Dignified Public Expression: A New Logic of Political Accountability

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey W. Paller

Research on political accountability emphasizes elections and popular control, but often neglects how ordinary people hold their leaders to account in the context of daily life. Dominant scholarly approaches emphasize the logic of electoral sanctioning and removal, missing the importance of mutual respect between representatives and citizens. This article introduces a new logic of democratic accountability based on the social practices, daily political behaviors, and public deliberation between representatives and citizens. Using urban Ghana as a study site, this article uncovers the mechanisms through which a theory based on respect works in practice. By reconciling theories of political representation with deliberative democracy, the article places the voices of urban Ghanaians in conversation with Western political thought to broaden understandings of accountability in African democracies.

Author(s):  
Karamagioli Evika

Over the past few years the concepts of government and governance have been dramatically transformed. Not only is this due to increasing pressures and expectations that the way we are governed should reflect modern methods of efficiency and effectiveness, but also that government should be more open to democratic accountability. The following chapter will introduce the social impact dimension of e-democracy while proposing concrete directions and incentives that should be provided for engagement through electronic means. The intention is to highlight the fact that technology is the result of a combination of tools, social practices, social organizations, and cultural meanings. It not only represents social arrangements, but also has the potential to facilitate and / or limit different types of interaction.


Comunicar ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (25) ◽  
Author(s):  
Glaucia Guimarães ◽  
Nilda Alves ◽  
Raquel Goulart-Barreto

Based on hints gathered in documents and observations, the aim of this work is to reveal emancipatory meanings present, though invisible or not fully realized in regulatory processes, as well as to understand knowledge and ideas impregnated in the daily practices of social agents. In order to valorize edge knowledge and social practices, this work is grounded on Boaventura de Sousa Santos, especially on his formulation of a two-fold Sociology: one related to the social experiences that have not been recognized yet as valuable and the second related to the expansion of possible social experiences. The movement corresponds to the construction of an archeology of already developed social experiences, though not visible or recognized by the existing theoretical frameworks, so as to reveal both kinds of experiences: the recognized ones and the possible ones. By means of experiences developed by ordinary people, the aim is to get to know and socialize experiences conducted in boundary scientific works in several social areas to make it possible to gather hints to the production of alternatives to hegemonic ideas and to the maintenance of traditions abandoned by modern sciences. Based on what can be called «Sociology of absences», experiences can be valued, publicized and used to convey hidden meanings, to exploit possible ways to deal with posed questions and to legitimate new forms of thinking. Based on these assumptions, we present a reflection on an experience in the social field, regarding possible conflicts and dialogues between forms of knowledge. In this case, we treat the pedagogical experience with video and TV programs, developed by teachers and experts on education and communication in the official schools of Rio de JaneiroCity, being the latter put in charge of helping the former in their pedagogical practices. By means of the hints gathered, sometimes taken as unimportant, it was possible to identify in the teachers´ speeches and actions, particular ways to work works with video and TV programs that, far from being characterized by lack of knowledge, were plenty of alternative logical thinking and could lead to the production of creative and emancipatory practices. In short, what could be seen as meaningless could also be regarded as emerging knowledge. Com base em indícios resgatados em documentos e observações, o objetivo deste trabalho é revelar sentidos emancipatórios existentes, mas invisíveis ou ignorados, em meio aos processos regulatórios, bem como compreender os saberes, as idéias que impregnam as práticas cotidianas desenvolvidas pelos sujeitos sociais. No sentido de valorizar os conhecimentos e as práticas sociais marginais, fundamentamo-nos em Boaventura de Sousa Santos, que propõe a sociologia das ausências e a sociologia das emergências. Na primeira, o movimento é o de expandir o domínio das experiências sociais já disponíveis, contudo negligenciadas, enquanto na segunda é o de expandir o domínio das experiências sociais possíveis. Propõe uma arqueologia das experiências já existentes, mas invisíveis, no intuito de revelar as experiências do mundo, tanto as disponíveis como as possíveis. Trata-se de revelar e difundir experiências vividas por pessoas comuns, de conhecer e propalar experiências construídas em trabalhos científicos marginalizados e de encontrar e anunciar conhecimentos/experiências nos mais diversos campos sociais, no movimento de constituição de alternativas à lógica hegemônica e, ao mesmo tempo, de manutenção de tradições marginalizadas e desperdiçadas pela ciência moderna. Por meio da sociologia das ausências, estas experiências são resgatadas e divulgadas para se tornarem possíveis encaminhamentos das questões enfrentadas, para se constituírem em outros sentidos para a transformação social ou, ainda, para propor novas formas de pensar. Apresentamos uma reflexão sobre experiência no campo social de conhecimentos que, segundo Santos, trata de conflitos e diálogos possíveis entre diferentes formas de conhecimento. No caso deste trabalho, a tentativa é a de resgatar a experiência pedagógica no uso de vídeos de alguns dos professores da Rede Municipal de Educação do Rio de Janeiro, ignorada pelos próprios professores e por especialistas nas áreas de educação e comunicação, sendo os últimos produtores de vídeos educativos para auxiliar a prática pedagógica dos primeiros. O exercício de ler indícios e pistas, muitas vezes insignificantes, mas reveladores, presentes nas falas e ações dos professores, indicou que, longe de ausência de saber, os modos peculiares de utilização de TV e vídeo revelam outros saberes e outra(s) lógica(s). O que pode sugerir ação isolada e desprovida de conhecimento, também pode ser compreendido como pista para uma prática e um saber criativo e emancipatório.


