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Questioning the boundaries between politics and economics

 

Jean-Louis Laville’s large body of work has focused on an intellectual history of the concept of solidarity since the Industrial Revolution. In The Solidarity Economy, his most famous distillation of this work, Laville establishes how the formations of economic solidarities (unions, activism, and other forms of associationalism) reveal that the boundaries between politics and economics are porous and structured such that politics, ideally a pure expression of ethics and values, is instead integrated with economic concerns. 

Exploring the possibilities and long histories of association, The Solidarity Economy identifies the power of contemporary social and solidarity movements and examines the history of postcapitalist practices in which democratic demands invade the heart of the economy. The Solidarity Economy ranges in focus from workers associations in France dating back to the nineteenth century, to associations of African Americans and feminists in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to a Brazilian landless-worker coalition in the twentieth century. 

Studying solidarity associations over time allows us to examine how we can recombine the economic and political spheres to address dependencies and inequalities. Ultimately, The Solidarity Economy has global scope and inspiring examples of associations that deepen democracy.

Never before has the idea of democracy enjoyed the global dominance it holds today, but neoliberalism has left the practice of democracy in deep crisis.

Marianne Maeckelbergh argues that the most promising model for global democracy is not coming from traditional political parties or international institutions, but from the global networks of resistance to neoliberal economics, known collectively as the Alter-globalisation movement. Through extensive ethnography of decision-making practices within these movements, Maeckelbergh describes an alternative form of global democracy in the making.

Perfect for activists and students of political anthropology, this powerful and enlightening book offers radical changes.

From theater to virtual reality, we find ourselves making sense of imagined worlds that surround us. Our experience of democracy in the twenty-first century is similar: we are spectators to politics, immersed in 24-hour news, joining candidates on the campaign trail, reflecting on civic life and national memory in spaces of culture. Theater and Democracy in an Era of Immersion draws on extensive interviews with artists to develop a theory of immersive spectatorship as political action, arguing that through our experience of art, we can cultivate practices to navigate the disorientations and disenchantments of our democracy. This theory complements and complicates debates over the democratic promise of participatory performance by theorizing a mode of spectatorship that cuts across media, disciplines, genres, and everyday experiences. 

James R. Ball III investigates phenomena that compose our experience of democracy, including campaign trail debates and rallies; electoral microtargeting; misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theory; sonic weapons and psychic spying; political assassination; racist state violence; public commemoration; AI in government; and the democratic work of mourning. Theater and Democracy in an Era of Immersion provides a unique performance studies intervention into political theory, indicating new avenues for research into political spectatorship and the theatricality of deliberative and ocular democracy.

In this pair of essays, award-winning journalists Hrvoje Šimičević and Barbara Matejčić expose the turn in Croatia’s political trends, showing how “moderate” pro-European governments have opened the floodgates for far-right radicalism and fascism to transition from the societal fringes into the mainstream. Šimičević weaves these histories around a chilling turning point: a Thompson concert in which hundreds of thousands chanted the Ustaše salute. Matejčić then reveals the civic response and defiant resistance to the politics of fear and escalating attacks against Serbians and other minorities. At the heart of these texts is a struggle over the meaning of Croatia itself: will it belong to the loudest voices or to all who live there?

U ova dva eseja, nagrađivani novinari Hrvoje Šimičević i Barbara Matejčić opisuju političke promjene u Hrvatskoj, pokazujući kako su samozvane umjerene proeuropske vlade imale ključnu ulogu u pomicanju fašizma i krajnje desnog radikalizma s društvenih rubova u političku srednju struju. Šimičević plete povijest te pojave oko jezive prekretnice: Thompsonovog koncerta na kojem su stotine tisuća posjetitelja izvikivale ustaški pozdrav. Matejčić zatim prikazuje odgovor građana i prkosan otpor politici straha i eskalaciji napada na Srbe i druge manjine. U srži ovih tekstova leži borba za značenje Hrvatske: hoće li zemlja pripadati onima koji najglasnije viču ili svima koji u njoj žive?

An enlightening examination of what it means when Americans rely on family and friends to stay on top of politics.

Accurate information is at the heart of democratic functioning. For decades, researchers interested in how information is disseminated have focused on mass media, but the reality is that many Americans today do not learn about politics from direct engagement with the news. Rather, about one-third of Americans learn chiefly from information shared by their peers in conversation or on social media. How does this socially transmitted information differ from that communicated by traditional media? What are the consequences for political attitudes and behavior?

Drawing on evidence from experiments, surveys, and social media, Taylor N. Carlson finds that, as information flows first from the media then person to person, it becomes sparse, more biased, less accurate, and more mobilizing. The result is what Carlson calls distorted democracy. Although socially transmitted information does not necessarily render democracy dysfunctional, Through the Grapevine shows how it contributes to a public that is at once underinformed, polarized, and engaged.

A stirring exploration of abolitionist thought and Black feminism to articulate a transformative theory of repair

Amid the relentless news of ICE raids, Supreme Court rulings that dismantle our civil rights, and egregious violations of democratic norms, people in the United States are struggling to visualize an actionable path forward. In To Turn the World Around, Ali Aslam proposes a transformative approach that pairs inner healing work with collective external engagement challenging oppressive forces. To actualize W. E. B. DuBois’s concept of abolition democracy, drawing from Black sociality grounded in the refusal of white institutions, Aslam advocates for not working within a broken system nor fleeing it, or merely enduring injustice, and instead offers combined personal healing and embodied action.

