Suchergebnisse

Abstract
This essay argues that higher education, the authoritative knowledge institution of the age, is a source of growing divisions in the country and also of the dominant theory of power as controlling, politics as partisan warfare, and democracy as customer service. Turning John Dewey's dictum that "education is the midwife of democracy" upside down, higher education trains professionals in every arena to see fellow citizens as clients and consumers to be acted upon, not cocreators of a common life. If higher education feeds the problem, its civic reconstruction is essential for remedy. Such reconstruction needs to draw upon and adapt older understandings of power as "poder," the capacity to act; politics as cross-partisan, negotiating the differences and pluralities of a common life; and democracy as the work of an inclusive "we the people" building a better version of that common life. In such a framework, higher education becomes a genuine commons, a site and catalyst of public resources cocreated and sustained by multiple stakeholders.

Abstract
This article examines the role professionals can play in expanding the concept and practice of democracy. It argues that the ways professionals are usually socialized to understand their work identities and practices displace or even suppress the popular agency of lay citizens and this has contributed significantly to the shrinking of democracy, since professionals play outsized roles in shaping the institutions of today's knowledge societies. Professionals' transformation into citizens who catalyze citizen energies and talents and work as citizens with other citizens is key to broadening the role of citizens from voters and volunteers, to co-creators and civic producers who are responsible for a democratic way of life. Beginning with a discussion of ways in which the "technocratic paradigm" has detached institutions and professional practices and identities from civic and community life and shrunk understandings of democracy, the article examines traditions of public work and citizen professionalism in America, which are important to recall and translate to new circumstances. It presents several case studies and concludes with suggestions of citizen professionalism as a new frontier for higher education and democracy.

Abstract
This article examines the role professionals can play in expanding the concept and practice of democracy. It argues that the ways professionals are usually socialized to understand their work identities and practices displace or even suppress the popular agency of lay citizens and this has contributed significantly to the shrinking of democracy, since professionals play outsized roles in shaping the institutions of today's knowledge societies. Professionals' transformation into citizens who catalyze citizen energies and talents and work as citizens with other citizens is key to broadening the role of citizens from voters and volunteers, to co-creators and civic producers who are responsible for a democratic way of life. Beginning with a discussion of ways in which the "technocratic paradigm" has detached institutions and professional practices and identities from civic and community life and shrunk understandings of democracy, the article examines traditions of public work and citizen professionalism in America, which are important to recall and translate to new circumstances. It presents several case studies and concludes with suggestions of citizen professionalism as a new frontier for higher education and democracy.

This essay locates deliberation and deliberative theory as an important strand in a larger interdisciplinary and political movement, civic agency. The civic agency movement, and its related politics, a politics of civic empowerment, include a set of developing practices and concepts which enhance the capacities of diverse groups of people to work across differences to solve problems, create things of common value, and negotiate a shared democratic way of life. Stirrings of civic agency can be seen in many settings, including efforts to recover the civic purposes and revitalize the civic cultures of institutions such as schools and colleges.

Abstract
This reflection on Ian Shapiro's recent book, Politics against Domination, argues that there are strengths to conceiving of politics as a struggle against domination but the argument neglects the actual democratic politics of actual movements such as the African American freedom struggle. In the civil rights movement, in particular, nonviolence added to older understandings of politics as engagement across difference a view of positive liberty, recently described by theorists such as Karuna Mantena and Danielle Allen. This understanding of nonviolence as positive liberty has enormous relevance for our time. It finds expression in significant actual civic practices.

Abstract
Pope Francis authored Laudato Si' as a statement on climate change, and it has provoked intense discussion and debate on climate around the world. The statement's contributions to the topic are most welcome.1 Yet few have noted the encyclical's resources for addressing a more general crisis in the contemporary world, a crisis of democracy understood as collective agency.2 This crisis erodes human capacities to address a multitude of challenges, from climate change to sectarian warfare, from economic and racial inequalities to public health and educational reform. In this essay, I argue that the encyclical has significant contributions to make not only for analyzing the crisis but also for catalyzing a democratic awakening. The encyclical, from this vantage, complements the field of civic studies.

This essay locates deliberation and deliberative theory as an important strand in a larger interdisciplinary and political movement, civic agency. The civic agency movement, and its related politics, a politics of civic empowerment, include a set of developing practices and concepts which enhance the capacities of diverse groups of people to work across differences to solve problems, create things of common value, and negotiate a shared democratic way of life. Stirrings of civic agency can be seen in many settings, including efforts to recover the civic purposes and revitalize the civic cultures of institutions such as schools and colleges.