The Education of Radical Democracy

The Education of Radical Democracy PDF Author: Sarah S. Amsler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134460139
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
The Education of Radical Democracy explores why radical democracy is so necessary, difficult, and possible and why it is important to understand it as an educative activity . The book draws on critical social theory and critical pedagogy to explain what enables and sustains work for radical democratization, and considers how we can begin such work in neoliberal societies today. Exploring examples of projects from the nineteenth century to the present day, the book sheds light on a wealth of critical tools, research studies, theoretical concepts and practical methods. It offers a critical reading of the ‘crisis of hope’ in neoliberal capitalist societies, focusing on the problem of the ‘contraction of possibilities’ for democratic agency, resistance to domination, and practices of freedom. It argues that radically democratic thinking, practice, and forms of social organization are vital for countering and overcoming systemic hegemonies and that these can be learned and cultivated. This book will be of interest to academics, practitioners, researchers, and students in education and critical theory, and to those interested in the sociology, philosophy and politics of hope. It also invites new dialogues between theorists of neoliberal power and political possibility, those engaged in projects for radical democratization, and teachers in formal and informal educational settings.

The Education of Radical Democracy

The Education of Radical Democracy PDF Author: Sarah S. Amsler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134460139
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
The Education of Radical Democracy explores why radical democracy is so necessary, difficult, and possible and why it is important to understand it as an educative activity . The book draws on critical social theory and critical pedagogy to explain what enables and sustains work for radical democratization, and considers how we can begin such work in neoliberal societies today. Exploring examples of projects from the nineteenth century to the present day, the book sheds light on a wealth of critical tools, research studies, theoretical concepts and practical methods. It offers a critical reading of the ‘crisis of hope’ in neoliberal capitalist societies, focusing on the problem of the ‘contraction of possibilities’ for democratic agency, resistance to domination, and practices of freedom. It argues that radically democratic thinking, practice, and forms of social organization are vital for countering and overcoming systemic hegemonies and that these can be learned and cultivated. This book will be of interest to academics, practitioners, researchers, and students in education and critical theory, and to those interested in the sociology, philosophy and politics of hope. It also invites new dialogues between theorists of neoliberal power and political possibility, those engaged in projects for radical democratization, and teachers in formal and informal educational settings.

Radical Education and the Common School

Radical Education and the Common School PDF Author: Michael Fielding
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136870318
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
What is education, what is it for and what are its fundamental values? How do we understand knowledge and learning? What is our image of the child and the school? How does the ever more pressing need to develop a more just, creative and sustainable democratic society affect our responses to these questions? Addressing these fundamental issues, Fielding and Moss contest the current mainstream dominated by markets and competition, instrumentality and standardisation, managerialism and technical practice. They argue instead for a radical education with democracy as a fundamental value, care as a central ethic, a person-centred education that is education in the broadest sense, and an image of a child rich in potential. Radical education, they say, should be practiced in the ‘common school’, a school for all children in its local catchment area, age-integrated, human scale, focused on depth of learning and based on team working. A school understood as a public space for all citizens, a collective workshop of many purposes and possibilities, and a person-centred learning community, working closely with other schools and with local authorities. The book concludes by examining how we might bring such transformation about. Written by two of the leading experts in the fields of early childhood and secondary education, the book covers a wide vista of education for children and young people. Vivid examples from different stages of education are used to explore the full meaning of radical democratic education and the common school and how they can work in practice. It connects rich thinking and experiences from the past and present to offer direction and hope for the future. It will be of interest and inspiration to all who care about education - teachers and students, academics and policy makers, parents and politicians.

Politics of Radical Democracy

Politics of Radical Democracy PDF Author: Little Adrian Little
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474470300
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book addresses the idea of radical democracy and, in particular, its poststructuralist articulation. It analyses the approach to radical democracy taken by a number of contemporary theorists and political commentators:, including Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Judith Butler, William Connolly, Jacques Ranciere, Claude Lefort, Sheldon Wolin, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri, and Giorgio Agamben. By examining critically the critiques accounts of democracy advanced by these theorists, this volume explores how a more radically conceived theory of democracy might be extended in a more egalitarian and inclusive direction.developed.The strand of radical democracy examined in this book is defined by a number of characteristics:*Democracy is conceptualised understood as a fugitive condition, being open to perpetual disruption and reinvention*The relationship between the state and civil society is regarded as the site where the open-ended 'promise' of democracy is fought out*There is an emphasis on questions of political renewal*There is a deep suspicion of identity-based political claims*Politics is conceived as either the site of or as one of the mechanisms for identity construction* Democratic politics is understood as a politics of contestation and disagreement* Democracy is regarded as always at least partially conflictual and not a means through which violence and conflict can be permanently eradicated*There is a deep suspicion of identity-based political claims*The political is assumed to be ontologically conflictual, with such conflict being understood as ultimately ineradicable from politics, though the form it takes necessarily varies from time to time and context to contextThe book clarifies the concept of radical democracy by mapping the field, and elaborates it further through a critical engagement with the works of its key proponents. In addition, it draws on the insights of radical democratic theory to explore a range of concre

