In two different occasions in the twentieth century John Dewey and Maxine Greene stressed the point that educators should attend to ‘what the known demands of us’. Following this dictum, from a critical perspective and with a constructive pedagogical spirit, in this paper we portray a new paradigm for values education that addresses the major challenges to the sustainable futures of young people in the third decade of the twenty first century as well as proposing transformative and empowering educational strategies. (...) Employing the terminology of sustainability in its wider sense, we begin with a widely acknowledged diagnosis of the five major global risks – interconnected and interdependent – that endanger the sustainable future of humanity and nature: environmental, political, social, health, and cultural. We then move to suggest a constructive solution, proposing three conceptual pillars for repairing the world and laying foundation for a thriving sustainable future: (a) Ecohumanism as the paradigm for values education – merging the humanist concern for human dignity, social justice and democracy with the ecological concern for climate stability, biodiversity and environmental sustainability; (b) education of democratic personality and for democratic culture that is holistic and transformative; and (c) a threefold notion of activist pedagogy that addresses the element of cultivating personal agency, empowering political literacy and agency, and engaging students in experiential, holistic, and active teaching-learning experiences. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline Du Bois’s WWI-era theory of democracy, which comprises three parts: first, an historically specific explanation of the racially exclusionist character of the modern struggle for democracy; second, a justification of universal suffrage; and third, an account of democratic culture, the promotion of which he believed was necessary to supplement the enfranchisement of black people where white supremacy still threated the achievement of justice.

Based on presentations at a conference in Varanasi, 2008.

The theory of the firm initially developed by Ronald Coase has made explicit the political nature of firms by putting hierarchy at the heart of the economic process. Theories of workplace democracy articulate this intuition in the normative terms of the conditions under which this political power can be legitimate. This paper presents an organizational theory of workplace democracy, and contends that the democratization of firms requires that we take their organizational dimension explicitly into account. It thus construes democracy as (...) an organizational principle and juxtaposes it to market, hierarchy, and norm-compliance as rival principles for the organization of economic activities. Attempts to construe democracy as an organizational principle with unique features in the tradition of transaction-cost economics are discussed before proposing an innovative solution based on an updated version of grid/group cultural theory of politics, adjusted to accommodate the basic requirements of democratic theory. (shrink)

(1996). Public opinion and democratic culture: The French revolution. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 175-180.

