Browsing by Subject "Democratic Theory"

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    Action in concert: recasting democratic practices as political friendship.
    (2009-08) Çıdam, Çiğdem
    This dissertation aims to develop a theoretical framework for reconceptualizing spontaneous popular action by relating it explicitly to democratic politics. Developing such a framework is necessary to address the inadequacies which emerge from democratic theory literature `s conceptualization of spontaneous popular action in terms of an unmediated, direct form of collective political act. A conceptualization of this kind is deeply problematic, I argue, because it opens up the way to misleading accounts that assume the immediate unity of different actors who participate in real democratic events. By making this argument, I am not trying to undermine the importance of spontaneous, non-institutional, and extra-parliamentary forms of popular action for democratic politics. On the contrary, I suggest that if we want to fully grasp and evaluate the democratic significance of such instances of popular action, we need an alternative conceptualization that brings to light, rather than erases, the mediatory political and ethical practices that go into the formation of these events. In order to formulate that alternative, I undertake an inquiry that proceeds along two related lines of theorization. First, focusing on the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Antonio Negri and Jürgen Habermas I provide a critical analysis of influential theories of democracy that put popular action at the center of their analyses. In the second "constructive" part of the project, I reinterpret Aristotle's notion of political friendship with a view to construct an alternative way of thinking about democratic politics. Interpreted here as an ongoing activity that involves the collective practices of judging and understanding among different individuals, who deliberate about what is to their interest, choose a course of action, and do what they resolve in common, Aristotle's notion of political friendship makes it possible for us to discern the dynamics of popular action. As such political friendship is a descriptive concept that reveals the mediated and temporal quality of action in concert. It is at the same an ethical concept that embodies the distinctly democratic values of reciprocity and equality, as well as the value of plurality. Understood this way, Aristotle's notion of political friendship provides us with rich conceptual resources to think about and evaluate non-institutional and unpredictable moments of popular action in new ways.
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    Greenhouse Democracy: A Political Theory for Climate Change
    (2017-09) Hobbs-Morgan, Chase
    This dissertation offers a critique of what scholars have called the ‘dominant climate imaginary:’ a way of thinking that animates mainstream climate politics. It proposes in turn a ‘democratic imaginary’ through which to respond to anthropogenic climate change. Through the lens of the dominant imaginary: 1) climate change appears as an essentially technical and scientific problem, 2) the impacts of climate change are presumed to be spatially and/or temporally distant, and 3) individuals and communities implicated in a changing climate are encouraged to accept that countering climate change is primarily the responsibility of distant organizations and institutions. As such, the dominant imaginary provides little room for centering and addressing everyday entanglements with climate change, even as it stymies opportunities for approaching climate change through bottom-up, democratic politics. In response, this dissertation argues that concerned political theorists and activists ought resist the dominant climate imaginary, and proposes the concept of ‘climate violence’ as a means of doing so. Once climate change is understood as a problem of violence – and therefore not only a technical and scientific problem – questions about its political implications are more easily asked. Who is responsible for the problem? Who is most impacted? How should those who are implicated in one way or another think about responsibility for, and democratic responses to, climate change? Having critiqued the dominant imaginary and argued for the concept of climate violence, the dissertation ends with a turn to democratic and feminist political theorists. By putting such theorists into conversation with the problem of climate violence, I end by outlining ‘greenhouse democracy’ a set of ecologically sensitive democratic commitments and provocations. According to greenhouse democracy the experience of living under the threat of climate violence, rather than any official citizenship granted by states, qualifies and invites one to participate in building bottom-up, collective responses to climate violence.