Culture And Democracy

This special issue of Public Culture draws on work in anthropology, political theory, and postcolonial studies to propose that democratic strategies and practices in differing countries are affected by their cultures, histories and their reception or resi

The underlying question of this collection of essays focuses on the very core of our democratic culture. It asks how one can actively take part in its political, legal, educational, informational, social, cultural and economic mechanisms. Advanced technologies have given rise to a vast array of tools enabling a culture of participation. New forms of civic engagement have emerged, as well as a new conceptualization of active citizenship. These developments encouraged the authors of this collection to address legal, social, political, philosophical, and media aspects of the emancipatory potential of participatory democracy. They focus on specific case studies stretching across various places and spheres, from the Canadian media legislature, community organizing in low-income neighbourhoods of the USA, the Knesset of Israel, the Roma minority in Poland, and legal texts of Austria, to the online sphere of art and digital democracy. The key advantage of this book thus lies in its multifaceted consideration of seemingly disparate, yet highly intertwined and ubiquitous, concepts of democratic societies around the globe.

Cultural Democracy explores the crisis of our national cultural vitality, as access to the arts becomes increasingly mediated by a handful of corporations and the narrow tastes of wealthy elites. Graves offers the concept of cultural democracy as corrective--an idea with important historic and contemporary validation, and an alternative pathway toward ethical cultural development that is part of a global shift in values. Drawing upon a range of scholarship and illustrative anecdotes from his own experiences with cultural programs in ethnically diverse communities, Graves explains in convincing detail the dynamics of how traditional and grassroots cultures may survive and thrive--or not--and what we can do to provide them opportunities equal to those of mainstream, Eurocentric culture.

The authors interviewed over 5,000 citizens in Germany, Italy, Mexico, Great Britain, and the U.S. to learn political attitudes in modem democratic states. Originally published in 1963. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In his new introduction, Whitfield sets the scene of the early twentieth century to show what inspired Horace Kallen to write this book. He delves deeply into his background, discussing the influences on Kallen's life and work. Whitfield also examines the many changes that have occurred since Culture and Democracy in the United States was first written, and reveals that many of the ideas espoused by Kallen have become reality.

This volume addresses the key question of the intersection of sociology and politics, and asks what a non-Marxist cultural perspective can offer the Left. Written by leading scholars, it develops new conceptions of social critique, new techniques of interpretive analysis, and new concepts for the sociology of democratic practice. It is a volume for the twenty-first-century, where global and local meet, when critical theory must examine its most fundamental presuppositions.

The essays of Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic György Lukács from 1945 to 1948, including the influential volume Literature and Democracy, are presented here for the first time in English translation, with an introduction and annotations by the editor.

This book discusses how public cultural policies can relate to the principle political issue of democracy. Here, democratic cultural policies include ideas and ideologies, institutional structures, agents and interests, power, access and participation and distribution of economic resources. Contributors focus on analysing the relationship between a political system and culture and the arts as an empirical field. They critically consider questions such as: How do different democratic forms affect cultural policy consequences? Can cultural autonomy be combined with cultural democracy? How is cultural policy-making used as a political process and which interests are involved? What position does popular culture have in cultural policies? How does a former Soviet state like Lithuania handle the question of culture and democracy? What does it mean when UNESCO talks about cultural diversity? How did intellectuals act in cultural policy debates in France in the late 19th century? The volume also looks at whether the democratisation of culture is actually possible. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Cultural Policy.