Using two contemporary cases of the global #MeToo movement and UK-based collective Sisters Uncut, this paper argues that a more in-depth and critical concern with gendered difference is necessary for understanding radical democratic ethics, one that advances and develops current understandings of business ethics. It draws on practices of social activism and dissent through the context of Irigaray’s later writing on democratic politics and Ziarek’s analysis of dissensus and democracy that proceeds from an emphasis on alterity as the (...) capacity to transform nonappropriative self-other relations. Therefore, the aims of the paper are: to develop a deeper understanding of a culture of difference and to consider sexual difference as central to the development of a practical democratic ethics and politics of organizations; to explore two key cases of contemporary feminist social movements that demonstrate connected yet contrasting examples of how feminist politics develops through an appreciation of embodied, intercorporeal differences; and to extend insights from Irigaray and Ziarek to examine ways in which a practical democratic politics proceeding from an embodied ethics of difference forms an important advancement to theorising the connection between ethics, dissent and democracy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture, and Political TheoryJennifer RobertsJ. Peter Euben. Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture, and Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. xvi 1 271 pp. Cloth, $55, £37.50; paper, $18.95, £13.95.Who, Socrates asks Meletus, improves the young men of Athens? The laws, Meletus replies. But which people, Socrates wants to know, which men? These very dicasts here. All of (...) them, Meletus, or just some? Oh, all of them. Goodness; and what about the audience? Them too? Yes, them too. And the members of the Boule? Certainly. And the men in the Assembly? Yes, them too. In other words, Meletus, what you are saying is that absolutely everyone in Athens improves young men except me. Is that right? Yes, that is exactly right, Meletus replies.Socrates has succeeded in making a fool of Meletus precisely because the question of “improving” the young (or anyone else) is so problematic. In this wide-ranging study of political thought in classical Athens, Peter Euben locates Greek explorations of the civic community, and how one educates people for it, in the context of contemporary debates over higher education in the United States. Taking as a springboard (and a title) the accusation of corrupting the youth made against Socrates at his trial, Euben seeks to mediate the claims of “canonists,” who advocate a focus on classical texts on the grounds that they instill Values with a capital V, and “multiculturalists,” who are suspicious of such texts, believing them to embody the narrow and bankrupt values of dead white males—dead white slave-holding males at that. His strategy is to stress what he sees as the polyphonal and multivocal nature of the Athenian corpus, emphasizing the impossibility of these revered but disparate texts’ “teaching” any virtue other than that of constant scrutiny of self and other. The texts he examines, moreover—tragedy, comedy, and dialogue—often deal directly with the question of education for democratic citizenship, a project dear to Euben’s heart.To do this, of course, Euben must demonstrate a pro-democratic agenda in both tragedy and Old Comedy, and here I think he succeeds, although the matter is far from simple; and then there is the question of Socrates/Plato. Readers will probably be persuaded by his arguments in the following order: Sophocles’ Antigone, yes; Aristophanes’ Clouds, maybe; Plato’s Gorgias, very dubious. It is in its discussion of the troubling Gorgias that Euben’s book is most challenging and provocative.Demonstrating multiple voices in Antigone is not a daunting task. The play works as a pro-democratic statement on many levels, beginning with its very surface. Most simply, Haemon and the chorus appear to embody the voice [End Page 621] of reason against Creon’s rigidity and vulgarity, and Haemon explicitly sides with the chorus against his autocratic father. At a deeper level, however, the polyphony of the play represents what Euben sees as the multivocal nature of democratic debate, as the conflicting claims of law and family are both enacted and articulated on the stage. Here, as elsewhere in the book, he finds the process of deliberation and analysis intrinsically democratic and gives it as least as much weight as the conclusions to which it leads, if not more.Creon, who rejects discussion and deliberation and associates yielding with unmanliness, seeks to deny the richness and complexity of human life and the human community. If Creon stands for autocracy, does the equally rigid Antigone then represent democracy? It would seem to me that she does not, since the primacy she gives to religious over civic obligations appears to place her in the camp of the female/religious force that Aeschylus rejected in the Oresteia as pre-democratic, replacing it with the patriarchal state of men and civic laws as the Furies are tamed and the rulings of male juries are constituted as the laws of the community. Euben, however, puts forward an interesting argument to the opposite effect: while Creon, he writes, “may regard Antigone as the amorphous anarchic symbol of womanly power, it is worth recalling that conservatives regarded Athenian democracy the same way” (171). (We might... (shrink)

In Corrupting Youth, Peter Euben explores the affinities between Socratic philosophy and Athenian democratic culture as a way to think about issues of politics and education, both ancient and modern. The book moves skillfully between antiquity and the present, from ancient to contemporary political theory, and from Athenian to American democracy. It draws together important recent work by political theorists with the views of classical scholars in ways that shine new light on significant theoretical debates such as those (...) over discourse ethics, rational choice, and political realism, and on political issues such as school vouchers and education reform. Euben not only argues for the generative capacity of classical texts and Athenian political thought, he demonstrates it by thinking with them to provide a framework for reflecting more deeply about socially divisive issues such as the war over the canon and the "politicization" of the university.Drawing on Aristophanes' Clouds, Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannos, and Plato's Apology of Socrates, Gorgias, and Protagoras, Euben develops a view of democratic political education. Arguing that Athenian democratic practices constituted a tradition of accountability and self-critique that Socrates expanded into a way of doing philosophy, Euben suggests a necessary reciprocity between political philosophy and radical democracy. By asking whether we can or should take "Socrates" out of the academy and put him back in front of a wider audience, Euben argues for anchoring contemporary higher education in appreciative yet skeptical encounter with the dramatic figure in Plato's dialogues. (shrink)

This book presents a moderately revisionist history of the great books idea anchored in the following movements and struggles: fighting anti-intellectualism, advocating for the liberal arts, distributing cultural capital, and promoting a public philosophy, anchored in mid-century liberalism, that fostered a shared civic culture.