1989 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Miller

This paper stands at the confluence of two streams in contemporary political thought. One stream is composed of those critics of liberal political philosophy who are often described collectively as ‘communitarians’. What unites these critics (we shall later want to investigate how deep their collegiality goes) is a belief that contemporary liberalism rests on an impoverished and inadequate view of the human subject. Liberal political thought – as manifested, for instance, in the writings of John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Ronald Dworkin – claims centrally to do justice to individuality: to specify the conditions under which distinct individuals, each with his own view about how life should be lived, can pursue these visions to the best of their ability. But, the critics claim, liberalism is blind to the social origins of individuality itself. A person comes by his identity through participating in social practices and through his affiliation to collectivities like family and nation. An adequate political philosophy must attend to the conditions under which people can develop the capacity for autonomy that liberals value. This, however, means abandoning familiar preoccupations of liberal thought – especially the centrality it gives to individual rights – and looking instead at how social relationships of the desired kind can be created and preserved. It means, in short, looking at communities – their nature and preconditions.


1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve King

Re-creating the social, economic and demographic life-cycles of ordinary people is one way in which historians might engage with the complex continuities and changes which underlay the development of early modern communities. Little, however, has been written on the ways in which historians might deploy computers, rather than card indexes, to the task of identifying such life cycles from the jumble of the sources generated by local and national administration. This article suggests that multiple-source linkage is central to historical and demographic analysis, and reviews, in broad outline, some of the procedures adopted in a study which aims at large scale life cycle reconstruction.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Noémi Bíró

"Feminist Interpretations of Action and the Public in Hannah Arendt’s Theory. Arendt’s typology of human activity and her arguments on the precondition of politics allow for a variety in interpretations for contemporary political thought. The feminist reception of Arendt’s work ranges from critical to conciliatory readings that attempt to find the points in which Arendt’s theory might inspire a feminist political project. In this paper I explore the ways in which feminist thought has responded to Arendt’s definition of action, freedom and politics, and whether her theoretical framework can be useful in a feminist rethinking of politics, power and the public realm. Keywords: Hannah Arendt, political action, the Public, the Social, feminism "


Author(s):  
Roman Fedorov

The article is devoted to the problem of the social state as one of the fundamental constitutional principles of the state structure of modern developed countries. The course of historical development of philosophical and legal thought on this problem is considered. The idea of a close connection between the concept of the social state and the ideas of utopian socialism of Thomas More and Henri Saint-Simon is put forward. Liberals also made a significant contribution to the development of the idea of the social state, they argued that the ratio of equality and freedom is a key problem for the classical liberal doctrine. It is concluded that the emergence of the theory of the social state for objective reasons was inevitable, since it is due to the historical development of society.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nabil Bouizegarene ◽  
maxwell ramstead ◽  
Axel Constant ◽  
Karl Friston ◽  
Laurence Kirmayer

The ubiquity and importance of narratives in human adaptation has been recognized by many scholars. Research has identified several functions of narratives that are conducive to individuals’ well-being and adaptation as well as to coordinated social practices and enculturation. In this paper, we characterize the social and cognitive functions of narratives in terms of the framework of active inference. Active inference depicts the fundamental tendency of living organisms to adapt by creating, updating, and maintaining inferences about their environment. We review the literature on the functions of narratives in identity, event segmentation, episodic memory, future projection, storytelling practices, and enculturation. We then re-cast these functions of narratives in terms of active inference, outlining a parsimonious model that can guide future developments in narrative theory, research, and clinical applications.


Author(s):  
Ismael Puga

Using a mixed-methods approach based on discussion focus groups and panel surveys of the Longitudinal Social Study of Chile, this chapter demonstrates that Chilean’s neoliberal economic order is not legitimized by the vast majority of the population. Instead, the author argues that social norms are in serious conflict with the prevailing socioeconomic order. Within Chilean society, both citizens and social analysts are prone to agree with the existence of a “neoliberal consensus” due to the strategic adaptation of social practices that take place within a socioeconomic order that most individuals accept as a given. As a consequence, a “fantasy consensus” emerges in Chilean society in order to stabilize the social economic order, thus avoiding collective mobilization and social change. In this scenario, the protest waves that Chilean society has faced since 2011 offer additional proof that the “fantasy consensus” has experienced serious fissures, thus opening a window of opportunity to delegitimize Chile’s neoliberal order in the country.


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