scholarly journals Composing an “Agon” and “Lettering a Public”: Democracy Between Binaries?

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Democratic Education ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Classroom Experiment ◽  
Neoliberal Ideology

In response to ongoing expansion of neoliberal ideology in democratic education, this essay details a classroom experiment that attempts to “redo,” or “recraft” democracy. Recrafting democracy, in this context, takes shape in active efforts to compose an agonistic public sphere through a specific kind of “lettering a public.” As described, intentionally inefficient student efforts to “care-fully” compose, revise, and mail democratic letters allowed a more reciprocal and felt form of democratic deliberation to unfold. The essay describes the “Dear Demos” course assignment and articulates how the experiment in doing democracy might work to contest neoliberal notions of efficient, technocratic models of self-governance.

Counsel, Collegiality, and Democracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 121-146
Author(s):  
Mogens Lærke
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Democratic Deliberation

This chapter studies the first of two remedies that Spinoza proposes against prejudice, deceit, and flattery. This first remedy consists in reform of the institutions of political counsel. Denouncing the traditional courtly systems of privy counselors, he envisages a broader public sphere of free philosophizing as a source of political advice for the sovereign powers. This conception forms the background for a discussion of absolutism, political resistance, and democratic deliberation and collegiality. Finally, in conclusion, the chapter addresses Spinoza’s conception of the “best citizens” in a free republic, comparing the figure with Caspar Barlaeus’s “wise merchants.”

Inadequate for democracy: How (not) to distribute education

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 343-365
Author(s):  
Alexandra Oprea
Keyword(s):  
Education Policy ◽  
Primary Education ◽  
Democratic Education ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Educational Achievements ◽  
Widespread Agreement ◽  
The Us ◽  
Democratic Equality

There is widespread agreement among philosophers and legal scholars that the distribution of educational resources in the US is unjust, but little agreement about why. An increasingly prominent view posits a sufficientarian standard based on the requirements of democratic citizenship. This view, which I refer to as democratic sufficientarianism, argues that inequalities in educational resources or opportunities above the threshold required for democratic citizenship are morally unobjectionable if and only if all children are provided with an education sufficient to meet those demands. In the article, I argue that democratic sufficientarianism faces a democratic education dilemma. Either the philosopher specifies a precise and demanding threshold with antidemocratic implications, or she insists upon democratic equality irrespective of educational achievements, thereby undercutting the search for anything but a minimal educational threshold. As an alternative, I defend a new sufficientarian standard that is reflexive, education-specific, and democracy-compatible. This reflexive sufficientarian standard can act as a guide to democratic deliberation about education policy. The article also sketches possibilities for litigation on behalf of children who have received insufficient primary education.

Blogs as a Source of Democratic Deliberation

2012 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara K. Kaye ◽  
Thomas J. Johnson ◽  
Peter Muhlberger
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Efficacy ◽  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political Partisanship ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Ideological Perspective ◽  
The Government ◽  
Negative Attributes

This chapter examines the deliberative potential of blogs and blog users. It investigates whether heavy reliance on blogs promotes positive characteristics—political efficacy, political interest, and political involvement—needed to foster democratic deliberation, or whether it leads to negative attributes—low trust, selective exposure, and political partisanship—that hinder democratic deliberation. Results show that unlike those who rarely rely on blogs, heavily dependent individuals are more involved in current events and are more trusting of the government, but they are also more likely to practice selective exposure by reading ideologically consistent blogs. Further, heavy reliance predicts involvement and selective exposure. The deliberative potential of blogs is boosted by users’ involvement in political issues but impeded by their propensity to seek out blogs that contain agreeable information. Instead of evolving into a public sphere, blogs may be becoming issue-oriented zones in which deliberation is limited to an ideological perspective.