Designing education policy, curriculum and competences which promote and nourish the values and/or morals believed to underpin democratic culture is both contentious and something which has...

We develop an account of societal democratization that synthesizes cultural sociology and deliberative democracy. Cultural sociologists emphasize the symbolic inclusion of marginalized groups into the civil sphere. Deliberative democrats stress growth in the deliberative capacity of society. We argue that democratization entails the co-evolution of culture and reason. The basis of co-evolution is the performative construction of an inclusive demos, which requires a deliberative background but is also a source of the moral emotions that motivate deliberation. Since moral emotions (...) can also sweep people up and make them do reckless things, they must in turn be redeemable in inclusive deliberation. This synthesis sharpens a normative position for the evaluation of episodes of inclusion, extends current accounts of the place of emotion in cultural sociology and deliberative democracy, and provides a frame for comparative analyses of democratization. We illustrate with an examination of the exclusion and inclusion of Indigenous Australians. (shrink)

(1996). Public opinion and democratic culture: The French revolution. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 175-180.

Richard Rorty's moral writings offer a cogent summary of the moral content of contemporary liberal democratic culture. Rorty insists on a divide between our public and private lives, yet he claims that moral progress is primarily driven by the imagination of great poetry and philosophy . A pressing tension thus emerges between private imagination and public moral justification, which is also very real in contemporary liberal democratic culture itself. I sketch a way out of this problem, (...) which fits well with the pragmatism he shares with William James and John Dewey. (shrink)

This article aims at exploring one specific facet of pluralism: How can we conceive of a variety of democratic cultures that are not just local adaptations of one basic western-centric understanding of the democratic ethos? Drawing on Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and Confucian sources, a convergence among diverse democratic cultures is cursorily highlighted on such elements as the priority of the common good, the acceptance of pluralism, the desirability of collegial deliberation, the equality of citizens, and the (...) value of individuality. Then two important points of dissonance are analysed in greater detail – the idea of the priority of rights over duties and the role of political conflict within a democratic polity – and shown not to be correlative with a divide between western and non-western contexts. Finally a typology of 4 kinds of democratic cultures is outlined. (shrink)

A partir da implantação da República, surgiu um movimento de intelectuais que procurou congregar e dinamizar num esforço comum os pensadores de várias áreas do conhecimento, através da revista A Águia, tendo em vista uma nova ordem moral e cívica dentro do ideal democrático. Procurámos dar a conhecer as linhas principais que consubstanciaram o espaço aberto pela revista, as influências recebidas e os debates que a animaram.

Lack of understanding about the relationship between federal and state educational institutions brings confusion into discussions of democracy, equity and equality in schools. The 'right to education' continues to be espoused by American society as a birthright, yet it does not figure in federal documentation. This matter has repeatedly come to the attention of legislative courts, who have insisted that the question of education as a fundamental right be addressed. Numerous court cases have attempted to bring closure on this issue, (...) on the basis of such abstractions as national rights, equal access, opportunity and economic disparity among the petitions. However, legal judgments remain inconclusive, reiterating that education remains a state legislative issue. This paper explores the implications of a fundamental right to education through an examination of federal and state legal litigation, discussing the philosophical and ideological roots of discussion of rights and democratic values, and evaluating how federal and judicial participation contributes to overall misunderstanding regarding public schooling. (shrink)

This collection of original essays brings a dramatically different perspective to bear on the contemporary "crisis of journalism." Rather than seeing technological and economic change as the primary causes of current anxieties, The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered draws attention to the role played by the cultural commitments of journalism itself. Linking these professional ethics to the democratic aspirations of the broader societies in which journalists ply their craft, it examines how the new technologies are being shaped to sustain value (...) commitments rather than undermining them. Recent technological change and the economic upheaval it has produced are coded by social meanings. It is this cultural framework that actually transforms these "objective" changes into a crisis. The book argues that cultural codes not only trigger sharp anxiety about technological and economic changes, but provide pathways to control them, so that the democratic practices of independent journalism can be sustained in new forms. (shrink)

