scholarly journals Not Monsters After All: How Political Deliberation Can Build Moral Communities Amidst Deep Difference

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Wahl
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
The United States ◽  
Shared Understanding ◽  
Political Dialogue ◽  
Moral Communities ◽  
Collective Decisions ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Political Deliberation ◽  
Hans Georg Gadamer

Political deliberation typically aims to improve the legitimacy of collective decisions. This article proposes a different function for deliberation, which is both more modest but nevertheless critical in public life: the legitimation not of decisions, but of fellow citizens. This outcome is especially important in polarized societies, where what divides citizens is not only differences in conceptions of the good, but also the perception that the other side is not motivated by any good at all. Drawing on the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Charles Taylor as well as on an empirical study of political dialogue between university students after the 2016 election in the United States, I show how a particular form of political dialogue can help interlocuters recognize the conceptions of the good that motivate others’ views. Such learning can help create what Taylor suggests is necessary for diverse democracies: a shared understanding that does not obscure and in fact brings to the fore principled and significant divisions. Such recognition has the potential to diminish support for violence and the disenfranchisement of political opponents.

Situational Breakdowns

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Nassauer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Outcomes ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
Collective Decisions ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Impact

This book provides an account of how and why routine interactions break down and how such situational breakdowns lead to protest violence and other types of surprising social outcomes. It takes a close-up look at the dynamic processes of how situations unfold and compares their role to that of motivations, strategies, and other contextual factors. The book discusses factors that can draw us into violent situations and describes how and why we make uncommon individual and collective decisions. Covering different types of surprise outcomes from protest marches and uprisings turning violent to robbers failing to rob a store at gunpoint, it shows how unfolding situations can override our motivations and strategies and how emotions and culture, as well as rational thinking, still play a part in these events. The first chapters study protest violence in Germany and the United States from 1960 until 2010, taking a detailed look at what happens between the start of a protest and the eruption of violence or its peaceful conclusion. They compare the impact of such dynamics to the role of police strategies and culture, protesters’ claims and violent motivations, the black bloc and agents provocateurs. The analysis shows how violence is triggered, what determines its intensity, and which measures can avoid its outbreak. The book explores whether we find similar situational patterns leading to surprising outcomes in other types of small- and large-scale events: uprisings turning violent, such as Ferguson in 2014 and Baltimore in 2015, and failed armed store robberies.

The Other America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harris Beider ◽  
Kusminder Chahal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Race Identity ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
The Right

Widely stereotyped as anti-immigrant, against civil-rights, or supporters of Trump and the right, can the white working class of the United States really be reduced to a singular group with similar views? This book begins with an overview of how the term “white working class” became weaponized and used as a vessel to describe people who were seen to be “deplorable.” The national narrative appears to credit (or blame) white working-class mobilization across the country for the success of Donald Trump in the 2016 US elections. Those who take this position see the white working class as being problematic in different ways: grounded in norms and behaviors that seem out of step with mainstream society; at odds with the reality of increased ethnic diversity across the country and especially in cities; blaming others for their economic plight; and disengaged from politics. Challenging populist views about the white working class in the United States, the book showcases what they really think about the defining issues in today's America—from race, identity, and change to the crucial on-the-ground debates occurring at the time of the 2016 U.S. election. As the 2020 presidential elections draw near, this is an invaluable insight into the complex views on 2016 election candidates, race, identity and cross-racial connections.

The Detraditionalization of Intimacy Reconsidered

2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Gross
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sexual Intimacy ◽  
Moral Communities ◽  
Cultural Frameworks ◽  
The World ◽  
Relative Decline ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
The U.S