Democracy and public communication: A Durkheimian lens on Habermas

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-33
Author(s):  
Atle Møen
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Communicative Rationality ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Rational Discourse ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Way

The article proposes a comparison of Durkheim’s and Habermas’s views about public communication and democratic deliberation. They seem to share an understanding that democratic deliberation requires support from the public sphere. Nonetheless, Durkheim believed that rational public communication must gain strength from ceremonies, whereas Habermas essentially focused on communicative rationality and rational discourse within the public sphere. The article thus asks whether Habermas’s theory of rational discourse implies a rationalist fallacy, largely because he offers no plausible explanation of the way in which social actors are emotionally motivated to participate in rational discourses, rather than resorting to violence and manipulation. Could Durkheim’s view about public communication, and its need to gather strength from collective ceremonies and collective sentiments, resolve this theoretical conundrum in that Durkheim’s view is complementary to Habermas’s?

Five theses on technoliberalism and the networked public sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damien Smith Pfister ◽  
Misti Yang
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Technical Expertise ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Technology Firms ◽  
Networked Public Sphere ◽  
Change Culture ◽  
Computational Technology

How have digital technologies affected the market logics and economization that constitute the underlying governing rationality of neoliberalism? This essay unfurls five theses that further develop the concept of technoliberalism, the intensification of neoliberalism through computational technology, in the context of the networked public sphere: (1) technoliberalism names the dominant governing rationality in cultures where digital computation technology suffuses everyday life; (2) technoliberalism replaces public, democratically accountable power with the private, technical expertise of digital technology firms; (3) technoliberalism focuses on contriving technical systems to change culture at the expense of democratic argument and deliberation; (4) technoliberalism intensifies the commodification of attention, resulting in undemocratic forms of “noopower”; and (5) technoliberalism standardizes subjectivities through grammatization. Each thesis complicates the prospects of democratic deliberation in the networked public sphere and articulates lines of communication research necessary for keeping democratic practices vibrant.

Democratic Education at 30: An interview with Dr. Amy Gutmann

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitja Sardoc
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
Democratic Education ◽  
University Of Pennsylvania ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
Education Today ◽  
Amy Gutmann ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
The University

In this interview, Dr. Amy Gutmann discusses the legacy of her book Democratic Education after 30 years since it was first published. After presenting some of the main ideas from Democratic Education, Dr. Gutmann emphasises the importance of both democratic education and democratic deliberation as central elements of public education in a plurally diverse polity. She then discusses a range of other educational issues including access to education as key to individual opportunity and social development (from both personal and scholarly perspectives) and the civic minimum goals of education in a democracy. Throughout the interview, Dr. Gutmann also presents a number of examples of how ideas and ideals central to her teaching and scholarship have been put into practice during her tenure as President of the University of Pennsylvania. The interview concludes with a reflection on some of the most pressing challenges facing education today.

The evolution of the debate

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-74
Author(s):  
Donatella della Porta ◽  
Pietro Castelli Gattinara ◽  
Konstantinos Eleftheriadis ◽  
Andrea Felicetti
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Critical Juncture ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Charlie Hebdo

Chapter 3 introduces time into the picture, exploring how and to what extent a discursive critical juncture triggered by the Charlie Hebdo attacks changed the nature of public discourse, the tone used to address the different dimensions of conflict embedded in the controversy, and the way in which political actors engaged in the debate. By looking at public debates over time, the chapter addresses the potential of critical junctures to change actors’ perspectives on contentious issues and to transform interactions among collective actors. The analysis focuses on three main characteristics of public debates: the type of actors that have access to the public sphere, the issues that they discuss, and the deliberative quality of the debate. The findings indicate that the critical juncture condensed but also neutralized public debates, in that it increased attention but also reduced political conflict over the issues associated with Charlie Hebdo—at least in the mass-media public sphere. In addition, the debate, which hardly met minimum standards of democratic deliberation, further deteriorated during the critical juncture.

Speaking Back to the Neoliberal Agenda for Higher Education

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 327-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spoma Jovanovic
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Democratic Education ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Education ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Critical Engagement

The deliberate and well-crafted creep of neoliberalism into institutions of higher education has consequences for faculty that are likewise felt by students, families, and society at large. This article provides an autoethnographic glimpse at how democratic education is being forsaken to for-profit activities and how faculty at one campus pushed back against their own administration in response. I conclude with some suggestions for how to communicate and organize to keep hope alive for higher education to remain a vibrant public sphere where critical engagement can flourish.

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