Radical Democracy and the Internet

Radical Democracy and the Internet PDF Author: Lincoln Dahlberg
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Radical Democracy and the Internet provides a systematic and mutual interrogation of radical democratic theory and Internet practice. Contributors critically examine a range of radical democratic theories in relation to online communication, from deliberative to agonistic to autonomist Marxist, and explore how such communication may be advancing democracy beyond what is conceptualized and practised within present liberal-capitalist political contexts. The result is an important contribution to both democratic theory and new media studies, and essential reading in politics, media studies, communications, and sociology.

Tools for Radical Democracy

Tools for Radical Democracy PDF Author: Joan Minieri
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0787997404
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
Tools for Radical Democracy is an essential resource for grassroots organizers and leaders, students of activism and advocacy, and anyone trying to increase the civic participation of ordinary people. Authors Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos share stories and tools from their nationally recognized and award-winning work of building a community-led organization, training community leaders, and conducting campaigns that changed public policy and delivered concrete results to tens of thousands of people. This how-to manual includes: · In-depth analysis of how to launch and win a campaign · Tools and guidelines for training people to lead their own campaigns and organizations · Insights for using technology effectively, building more powerful alliances, and engaging in the social justice movement

Political Education in Times of Populism

Political Education in Times of Populism PDF Author: Edda Sant
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030762998
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
"In professional and academic contexts nothing is more important than helping people to understand and engage with democratic society. Sant has written an excellent book which helps greatly towards that end. She has developed incisive new arguments about the nature of contemporary politics and education. Using the most recent as well as classic literature, she explores key ideas and issues. Through wide ranging discussions and by referring to her own valuable empirical work she characterizes and creates thoughtful insights and innovative pedagogical approaches. This book achieves the very difficult task of illuminating complex ideas at the same time as helping to determine practical ways to achieve social justice through education. Political education has been neglected for too long. This book is a bold new step in its achievement." —Ian Davies, Emeritus Professor, University of York, UK This book examines political education in times of democratic crisis, polarisation and uncertainty. Using populism as a diagnostic tool, the book scrutinises current democratic practices and considers alternatives for future social studies and citizenship education. The author examines contemporary events including Brexit, the Catalan referendum for independence and protests in Chile to ask how democratic educators can respond to times of crisis. Centered on themes of knowledge and ideology, the book draws together political philosophy and educational research to map out, critically analyse and offer alternatives to dominant debates on political education. It will be of interest and value to scholars examining the relationship between democracy and educational theory and practice. Edda Sant is Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. A former social studies teacher, her research interests lie in citizenship, political and democratic education. She has published widely in this field, and in 2016 was recognized with a Children’s Identity & Citizenship European Association Award.

Radical Democracy

Radical Democracy PDF Author: David Trend
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113666078X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Radical Democracy addresses the loss of faith in conventional party politics and argues for new ways of thinking about diversity, liberty and civic responsibility. The cultural and social theorists in Radical Democracy broaden the discussion beyond the conventional and conservative rhetoric by investigating the applicability of radical democracy in the United States. Issues debated include whether democracy is primarily a form of decision making or an instrument of popular empowerment; and whether democracy constitutes an abstract ideal or an achievable goal.

Democracy and Education

Democracy and Education PDF Author: John Dewey
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN:
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.

Democracy in Chains

Democracy in Chains PDF Author: Nancy MacLean
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101980974
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for the National Book Award The Nation's "Most Valuable Book" “[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right.”—The Atlantic “This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you're worried about what all this means for America's future, you should be.”—NPR An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution. Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority. In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers.” And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy. Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.

Dimensions of Radical Democracy

Dimensions of Radical Democracy PDF Author: Chantal Mouffe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The themes of citizenship and community are today at the center of a fierce debate as both left and right try to mobilize them for their cause. For the left such notions are crucial in all the current attempts to redefine political struggle through extending and deepening democracy. But, argue the contributors to this volume, these concepts need to be made compatible with the pluralism that marks modern democracy. Rather than reject the liberal tradition, they argue, the aim should be to radicalize it. These essays set out to examine what types of "citizen" and "community" might be required by such a radical and plural democracy. From a range of disciplines and a fruitful diversity of theoretical perspectives, the contributors help us to address the following challenge: how to defend the greatest possible pluralism without destroying the very framework of the democratic political community. Despite their differences, a vision emerges from these essays which is sharply at odds both with the universalistic and rationalistic conception to be found in the work of Habermas, and with postmodern celebrations of absolute heterogeneity. For this book is an exploration of politics—of a politics where power, conflict and antagonism will always play a central role.