching and learning in the first decade of the 21st century.
Author: Barbara Cruikshank
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2019-06-30
Total Pages: 164
ISBN-13: 1501733915
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →How do liberal democracies produce citizens who are capable of governing themselves? In considering this question, Barbara Cruikshank rethinks central topics in political theory, including the relationship between welfare and citizenship, democracy and despotism, and subjectivity and subjection. Drawing on theories of power and the creation of subjects, Cruikshank argues that individuals in a democracy are made into self-governing citizens through the small-scale and everyday practices of voluntary associations, reform movements, and social service programs. She argues that our empowerment is a measure of our subjection rather than of our autonomy from power. Through a close examination of several contemporary American "technologies of citizenship"—from welfare rights struggles to philanthropic self-help schemes to the organized promotion of self-esteem awareness—she demonstrates how social mobilization reshapes the political in ways largely unrecognized in democratic theory. Although the impact of a given reform movement may be minor, the techniques it develops for creating citizens far extend the reach of govermental authority. Combining a detailed knowledge of social policy and practice with insights from poststructural and feminist theory, The Will to Empower shows how democratic citizens and the political are continually recreated.
Author: Ronald J. Daniels
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 2021-10-05
Total Pages: 337
ISBN-13: 1421442698
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Introduction -- American dreams : access, mobility, fairness -- Free minds : educating democratic citizens -- Hard facts : knowledge creation and checking power -- Purposeful pluralism : dialogue across difference on campus -- Conclusion.
Author: Carl Disalvo
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2022-02-08
Total Pages: 235
ISBN-13: 0262368951
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Through practices of collaborative imagination and making, or "doing design otherwise,” design experiments can contribute to keeping local democracies vibrant. In this counterpoint to the grand narratives of design punditry, Carl DiSalvo presents what he calls “doing design otherwise.” Arguing that democracy requires constant renewal and care, he shows how designers can supply novel contributions to local democracy by drawing together theory and practice, making and reflection. The relentless pursuit of innovation, uncritical embrace of the new and novel, and treatment of all things as design problems, says DiSalvo, can lead to cultural imperialism. In Design as Democratic Inquiry, he recounts a series of projects that exemplify engaged design in practice. These experiments in practice-based research are grounded in collaborations with communities and institutions. The projects DiSalvo describes took place from 2014 to 2019 in Atlanta. Rather than presume that government, industry—or academia—should determine the outcome, the designers began with the recognition that the residents and local organizations were already creative and resourceful. DiSalvo uses the projects to show how design might work as a mode of inquiry. Resisting heroic stories of design and innovation, he argues for embracing design as fragile, contingent, partial, and compromised. In particular, he explores how design might be leveraged to facilitate a more diverse civic imagination. A fundamental tenet of design is that the world is made, and therefore it could be made differently. A key concept is that democracy requires constant renewal and care. Thus, designing becomes a way to care, together, for our collective future.
Author: Christopher Thornhill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2021-01-28
Total Pages: 281
ISBN-13: 1108853374
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Democratic Crisis and Global Constitutional Law explains the current weakness of democratic polities by examining antinomies in constitutional democracy and its theoretical foundations. This book argues that democracy is usually analysed in a theoretical lens that is not adequately sensitive to its historical origins. The author proposes a new sociological framework for understanding democracy and its constitutional preconditions, stressing the linkage between classical patterns of democratic citizenship and military processes and arguing that democratic stability at the national level relies on the formation of robust normative systems at the international level. On this basis, he argues that democracy is frequently exposed to crisis because the normative terms in which it is promoted and justified tend to simplify its nature. These terms create a legitimising space in which anti-democratic movements, typically with a populist emphasis, can take shape and flourish.
Author: Roland Axtmann
Publisher: SAGE
Published: 2003-03-06
Total Pages: 356
ISBN-13: 9780761971832
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This textbook is designed for first-time students of politics. It provides an ideal introduction and survey to the key themes and issues central to the study of democratic politics today. The text is structured around three major parts: concepts, institutions and political behaviour; and ideologies and movements. Within each section a series of short and accessible chapters serve to both introduce the key ideas, institutional forms and ideological conflicts central to the study of democratic politics and provide a platform for further, in-depth studies. Each chapter contains a 'bullet-point' summary, a guide to further reading, and a set of questions for tutorial discussion. Designed and written for an undergraduate readership, Understanding Democratic Politics: An Introduction will become an essential guide and companion to all students of politics throughout their university degree.
Author: Robert A. Dahl
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1956
Total Pages: 168
ISBN-13: 9780226134260
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Robert Dahl's Preface helped launch democratic theory fifty years ago as a new area of study in political science, and it remains the standard introduction to the field. Exploring problems that had been left unsolved by traditional thought on democracy, Dahl here examines two influential models--the Madisonian, which represents prevailing American doctrine, and its recurring challenger, populist theory--arguing that they do not accurately portray how modern democracies operate. He then constructs a model more consistent with how contemporary democracies actually function, and, in doing so, develops some original views of popular sovereignty and the American constitutional system.
Author: Isaac D. Balbus
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-04-08
Total Pages: 512
ISBN-13: 1135838895
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This introduction to the study of politics explores the multiple meanings of "governance" as well as the several senses of what it means to be a "subject." It takes the reader on a journey through and across the domains of law and institutions, markets and power, and culture and identity, and shows how the understanding of any one of these domains demands an understanding of them all. The path through these related regions is marked by regular encounters with leading and competing thinkers—from the expected, such as James Madison, Robert Dahl, Michel Foucault, and Adam Smith, to the unexpected, such as Joseph Raz, Lisa Disch, Doug Henwood, and Joan Scott—that encourage the reader to evaluate their arguments for their internal coherence and explanatory power. Governing Subjects is at once a holistic and critical introduction to the study of politics.