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Sharing Democracy Michaele L. Ferguson (Assistant Professor of Political Science, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Colorado)

Sharing Democracy By Michaele L. Ferguson (Assistant Professor of Political Science, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Colorado)

Summary

Democratic theorists frequently assume that the people must have something in common, or else democracy will fail. This produces an ironically anti-democratic tendency to emphasize the passive possession of commonality. Sharing Democracy counters this tendency with a radical vision of democracy grounded instead in the active exercise of political freedom.

Sharing Democracy Summary

Sharing Democracy by Michaele L. Ferguson (Assistant Professor of Political Science, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Colorado)

It is frequently assumed that the people must have something in common or else democracy will fail. This assumption that democracy requires commonality - such as a shared nationality, a common culture, or consensus on a core set of values - sets theorists and political actors alike on a futile search for what we have in common, and it generates misplaced anxiety when it turns out that this commonality is not forthcoming. In Sharing Democracy, Michaele Ferguson argues that this preoccupation with commonality misdirects our attention toward what we share and away from how we share in democracy. This produces an ironically anti-democratic tendency to emphasize the passive possession of commonality at the expense of promoting the active exercise of political freedom. Ferguson counteracts this tendency by exposing the reasons for the persistent allure of the common. She offers in its stead a radical vision of democracy grounded in political freedom: the capacity of ordinary people to make and remake the world in which they live. This vision of democracy is exemplified in protest marches: cacophonous, unpredictable, and self-authorizing collective enactments of our world-building freedom. Ferguson develops her radical vision of democracy by drawing on Hannah Arendt's account of how we share a world in common with others, Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy of language, and Linda Zerilli's critique of the essentialist/anti-essentialist debates in feminist theory. She juxtaposes critical readings of democratic theorists with readings of authors in related fields, such as Benedict Anderson, Robert Putnam, and Charles Taylor. Her theoretical argument is illustrated and informed by interpretations of political events, including the Arab Spring, the integration of Little Rock High School, debates over Quebec secession, immigrant rights protests in the US in 2006, and the Occupy movement.

About Michaele L. Ferguson (Assistant Professor of Political Science, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Colorado)

Michaele L. Ferguson is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Table of Contents

Introduction: We Are All Egypt ; Chapter One: The Allure of Commonality ; Chapter Two: Sharing the World in Common with Others ; Chapter Three: Imagining the Demos: Sharing Identity in Feminist and Democratic Theory ; Chapter Four: Politicizing the Demos: Sharing Affect as Self-Conscious World-Building ; Chapter Five: Pluralizing the Demos: Sharing Agency and the Dilemma of Democratic Exclusion ; Chapter Six: This is What Democracy Looks Like: Protests as Democratic Imaginary ; Bibliography

Additional information

NLS9780199921607
9780199921607
0199921601
Sharing Democracy by Michaele L. Ferguson (Assistant Professor of Political Science, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Colorado)
New
Paperback
Oxford University Press Inc
2012-10-18
224
N/A
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