Making Public Pasts

Making Public Pasts
Author: Alan Gordon
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780773522541

It conscripts historical events in a bid to guide shared memories into a coherent narrative that helps individuals negotiate their place in broader collective identities." "The contest over public memories involves an exclusiveness that packages "other" according to the ideological preferences of the dominant cultures. Gordon shows that in Montreal ethnic, class, and gender voices strove to stake their own claims to legitimacy."--BOOK JACKET.

Overcoming Polarization in the Public Square

Overcoming Polarization in the Public Square
Author: Lauren Swayne Barthold
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2020-06-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030455866

This book describes how civic dialogue can serve as an antidote to a polarized public square. It argues that when pervasive polarization renders rational and fact-based argumentation ineffective, we first need to engage in a way that builds trust. Civic dialogue is a form of structured discourse that utilizes first-person narratives in order to promote trust, openness, and mutual understanding. By creating a dialogic structure that encourages listening and reflection, particularities and differences about fraught identities can be expressed in such a way that leads to the possibility of connecting through our fundamental, shared, and deeply felt humanity. Drawing on Plato, Buber, Gadamer, Dewey, cognitive bias research, as well as the work of dialogue practitioners, Lauren Swayne Barthold provides a sustained defense of civic dialogue as an effective strategy for avoiding futile political arguments and for creating pluralistic democratic communities.

Creating Space for Democracy

Creating Space for Democracy
Author: Timothy J. Shaffer
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2023-07-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000980138

Published in Association with and We live in divisive and polarizing times, often remaining in comfortable social bubbles and experiencing few genuine interactions with people who are different or with whom we disagree. Stepping out and turning to one another is difficult but necessary. For our democracy to thrive at a time when we face wicked problems that involve tough trade-offs it is vital that all citizens participate fully in the process. We need to learn to listen, think, and act with others to solve public problems. This collaborative task begins with creating space for democracy. This book provides a guide for doing so on campus through deliberation and dialogue.At the most basic level, this book describes collaborative and relational work to engage with others and co-create meaning. Specifically, dialogue and deliberation are processes in which a diverse group of people moves toward making a collective decision on a difficult public issue.This primer offers a blueprint for achieving the civic mission of higher education by incorporating dialogue and deliberation into learning at colleges and universities. It opens by providing a conceptual framework, with leading voices in the dialogue and deliberation field providing insights on issues pertinent to college campuses, from free speech and academic freedom to neutrality and the role of deliberation in civic engagement. Subsequent sections describe a diverse range of methods and approaches used by several organizations that pioneered and sustained deliberative practices; outline some of the many ways in which educators and institutions are using dialogue and deliberation in curricular, co-curricular, and community spaces, including venues such as student centers, academic libraries, and residence halls. All of the chapters, including a Resource Section, provide readers with a starting point for conceptualizing and implementing their own deliberation and dialogue initiatives.This book, intended for all educators who are concerned about democracy, imparts the power and impact of public talk, offers the insights and experiences of leading practitioners, and provides the grounding to adopt or adapt the models in their own settings to create educative spaces and experiences that are humanizing, authentic, and productive. It is an important resource for campus leaders, student affairs practitioners, librarians, and centers of institutional diversity, community engagement, teaching excellence and service-learning, as well as faculty, particularly those in the fields of communication studies, education, and political science.Click here for more information on AAC&U and Campus Compact.

Democracy, Dialogue, and Environmental Disputes

Democracy, Dialogue, and Environmental Disputes
Author: Bruce A. Williams
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1998-04-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780300075540

At every level of government, environmental regulation is under siege. In Washington, it has been attacked first through the "New Federalism" and now through the "Contract with America." Outside the capital, environmental regulation is the subject of controversy as state and local officials struggle with new responsibilities, threats of industry exit, and challenges from grassroots groups. This book addresses the conundrum of regulation by tracing its source to the competing characterizations of regulatory legitimacy that have accompanied the growth of the American state. Bruce Williams and Albert Matheny identify three distinct languages--managerial, pluralist, and communitarian--used to articulate competing visions of regulation. They argue that each language posits a different understanding of the public interest and therefore a different relationship between the state, the market, and the public. Because all three languages are invoked in regulatory debates, disputants talk past one another, leaving fundamental issues of legitimacy and democracy unresolved or masked by unexamined assumptions. The authors propose a dialogic model for analyzing regulatory policymaking, drawing on postmodernist theory that claims that establishing single languages for understanding the world inevitably distorts communication. They then apply their analysis to case studies of actual environmental disputes over hazardous waste regulation in the 1980s and 1990s in New Jersey, Ohio, and Florida.

Argument as Dialogue Across Difference

Argument as Dialogue Across Difference
Author: Jennifer Clifton
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2016-11-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317214412

In the spirit of models of argument starting with inquiry, this book starts with a question: What might it mean to teach argument in ways that open up spaces for change—changes of mind, changes of practice and policy, changes in ways of talking and relating? The author explores teaching argument in ways that take into account the complexities and pluralities young people face as they attempt to enact local and global citizenship with others who may reasonably disagree. The focus is foremost on social action—the hard, hopeful work of finding productive ways forward in contexts where people need to work together across difference to get something worthwhile done.

Constructing Post-Colonial India

Constructing Post-Colonial India
Author: Sanjay Srivastava
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2005-09-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134683596

An interdisciplinary, engaging book which looks at the nature of Indian society since Independence. By focusing on the Doon school, a famous boarding school in India, it unpacks what post-colonialism means to Indian citizens.

Public Dialogue and Participatory Democracy

Public Dialogue and Participatory Democracy
Author: Shawn J. Spano
Publisher: Hampton Press (NJ)
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2001
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This text presents a case-study account of a community project designed to enhance the quality of public communication through assisting academics, public professionals, and communication practitioners in developing community-building programmes.

Dialogue in Politics

Dialogue in Politics
Author: Lawrence N. Berlin
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2012
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027210357

The volume considers politics as cooperative group action and takes the position that forms of government can be posited on a continuum with endpoints where governance is shared, and where hegemony dictates, ranging from politics as interaction to politics as imposition. Similarly, dialogue and dialogic action can be superimposed on the same continuum lying between truly collaborative where co-participants exchange ideas in a cooperative manner and dominated by an absolute position where dialogue proceeds along prescribed paths. The chapters address the continuum between these endpoints and present illuminating and persuasive analyses of dialogue in politics, covering motions of support, the relationship between politics and the press, interviews, debates, discussion forums and multimodal media analyses across different discourse domains and different cultural contexts from Africa to the Middle East, and from the United States to Europe.