This book examines fundamental questions about funding for the arts: why should governments provide funding for the arts? What do the arts contribute to daily life? Do artists and their publics have a social responsibility? Challenging questionable assumptions about the state, the arts and a democratic society, Lambert Zuidervaart presents a vigorous case for government funding, based on crucial contributions the arts make to civil society. He argues that the arts contribute to democratic communication and a social economy, (...) fostering the critical and creative dialogue that a democratic society needs. Informed by the author's experience leading a non-profit arts organisation as well as his expertise in the arts, humanities and social sciences, this book proposes an entirely new conception of the public role of art with wide-ranging implications for education, politics and cultural policy. (shrink)

This essay rethinks democratic experimentalism from an ethical point of view, and look at its potential for the future by drawing on two key thinkers of the late 20th and early 21st century: Richard Rorty and Luce Irigaray. I explore the experimentalist character in Irigaray's later thought and point to a pragmatist link in her works, and then dynamize her original theory of sexual difference by pointing to G.H. Mead's symbolic interactionism. Then a revolutionary character of Irigaray's thought is (...) defended by focusing on her interventions into the very core of Western philosophy and in particular its Hegelian heritage. By introducing Rorty into the debate, a pledge is made for a new democratic culture of love and nonviolence as a 'spiritual' mode of democratic experimentalism needed in our times. Finally, I show that Irigaray's and Rorty's thought share an affinity toward intercultural thinking, bearing important consequences for an ethicospiritual project of democratic experimentalism. (shrink)

Since Deng Xiaoping came into power, China has been described as pragmatic in its approach to politics and development, and in the nineties there has been a revival of interest in Chinese cultural tradition. What is the relation between these two phenomena? Do they coexist, separately in mutual indifference, or in tension? Has there been constructive engagement, or at the very least does the potential for such engagement exist? More specifically, what roles, if any, do they play in China's quest (...) for democracy? Does Dewey's pragmatism have any relevance to China in the twenty-first century? The issue of cultural tradition was central in the historical encounter between Dewey's pragmatism and Confucianism in the New Culture movement of early twentieth century. It is still salient in the debates about China's future and whether it would or should follow the democratic path. This essay will examine anti-democratic tendencies in the rising cultural nationalism in China and, through a philosophical exploration of John Dewey's views about tradition, it will suggest how Chinese pragmatists today might defend democracy against attacks by cultural nationalists who reject the democratic path as alien and therefore wrong for China. (shrink)

The broad aim of this paper is to track the evolution of adult literacy policy in the UK across three decades, highlighting convergences between policy phases and the promotion of democratic learning spaces. It is anchored onto the argument that, although it is generally accepted that democratic learning spaces are perceived as beneficial to adult literacy learners, policy has often deterred its promotion and, therefore, implementation. The paper identifies three block phases of adult literacy development: the seventies to (...) mid-eighties, the mid-eighties to mid-nineties and the mid-nineties to the Moser Committees. The features of each of these phases are highlighted to map out convergences and divergences to the ethos of democratic learning spaces. The paper argues that, with the evolution of policy in adult literacy, the ethos of democratic learning space continuously diminished, such that as policy evolved year on year, the principle of democratic learning space found itself at counterpoint to policy. We draw on two theoretical frameworks, the NLS view of literacy and Bourdieu’s capital framework to explain these divergences and conclude that the dominant perception of literacy and the prioritised capital in the context of policy appear to limit the vestiges of democratic learning spaces. Keywords: Adult literacy, policy, democratic learning spaces, cultural dissonance, human capital, social capital. (shrink)

We would like to open some questions here about the institutional and cultural conditions of anything that might be called cultural studies or multiculturalism. By introducing cultural studies and multiculturalism many intellectuals aim at a more democratic culture. We share this aim. In this essay, however, we would like to argue that the projects of cultural studies and multiculturalism require: a more international model of cultural studies than the dominant Anglo-American versions; renewed attention to the institutional environments of (...) cultural studies; and a questioning of the relations between multiculturalism and identity politics. We seek less to “fix” these problems than to provide a critical analysis of the languages, the methods of criticism, and the assumptions about identity, culture, and politics that present the problems to us. Because the thickets entangling what our group calls cultural studies are so deeply rooted in Western academia, which to a large degree constitutes our own group, the counterexample of cultural criticism in other contexts can be more than usually instructive. We begin by considering the position of cultural studies in China, since our group includes a number of Chinese intellectuals, on whose experience the following section is largely based. The Chicago Cultural Studies Group began meeting in June 1990. It includes Lauren Berlant, David Bunn, Vinay Dharwadker, Norma Field, Dilip Gaonkar, Marilyn Ivy, Benjamin Lee, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Xinmin Liu, Mathew Roberts, Sharon Stephens, Katie Trumpener, Greg Urban, Michael Warner, Jianyang Zha, and Jueliang Zhou. (shrink)

