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Challenges of Ordinary Democracy:

A Case Study in Deliberation and Dissent

ISBN-13: 9780271036908
Publisher: PENN STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Imprint: PENN STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
By Karen Tracy
Price: AUD $67.99
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Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
Local release date: 24/09/2010
Format: Paperback 264 pages Weight: 0g
Categories: linguistics [CF]

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Analyzes the practice and meanings of democratic decision making through an extended case study of school board meetings in one western U.S. community. Argues that for communication conduct in local governance bodies, reasonable hostility is a more promising ideal than civility.

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

1. Public Meetings: Ordinary Democracy’s Home

2. A Historical Snapshot: Three Years of BVSD Life

3. “Democracy”: An Ideal with Traction

4. Citizen Participation, Doing Dissent

5. Newspapers in the Cycle of Political Upheaval

6. The Campaign: The Usefulness of Platitudes and Personal Attack

7. A Fight over Words and Policy

8. One Meeting: Six Observations

9. Reasonable Hostility in Ordinary Democracy

Postscript: Education Governance in Twenty-First-Century America

Appendix: The Method and Data

References

Index

“Karen Tracy’s perceptive analysis stays at the ground level; ‘ordinary’ means ‘local’ and ‘observable’ speech that reflects routine concerns--speech that aims to do a solid day’s work in the public world. . . . Her central goal is simply to describe and make sense of the ordinary democratic talk of local government, something as understudied as it is celebrated in political theory. . . . Challenges of Ordinary Democracy posits ‘reasonable hostility’ as the appropriate communicative ideal for local deliberative forums such as school board meetings. . . . Passionate expressions of dissent are to be expected in functioning democratic politics, Tracy concludes, rather than avoided and neutralized. In advocating realism over idealism and by paying close attention to details, Tracy rightly directs those interested in understanding contemporary democracy to the sometimes messy everyday practices in the unassuming places all around us.”

—Albert W. Dzur, Political Science Quarterly

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Challenges of Ordinary Democracy:

A Case Study in Deliberation and Dissent