Democratic Situations

Democratic Situations challenges researchers and students in Science & Technology Studies and related fields to treat democracy as an empirical phenomenon. This means leaving behind off-the-shelf theoretical notions of democracy that may have travelled into STS unexamined. The alternative strategy p...

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Format: Online
Language:English
Published: Mattering Press 2024
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Online Access:OCN: 1419649732
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collection Directory of Open Access Books
description Democratic Situations challenges researchers and students in Science & Technology Studies and related fields to treat democracy as an empirical phenomenon. This means leaving behind off-the-shelf theoretical notions of democracy that may have travelled into STS unexamined. The alternative strategy pursued in this volume is to pay as much analytical attention to the study of democratic politics as STS has previously offered to familiar topics of science and technology. This timely collection of empirical stories and conceptual inventions leads the way by showing how the making and doing of democracy can be placed at the centre of relational research. The book turns the well-known sites of contemporary Euro-American participatory democracy, such as elections, bureaucracies, public debate and citizen participation, into fluctuating democratic situations where supposedly untouchable democratic ideals are shaped, contested and warped in practice. The fact that Euro-American participatory democracy is often upheld as an ideal for the rest of the world makes it all the more important to study how it is a situated, distributed, material, emergent, heterogenous, fragile and at times faltering figure and project. Through situated analyses, the authors demonstrate that democracy cannot be reduced to theoretical ideals and schemes of conflict, institutions, or deliberation. Instead, the volume offers an urgently needed empirically driven renewal of our understanding of democratic politics in a time when conventional ideas increasingly fail to capture current events such as Brexit, Trump and Covid19. The twelve chapters are organised into three sections. The first part, entitled Interfaces of technodemocracy, focuses on how democratic politics is co-shaped by its interfaces with more or less rigid institutions and bureaucracies. The second section, Technosciences, democracy and situated enactments of participation, emphasises the relationships between science and public participation. The third part called Reconfigurations of democratic politics with new nonhuman actors focuses on the role of material objects, especially new digital technologies, in democratic politics.
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publishDate 2024
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1334922025-07-17T10:00:17Z Democratic Situations Birkbak, Andreas Politics and government thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government Democratic Situations challenges researchers and students in Science & Technology Studies and related fields to treat democracy as an empirical phenomenon. This means leaving behind off-the-shelf theoretical notions of democracy that may have travelled into STS unexamined. The alternative strategy pursued in this volume is to pay as much analytical attention to the study of democratic politics as STS has previously offered to familiar topics of science and technology. This timely collection of empirical stories and conceptual inventions leads the way by showing how the making and doing of democracy can be placed at the centre of relational research. The book turns the well-known sites of contemporary Euro-American participatory democracy, such as elections, bureaucracies, public debate and citizen participation, into fluctuating democratic situations where supposedly untouchable democratic ideals are shaped, contested and warped in practice. The fact that Euro-American participatory democracy is often upheld as an ideal for the rest of the world makes it all the more important to study how it is a situated, distributed, material, emergent, heterogenous, fragile and at times faltering figure and project. Through situated analyses, the authors demonstrate that democracy cannot be reduced to theoretical ideals and schemes of conflict, institutions, or deliberation. Instead, the volume offers an urgently needed empirically driven renewal of our understanding of democratic politics in a time when conventional ideas increasingly fail to capture current events such as Brexit, Trump and Covid19. The twelve chapters are organised into three sections. The first part, entitled Interfaces of technodemocracy, focuses on how democratic politics is co-shaped by its interfaces with more or less rigid institutions and bureaucracies. The second section, Technosciences, democracy and situated enactments of participation, emphasises the relationships between science and public participation. The third part called Reconfigurations of democratic politics with new nonhuman actors focuses on the role of material objects, especially new digital technologies, in democratic politics. 2024-01-25T04:10:24Z 2024-01-25T04:10:24Z 2024-01-24T14:23:37Z 2022 book OCN: 1419649732 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/87172 9781912729302 9781912729135 9781912729319 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/133492 eng open access image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/87172/1/Democratic_Situations_9781912729128.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/87172/1/Democratic_Situations_9781912729128.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/87172/1/Democratic_Situations_9781912729128.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/87172/1/Democratic_Situations_9781912729128.pdf Mattering Press 10.28938/9781912729302 10.28938/9781912729302 cc75b5a6-8f3f-4412-bf4e-26e8d3b68bf0 9781912729302 9781912729135 9781912729319 274 Manchester open access
spellingShingle Politics and government
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government
Democratic Situations
title Democratic Situations
title_full Democratic Situations
title_fullStr Democratic Situations
title_full_unstemmed Democratic Situations
title_short Democratic Situations
title_sort democratic situations
topic Politics and government
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government
topic_facet Politics and government
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government
url OCN: 1419649732