Everyday Politics

Everyday Politics PDF Author: Harry C. Boyte
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812204212
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Increasingly a spectator sport, electoral politics have become bitterly polarized by professional consultants and lobbyists and have been boiled down to the distributive mantra of "who gets what." In Everyday Politics, Harry Boyte transcends partisan politics to offer an alternative. He demonstrates how community-rooted activities reconnect citizens to engaged, responsible public life, and not just on election day but throughout the year. Boyte demonstrates that this type of activism has a rich history and strong philosophical foundation. It rests on the stubborn faith that the talents and insights of ordinary citizens—from nursery school to nursing home—are crucial elements in public life. Drawing on concrete examples of successful public work projects accomplished by diverse groups of people across the nation, Boyte demonstrates how citizens can master essential political skills, such as understanding issues in public terms, mapping complex issues of institutional power to create alliances, raising funds, communicating, and negotiating across lines of difference. He describes how these skills can be used to address the larger challenges of our time, thereby advancing a renewed vision of democratic society and freedom in the twenty-first century.

Everyday Politics

Everyday Politics PDF Author: Harry C. Boyte
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812204212
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Get Book Here

Book Description
Increasingly a spectator sport, electoral politics have become bitterly polarized by professional consultants and lobbyists and have been boiled down to the distributive mantra of "who gets what." In Everyday Politics, Harry Boyte transcends partisan politics to offer an alternative. He demonstrates how community-rooted activities reconnect citizens to engaged, responsible public life, and not just on election day but throughout the year. Boyte demonstrates that this type of activism has a rich history and strong philosophical foundation. It rests on the stubborn faith that the talents and insights of ordinary citizens—from nursery school to nursing home—are crucial elements in public life. Drawing on concrete examples of successful public work projects accomplished by diverse groups of people across the nation, Boyte demonstrates how citizens can master essential political skills, such as understanding issues in public terms, mapping complex issues of institutional power to create alliances, raising funds, communicating, and negotiating across lines of difference. He describes how these skills can be used to address the larger challenges of our time, thereby advancing a renewed vision of democratic society and freedom in the twenty-first century.

Life as Politics

Life as Politics PDF Author: Asef Bayat
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 080478633X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
Prior to 2011, popular imagination perceived the Muslim Middle East as unchanging and unchangeable, frozen in its own traditions and history. In Life as Politics, Asef Bayat argues that such presumptions fail to recognize the routine, yet important, ways in which ordinary people make meaningful change through everyday actions. First published just months before the Arab Spring swept across the region, this timely and prophetic book sheds light on the ongoing acts of protest, practice, and direct daily action. The second edition includes three new chapters on the Arab Spring and Iran's Green Movement and is fully updated to reflect recent events. At heart, the book remains a study of agency in times of constraint. In addition to ongoing protests, millions of people across the Middle East are effecting transformation through the discovery and creation of new social spaces within which to make their claims heard. This eye-opening book makes an important contribution to global debates over the meaning of social movements and the dynamics of social change.

Everyday Politics, Ordinary Lives

Everyday Politics, Ordinary Lives PDF Author: Adrian Bingham
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192576720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
What did British citizens really feel about the political system, their role in it, and the people who represented them? Everyday Politics, Ordinary Lives examines British democracy from below, investigating how electors understood politics and how they viewed its relationship to their lives, from the establishment of a near democracy with the Representation of the People Act 1918 up until the rise of the internet and 24-hour news channels in the early 1990s. It focuses on the everyday political opinions, discussions, and interactions of ordinary British voters in the period, and pays attention to the ways in which women, young people, and minoritized groups related to a political system dominated by men. Adrian Bingham incorporates material from a broad and diverse range of sources, from pioneering social surveys conducted after the First World War, through the mid-century qualitative research of Mass-Observation and early political scientists, up to the data-driven work of the British Election Study and modern pollsters such as Gallup and MORI. The book also draws extensively on the archives of the Conservative and Labour parties, as they sought to understand the attitudes of the voters they were trying to attract, and content from the media, memoirs, diaries, and life-writing. Everyday Politics, Ordinary Lives argues that most people, across the period, felt remote from politics and sceptical of politicians. But this reflected the perception that the world of parliamentary debates and party intrigue was distant, insular, and rather impenetrable, not that people did not care about political issues or have a desire to improve their position. Britain was home to plenty of everyday political thinking and conversation, and the amount and quality of this activity tended to increase and improve over the period as people became better educated, had access to more information through the media, and the power of the democratic ideal grew in strength over the period. The author maps these changing patterns of political support to deeper social and cultural developments, and thereby produce a new and distinctive history of British democracy that challenges some of the simplistic narratives that underpin contemporary political debate.