Aslam’s vision of transformative selfhood centers healing justice, self and mutual aid, and a somatic approach informed by Black women’s history of navigating bodily dispossession and violations of autonomy and personhood. Simultaneously a tool of personal survival, political refusal, and collective care, inner work incubates new forms of resistance and prepares participants to engage with the outer work of abolition. The movements that rise from the foundation of this inner work are collaborative and experimental, a collective “figuring out” that creates holistic approaches to abolition that transcend conventional politics.

Reimagining inner work as resistance that is ongoing, expansive, and relational, To Turn the World Around offers a stirring framework for the creation of transformational movements. Aslam’s unique theory of repair carefully bridges constituencies, acknowledging the politics of refusal while embracing the hopefulness of sociality.

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A compelling exploration of the idea that enables diverse people to live together with respect, dignity, and understanding.

Most regard toleration as an unattractive fallback position of compromise and so tend to overlook it in favor of such active concepts as freedom, equality, and justice. Fotion and Elfstrom argue that toleration offers us the useful possibility of responding to a difficult situation with a degree of flexibility not possible with the dichotomous concepts of good-bad, right-wrong, ethical-unethical, Right-Left.

Tolerating saturates ordinary human life and infuses public discussions of religion, morality, and politics. It forms a major strand in the history of Western European thought. Yet the word “toleration” and similar terms are rarely used. Unnoticed and unremarked, they are like the air that surrounds us, vitally important yet invisible.The authors seek to address this oversight in several ways. They begin with a thorough conceptual analysis of toleration and its kindred concepts. They are convinced that an appreciation of the importance of the family of toleration concepts must be founded on an understanding of the various ways in which they function in our language and our lives. In addition, they examine the historical development of the concept of toleration and canvass the major arguments people have employed either to urge toleration or to disparage it. They examine the role of toleration in liberal political philosophy and respond to the major critics of liberal toleration.

The authors also discuss a number of factors that cause toleration to be overlooked in political debate and personal reflection and offer evidence to support the view that this omission is unfortunate. In particular, they argue that toleration has the crucial role of helping people live with one another with respect and dignity in the fractious and contentious world we inhabit. With the rise of racism and other forms of religious, political, and social intolerance, people on all sides of the present debates concerning multi-culturalism and diversity will benefit from this timely and lucidly argued philosophical discussion of the concepts of toleration and its possible application in a less-than-perfect world.

Tracing the erosion of democratic norms in the US and the conditions that make it possible

Jonathan Beecher Field tracks the permutations of the town hall meeting from its original context as a form of democratic community governance in New England into a format for presidential debates and a staple of corporate governance. In its contemporary iteration, the town hall meeting models the aesthetic of the former but replaces actual democratic deliberation with a spectacle that involves no immediate electoral stakes or functions as a glorified press conference. Urgently, Field notes that though this evolution might be apparent, evidence suggests many US citizens don’t care to differentiate.

Forerunners: Ideas First
Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead 

At Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln described government by the people as “the great task remaining before us.” Many citizens of modern America, frustrated and disheartened, are tempted to despair of realizing that ideal. Yet, it is a project still alive in parts of New England. 

This book traces the origins of town-meeting democracy in Ashfield, a community of just under 2,000 people in the foothills of the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. Donald Robinson begins by recounting several crises at the town's founding in the eighteenth century that helped to shape its character. He shows how the town has changed since then and examines how democratic self-government functions in the modern context. 

The picture is not pretty. Self-government carries no guarantees, and Ashfield is no utopia. Human failings are abundantly on display. Leaders mislead. Citizens don't pay attention and they forget hard-earned lessons. 

But in this candid account of the operation of democracy in one New England town, Robinson demonstrates that for better and for worse, Ashfield governs itself democratically. Citizens control the actions of their government. Not everyone participates, but all may, and everyone who lives in the town must accept and obey what town meeting decides.

Examining truth, expertise, and authority in the contemporary United States

In an era defined by accusations of “fake news,” declining institutional trust, and deepening political polarization, Truth After Post-Truth reframes the debate about knowledge and democracy in the United States. Rather than treating the so-called post-truth crisis as a failure of public reasoning or the product of bad-faith actors and digital misinformation, this interdisciplinary volume argues that the problem runs deeper and that solutions require renewed democratic deliberation about how public knowledge itself should be produced, evaluated, and shared.

Contributors move beyond familiar diagnoses that blame either misinformed citizens or manipulative media systems. Instead, they interrogate the intellectual and political norms that underwrite claims about truth, expertise, and authority. This book challenges the assumption that restoring democracy depends on returning the public to a fixed set of knowledge practices and calls instead for open debate about which norms and institutions best serve a pluralistic society. Organized around three urgent questions—what relationship a healthy democracy should have to experts, whether a shared and cross-partisan news sphere is necessary or achievable, and whether media reform or media literacy is the more pressing priority—the essays are rigorous, provocative, and often in productive tension with one another. Together, they model the kind of critical engagement needed to rebuild a more resilient democratic information environment.

Timely and forward-looking, Truth After Post-Truth will be essential reading for readers concerned with the future of democratic public life, as well as for scholars and students of media, politics, and communication.

Contributors include the volume editors as well as Mark Andrejevic, Matt Carlson, Vivek Chibber,  Belinha de Abreu, John Nerone, Whitney Phillips, Sue Robinson, Michael Schudson, Nik Usher, Andrea Wenzel, and Alex Worsnip.