The paper examines democratic concepts or elements in traditional Yoruba society and their implications for the culture of democracy in Africa and the social order at the global level. One of the major problems confronting African states is the problem of governance. Political crises have metamorphosed into problems of ethnic conflict, war, corruption, economic stagnation, social disorder and paucity of sustainable development in Africa and these crises have also resulted in global disequilibrium. This paper revisits traditional Yoruba society, (...) with a special emphasis on the democratic elements. It adopts as its theoretical framework some aspects of the traditional Yoruba socio-ethical values to underscore the importance of democratic elements based on communal values. Such concepts as ifowosowopo (cooperation), agbajo owo (solidarity), amumora (tolerance), and ilosiwaju (progress) are examined to point up their roles in addressing the crisis of (democratic) governance. The paper establishes that the inbuilt democratic elements, based on social ethical values, helped to sustain governance in traditional Yoruba society. It is concluded that democratic elements are much more important than democracy itself. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Cultural Imperialism in Rawls's Law of Peoples Rawls's Answers to the Charge Conclusion: Peace or Justice? Acknowledgements Notes.

In the United States, organ transfer has generated a highly selective and overly specialized approach to bioethics. A dominant assumption is the myth of medical democracy: whereas professionals involved in this highly technocratic arena publicly embrace notions of medical equality, particularized practices expose another reality. The more specific ideological tenets of medical democracy read as follows: First, all potential transplant patients are equally deserving of replacement organs. Further, all citizens are entitled to equal access to these unusual commodities, which are (...) regularly described as precious and scarce “national resources.” Whether the premises of medical democracy are in fact played out in daily practice, however, is another matter entirely. Organ donation is driven by a universalized sense of humanity, whereby all bodies are assumed equal beneath the surgeon's knife. Yet the social worth of individuals varies radically: children, pregnant women, the unemployed, and prisoners, for example, expose a wide spectrum of responses to certain categories of bodies. So, too, do the cultural origins of organ donors. By drawing on anthropological knowledge of sociomedical practices relevant to organ transfer, this essay explores this theme of medical democracy specifically in reference to the needs of Latinos in New York City. (shrink)

Alessandro Ferrara explains what he terms "the democratic horizon" - the idea that democracy is no longer simply one form of government among others, but is instead almost universally regarded as the only legitimate form of government, the horizon to which most of us look. Professor Ferrara reviews the challenges under which democracies must operate, focusing on hyperpluralism, and impresses a new twist onto the framework of political liberalism. He shows that distinguishing real democracies from imitations can be difficult, (...) responding to this predicament by enriching readers' understanding of the spirit of democracy; clearing readers' views of pluralism from residues of ethnocentrism; and conceiving multiple versions of democratic culture, rooted in the diversity of civilizational contexts. (shrink)

There are many types of political culture as well as many elements to be found in each type of political culture. The present study will be limited in two ways. Firstly, we shall not deal with all the elements of political culture. We shall focus on what has been called the "Affective Attitudes" element, which we take to include feelings and emotional proclivities, which to us, are inseparable from values and evaluations. Secondly, we shall not focus on (...) all types of political cultures, but rather on democratic political culture. We plan to study one particular conceptual relation between (democratic) political culture and (democratic) political system. This is the relation of congruence. This relation is less controversial than causal relation which some theorists propose as holding between political culture and political system. However, it does suggest concepts that can be used in formulating causal hypotheses that can be empirically tested. مناقشة لطبيعة الثقافة السياسية التي تتوائم مع تتوائم مع النظام السياسي الديمقراطي. سوف يجري التركيز على التوجهات الانفعالية (المشاعر العواطف والقيم) التي تشكل جزءا هاما من الثقافة السياسية -/- . (shrink)