The Social Psychology of Everyday Politics

The Social Psychology of Everyday Politics PDF Author: Caroline Howarth
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317601394
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
The Social Psychology of Everyday Politics examines the ways in which politics permeates everyday life, from the ordinary interactions we have with others to the sense of belonging and identity developed within social groups and communities. Discrimination, prejudice, inclusion and social change, politics is an on-going process that is not solely the domain of the elected and the powerful. Using a social and political psychological lens to examine how politics is enacted in contemporary societies, the book takes an explicitly critical approach that places political activity within collective processes rather than individual behaviors. While the studies covered in the book do not ignore the importance of the individual, they underscore the need to examine the role of culture, history, ideology and social context as integral to psychological processes. Individuals act, but they do not act in isolation from the groups and societies in which they belong. Drawing on extensive international research, with contributions from leaders in the field as well as emerging scholars, the book is divided into three interrelated parts which cover: The politics of intercultural relations Political agency and social change Political discourse and practice Offering insights into how psychology can be applied to some of the most pressing social issues we face, this will be fascinating reading for students of psychology, political science, sociology and cultural studies, as well as anyone working in the area of public policy.

A Politics of the Ordinary

A Politics of the Ordinary PDF Author: Thomas L. Dumm
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814718965
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In A Politics of the Ordinary, Thomas Dumm dramatizes how everyday life in the United States intersects with and is influenced by the power of events, on the one hand, and forces of conformity and normalcy on the other. Combining poststructuralist analysis with a sympathetic reading of a strain of American thought that begins with Emerson and culminates in the work of Stanley Cavell, A Politics of the Ordinary investigates incidents from everyday life, political spectacles, and popular culture. Whether juxtaposing reflections about boredom in rural New Mexico with Emerson's theory of constitutional amendment, Richard Nixon's letter of resignation with Thoreau's writings to overcome quiet desperation, or demonstrating how Disney's Toy Story allegorizes the downsizing of the American white-collar work force, Dumm's constant concern is to show how the ordinary is the primary source of the democratic political imagination.

Cultural Politics of Everyday Life

Cultural Politics of Everyday Life PDF Author: John Shotter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description


The Power of Everyday Politics

The Power of Everyday Politics PDF Author: Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501722018
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Ordinary people's everyday political behavior can have a huge impact on national policy: that is the central conclusion of this book on Vietnam. In telling the story of collectivized agriculture in that country, Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet uncovers a history of local resistance to national policy and gives a voice to the villagers who effected change. Not through open opposition but through their everyday political behavior, villagers individually and in small, unorganized groups undermined collective farming and frustrated authorities' efforts to correct the problems.The Power of Everyday Politics is an authoritative account, based on extensive research in Vietnam's National Archives and in the Red River Delta countryside, of the formation of collective farms in northern Vietnam in the late 1950s, their enlargement during wartime in the 1960s and 1970s, and their collapse in the 1980s. As Kerkvliet shows, the Vietnamese government eventually terminated the system, but not for ideological reasons. Rather, collectivization had become hopelessly compromised and was ultimately destroyed largely by the activities of villagers. Decollectivization began locally among villagers themselves; national policy merely followed. The power of everyday politics is not unique to Vietnam, Kerkvliet asserts. He advances a theory explaining how everyday activities that do not conform to the behavior required by authorities may carry considerable political weight.

The Politics of Everyday Life

The Politics of Everyday Life PDF Author: Paul Ginsborg
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300107487
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
"Ginsborg is never judgemental, though he is devastatingly thorough and occasionally mischievously witty." Times Literary Supplement

Avoiding Politics

Avoiding Politics PDF Author: Nina Eliasoph
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521587594
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Nina Eliasoph's vivid portrait of American civic life reveals an intriguing culture of political avoidance. Despite the importance for democracy of open-ended political conversation among ordinary citizens, many Americans try hard to avoid appearing to care about politics. To discover how, where and why Americans create this culture of avoidance, the author accompanied suburban volunteers, activists, and recreation club members for over two years, listening to them talk - and avoid talking - about the wider world, together and in encounters with government, media, and corporate authorities. She shows how citizens create and express ideas in everyday life, contrasting their privately expressed convictions with their lack of public political engagement. Her book challenges received ideas about culture, power and democracy, while exposing the hard work of producing apathy.

Everyday Politics in the Philippines

Everyday Politics in the Philippines PDF Author: Benedict J. Kerkvliet
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742518704
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Focusing on a rice farming village in central Luzon, Kerkvliet argues that the faction and patron-client relationships dealt with by conventional studies are only one part of Philippine political life.