Critical Theory and Democracy


Book Description

Andrew Arato has become a prominentpolitical theoristin the fields of democratic theory, constitutional law, and comparative politics. He has had a profound and global influenceon the thinking ofseveral generations of scholars. The Critical Theory and Democracy of Andrew Arato brings together original essays honouring Arato's intellectual contribution to the field, based round the themes in Arato's work of Critical Theory and Civil Society, Democracy and Dictatorship, and Constitution Making. It includes contributions from leading ...




Critical Theory and Democratic Vision


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dialogue with what Farr calls recent liberation philosophies such as feminism and African-American philosophy. All of these forms ofphilosophy are driven by a democratic impulse whereby we realize that there are many social groups that have been excluded from the democratic decision-making process." --Book Jacket.




Democracy


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Critical Theory in Critical Times


Book Description

We live in critical times. We face a global crisis in economics and finance, a global ecological crisis, and a constant barrage of international disputes. Perhaps most dishearteningly, there seems to be little faith in our ability to address such difficult problems. However, there is also a more positive sense in which these are critical times. The world's current state of flux gives us a unique window of opportunity for shaping a new international order that will allow us to cope with current and future global crises. In Critical Theory in Critical Times, eleven of the most distinguished critical theorists offer new perspectives on recent crises and transformations of the global political and economic order. Essays from Jürgen Habermas, Seyla Benhabib, Cristina Lafont, Rainer Forst, Wendy Brown, Christoph Menke, Nancy Fraser, Rahel Jaeggi, Amy Allen, Penelope Deutscher, and Charles Mills address pressing issues including international human rights and democratic sovereignty, global neoliberalism, novel approaches to the critique of capitalism, critical theory's Eurocentric heritage, and new directions offered by critical race theory and postcolonial studies. Sharpening the conceptual tools of critical theory, the contributors to Critical Theory in Critical Times reveal new ways of expanding the diverse traditions of the Frankfurt School in response to some of the most urgent and important challenges of our times.




Negativity and Democracy


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The current political climate of uncompromising neoliberalism means that the need to study the logic of our culture—that is, the logic of the capitalist system—is compelling. Providing a rich philosophical analysis of democracy from a negative, non-identity, dialectical perspective, Vasilis Grollios encourages the reader not to think of democracy as a call for a more effective domination of the people or as a demand for the replacement of the elite that currently holds power. In doing so, he aspires to fill in a gap in the literature by offering an out-of-the-mainstream overview of the key concepts of totality, negativity, fetishization, contradiction, identity thinking, dialectics and corporeal materialism as they have been employed by the major thinkers of the critical theory tradition: Marx, Engels, Horkheimer, Lukacs, Adorno, Marcuse, Bloch and Holloway. Their thinking had the following common keywords: contradiction, fetishism as a process and the notion of spell and all its implications. The author makes an innovative attempt to bring these concepts to light in terms of their practical relevance for contemporary democratic theory.




Agency, Democracy, and Nature


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In this book Robert Brulle draws on a broad range of empirical and theoretical research to investigate the effectiveness of U.S. environmental groups. Brulle shows how Critical Theory--in particular the work of Jürgen Habermas--can expand our understanding of the social causes of environmental degradation and the political actions necessary to deal with it. He then develops both a pragmatic and a moral argument for broad-based democratization of society as a prerequisite to the achievement of ecological sustainability. From the perspectives of frame analysis, resource mobilization, and historical sociology, using data on more than one hundred environmental groups, Brulle examines the core beliefs, structures, funding, and political practices of a wide variety of environmental organizations. He identifies the social processes that foster the development of a democratic environmental movement and those that hinder it. He concludes with suggestions for how environmental groups can make their organizational practices more democratic and politically effective.




Theories of Democracy


Book Description

This is the first book to be published in this exciting new series on political philosophy. Cunningham provides a critical and clear introduction to the main contemporary approaches to democracy: participatory democracy, classic and radical pluralism, deliberative democracy, catallaxy, and others. Also discussed are theorists in the background of current democratic thought, such as Tocqueville, Mill, and Rousseau. The book includes applications of democratic theories including an extended discussion of democracy and globalisation.




Deliberative Freedom


Book Description

In Deliberative Freedom, Christian F. Rostbøll accepts the common belief that democracy and freedom are intimately related, but he sees this relationship in a new and challenging way. Rostbøll argues that deliberative democracy is normatively committed to multiple dimensions of freedom, and that this, in turn, makes it a distinct model of democracy. He presents a new version of deliberative democracy that rejects the prevailing synthesis of Habermasian critical theory and Rawlsian political liberalism, and contends that this synthesis obscures and neglects important concerns in terms of freedom and emancipation. In addition, Rostbøll explores how the many dimensions of freedom supply a new and fruitful way to address issues such as paternalism, elitism, rationalism, and neutrality.




Democracy in What State?


Book Description

"Is it meaningful to call oneself a democrat? And if so, how do you interpret the word?" In responding to this question, eight iconoclastic thinkers prove the rich potential of democracy, along with its critical weaknesses, and reconceive the practice to accommodate new political and cultural realities. Giorgio Agamben traces the tense history of constitutions and their coexistence with various governments. Alain Badiou contrasts current democratic practice with democratic communism. Daniel Bensaid ponders the institutionalization of democracy, while Wendy Brown discusses the democratization of society under neoliberalism. Jean-Luc Nancy measures the difference between democracy as a form of rule and as a human end, and Jacques Rancière highlights its egalitarian nature. Kristin Ross identifies hierarchical relationships within democratic practice, and Slavoj Zizek complicates the distinction between those who desire to own the state and those who wish to do without it. Concentrating on the classical roots of democracy and its changing meaning over time and within different contexts, these essays uniquely defend what is left of the left-wing tradition after the fall of Soviet communism. They confront disincentives to active democratic participation that have caused voter turnout to decline in western countries, and they address electoral indifference by invoking and reviving the tradition of citizen involvement. Passionately written and theoretically rich, this collection speaks to all facets of modern political and democratic debate.




Technology and Democracy: Toward A Critical Theory of Digital Technologies, Technopolitics, and Technocapitalism


Book Description

As we enter a new millennium, it is clear that we are in the midst of one of the most dramatic technological revolutions in history that is changing everything from the ways that we work, communicate, participate in politics, and spend our leisure time. The technological revolution centers on computer, information, communication, and multimedia technologies, is often interpreted as the beginnings of a knowledge or information society, and therefore ascribes technologies a central role in every aspect of life. This Great Transformation poses tremendous challenges to critical social theorists, citizens, and educators to rethink their basic tenets, to deploy the media in creative and productive ways, and to restructure the workplace, social institutions, and schooling to respond constructively and progressively to the technological and social changes that we are now experiencing.