This volume combines rigorous empirical and theoretical analyses with political engagement to look beyond reductive short-hands that ignore the historical evolution and varieties of Islamic doctrine and that deny the complexities of Muslim societies' encounters with modernity itself. Are Islam and democracy compatible? Can we shed the language of 'Islam vs. the West' for new political imaginaries? The authors analyze struggles over political legitimacy since the Arab Spring and the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS in their historical and political (...) complexity across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Distinguishing multiculturalism from interculturalism and understanding multiple modernities, philosophers in the volume tease out the complexities of civilizational encounters. The volume also shows how the Paris massacres or the Danish caricature controversy do not remain confined to Europe but influence struggles and confrontations within Muslim societies. Gender and Islam are addressed from a comparative perspective bringing into conversation not only the experience of different Muslim countries with Islamic law but also by analysing Jewish family law. (shrink)

In this paper I draw some distinctions between the terms “cultural diversity” and “plurality” and argue that a radical conception of plurality is needed in order both to re-imagine the boundaries of democratic education and to address more fully the political aspects of conflict that plurality gives rise to. This paper begins with a brief exploration of the usages of the term diversity in European documents that promote intercultural education as a democratic vehicle for overcoming social conflict between (...) different cultural groups. In contradistinction to these usages, this paper calls for a more robust conception of plurality, one that does not simply denote membership in different cultural groupings but is rooted in the human condition and based on a conception of uniqueness. Following the work of Hannah Arendt and feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero, I explore how the appearance of unique beings in specific contexts can be understood as an eminently political act and I contend that such a view leads to a better educational understanding of conflict and contestation. The paper sketches the contours of democratic plurality along this line of thought and discusses how these new boundaries have implications for education’s relation to democracy. (shrink)

The information regime is mediated by the culture of the electronic device. It is characterized by the control of the deluded citizen through the deployment of freedom, thereby nullifying the core issue of human life: freedom. Through phenomenological-hermeneutic methodology (Heidegger, 2002), this work starts from the world of digital life to direct the interpretation towards digital governance, all of which appears as a hermeneutic horizon the information regime. It is concluded that in this new social order the political and (...) all other orders that arise from interaction are governed by a capitalism of emotions. (shrink)

Dewey’s understanding of democratic school life is regarded as the early foundation of democratic education (Cohen et al. 2009). Similarly, Biesta (2007) underlines the significant role of schools...

El actual debate sobre el papel de la "esfera pública" en la política moderna no asume un concepto único de lo "público". La reconstrucción habermasiana de la esfera pública enfatiza la apertura inclusiva de la interacción discursiva a través de la sociedad civil, pero también sus efectos políticos al proveer legitimación reflexiva y una formación racional de la opinión. La esfera pública también se relaciona con el aparecer en común y actuar juntos; o es vinculada con la cultura política, con (...) los códigos sociales de expresión y los modos de presentación entre otros, con la opinión pública y con los múltiples públicos de la sociedad civil moderna. Tocqueville propone una interpretación matizada y multidimensional del espíritu público en la revolución democrática moderna. De ese modo, va más allá de las interpretaciones del espacio público racionalistas e idealizadas (como un ámbito comprehensivo de consenso discursivo); a través de la interpretación de Tocqueville de la sociedad y la cultura pública democráticas, se esboza la posibilidad de una esfera pública descentrada y asimétrica. Current debate over the role of "public sphere" in modern politics does not presuppose a single conception of the "public". Habermas' reconstruction of public sphere stresses the inclusive openness of discursive interaction through civil society, but also its political effects in providing reflexive legitimization and a rational formation of opinion. Public sphere is related also to appearing in common and acting together; or it is linked with public political culture, with social codes of expression and modes of presentation between others, with public opinion and with the multiple publics of modern civil society. Tocqueville proposes a qualified and multidimensional interpretation of the public spirit in modern democratic revolution. So, he goes beyond rationalist and idealized interpretations of public sphere (as a comprehensive realm of discursive consensus); through Tocqueville's interpretation of democratic society and political culture, the possibility of a de-centered and asymmetrical public sphere is outlined. (shrink)