This essay challenges those strains of contemporary social theory that regard romantic/ sexual intimacy as a premier site of detraditionalization in the late modern era. Striking changes have occurred in intimacy and family life over the last half-century, but the notion of detraditionalization as currently formulated does not capture them very well. With the goal of achieving a more refined understanding, the article proposes a distinction between “regulative” and “meaning-constitutive” traditions. The former involve threats of exclusion from various moral communities; the latter involve linguistic and cultural frameworks within which sense is made of the world. Focusing on the U.S. case and marshaling various kinds of empirical evidence, the article argues that while the regulative tradition of what it terms lifelong, internally stratified marriage has declined in strength in recent years, the image of the form of couplehood inscribed in this regulative tradition continues to function as a hegemonic ideal in many American intimate relationships. Intimacy in the United States also remains beholden to the tradition of romantic love. That these meaning-constitutive traditions continue to play a central role in structuring contemporary intimacy suggests that detraditionalization involves the relative decline only of certain regulative traditions, a point that calls into question some of the normative assessments that often accompany the detraditionalization thesis.

Reintegrating Cuba into the Global Economy

2019 ◽  
pp. 241-276
Author(s):  
Larry Catá Backer
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Trade ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Cooperation Agreement ◽  
Political Dialogue ◽  
The World ◽  
The U.S

This chapter seeks to answer the question: What internal Cuban legal adjustments are necessary for Cuba to enter into a fully normalized relationship with the United States. and the rest of the world? The chapter first focuses on the adjustments Cuba might have to undertake if it is to embed itself within the structures of global trade and finance. Next, the chapter examines the extent to which Cuba is disposed to consider these possible reforms. Third, it examines what may be possible in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election of 2016 (and its aftermath) and other global changes, including the emergence of a Chinese alternative to national embedding in global trade. These have considerably changed the terrain within with the consequences of U.S.-Cuba normalization can be considered. The examination considers the value of the European Union’s strategic initiative, the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA), as a viable basis for Cuban reintegration in the global economy.

Epilogue

2021 ◽  
pp. 203-210
Author(s):  
Jenna Supp-Montgomerie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Electric Pulse ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Free Communication ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The telegraph wove its way across the ocean at a time when religion’s role in public life was commonplace. Since then, networks have become more vital to everyday life in easily perceptible ways while religion is considered a less overt part of so-called secular public culture in the United States. The epilogue proposes that the relationship of telegraphic networks to the networks that shape our world today is not causal or continuous but one of resonance in which some elements are amplified and some are damped. The protestant dreams for the telegraph in the nineteenth century—particularly the promise of global unity, the celebration of unprecedented speed and ubiquity, and the fantasy of friction-free communication—reverberate in dreams for the internet and social media today. In cries that the internet makes us all neighbors reverberates the electric pulse of the celebrations of the 1858 cable’s capacity to unite the world in Christian community. And yet, it is not a straight shot from then to now. Some elements have faded, particularly overt religious motifs in imaginaries of technology. The original power of public protestantism in the first network imaginaries continues to resonate today in the primacy of connection.

Who Wants to Make America Great Again? Understanding Evangelical Support for Donald Trump

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele F. Margolis
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Conservative Politics ◽  
United States Today ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
White Evangelicals ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractWhite evangelicals overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election, producing extensive debate as to who evangelicals are, what it means to be an evangelical in the United States today, and whether the electoral results are surprising or not. This paper offers empirical clarity to this protracted discussion by asking and answering a series of questions related to Trump's victory in general and his support from white evangelicals in particular. In doing so, the analyses show that the term “evangelical” has not become a synonym for conservative politics and that white evangelical support for Trump would be higher if public opinion scholars used a belief-centered definition of evangelicalism rather than relying on the more common classification strategies based on self-identification or religious denomination. These findings go against claims that nominal evangelicals, those who call themselves evangelicals but are not religious, make up the core of Trump's support base. Moreover, strong electoral support among devout evangelicals is not unique to the 2016 election but rather is part of a broader trend of evangelical electoral behavior, even when faced with non-traditional Republican candidates. Finally, the paper explores why white evangelicals might support a candidate like Trump. The paper presents evidence that negative partisanship helps explain why devout evangelicals—despite Trump's background and behaviors being cause for concern—coalesced around his presidential bid. Together, the findings from this paper help make sense of both the 2016 presidential election and evangelical public opinion, both separately and together.

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