The Expressive Turn of Political Participation

and Citizenship in the Digital Age

Presentation for E-Democracy Conference 2010Danube University Krems

Austria

Jakob Svensson, Ph.D.

Media and Communication StudiesCentre for HumanIT

Jakob Svensson

•Citizenship

•Digital Late Modernity

•Rationality

•Expressive Rationality

Jakob Svensson

Internet is considered the new arena for citizenship

In digital late modernity, when more and more people socialze, organize, contribute, inform and publish their concerns and themselves online,the rational(s) for political participation and enacting citizenship(s), shifts.

Jakob Svensson

Citizens ≠Human beings in general

Jakob Svensson

Citizens ≠Human beings in general

Centre of power

Jakob Svensson

Citizens ≠Human beings in general

Centre of power

Citizenship as a process in relation to some kind of authority

Jakob Svensson

Citizenship:

1) Membership in a political community

Jakob Svensson

Citizenship:

1) Membership in a political community with

2) rights and duties connected to this membership

Jakob Svensson

Citizenship:

1) Membership in a political community with

2) rights and duties connected to this membership,

3) together with the possibility of free and equal participation to the community’s processes.

Bellamy: 2008

Jakob Svensson

What is the political here? What does the political consists of?

Jakob Svensson

What is the political here? What does the political consists of?

Concerns of the organization and structure of society

Power - equal division society’s common goods

Discursive and relational

Jakob Svensson

Community?

Jakob Svensson

Community?

Community of interest - community of common meaning making practices

Jakob Svensson

Community?

Community of interest - community of common meaning making practices

In late modernity non fixed

Jakob Svensson

Political Community

An ensemble of people concerned with the organization of society and making sense of these concerns in a similar way.

Jakob Svensson

Political Community

An ensemble of people concerned with the organization of society and making sense of these concerns in a similar way.

When people then participate and act upon shared meanings, address issues of the structure of society and the division of its common goods, in relation to an authority, they enter into the practice of citizenship

Jakob Svensson

•Citizenship

•Digital Late Modernity

•Rationality

•Expressive Rationality

Jakob Svensson

Late modernity

(liquid modernity, second modernity, high modernity, reflexive modernity)

Jakob Svensson

Late modernity

(liquid modernity, second modernity, high modernity, reflexive modernity)

- dispersion of cultural frameworks due to pluralization and fragmentation along lines of ethnicity, media consumption, cultural interests, life styles, tastes et cetera

Jakob Svensson

Late modernity

(liquid modernity, second modernity, high modernity, reflexive modernity)

- dispersion of cultural frameworks due to pluralization and fragmentation along lines of ethnicity, media consumption, cultural interests, life styles, tastes et cetera

- Individualization - lacking sense of social belonging and a growing sense of personal autonomy Dahlgren 2006

Jakob Svensson

Late modernity

(liquid modernity, second modernity, high modernity, reflexive modernity)

- dispersion of cultural frameworks due to pluralization and fragmentation along lines of ethnicity, media consumption, cultural interests, life styles, tastes et cetera

- Individualization - lacking sense of soical belonging and a growing sense of personal autonomy Dahlgren 2006

- Networked and digital - Dialectic relationship between societal and technological/ media changes

Jakob Svensson

Late modernity

(liquid modernity, second modernity, high modernity, reflexive modernity)

- dispersion of cultural frameworks due to pluralization and fragmentation along lines of ethnicity, media consumption, cultural interests, life styles, tastes et cetera

- Individualization - lacking sense of soical belonging and a growing sense of personal autonomy Dahögren 2006

- Networked and digital - Dialectic relationship between societal and technological/ media changes

- Sub-politics Beck 1998 /Life politics Giddens 1991

Jakob Svensson

•Citizenship

•Digital Late Modernity

•Rationality

•Expressive Rationality

Jakob Svensson

The instrumental - communicative rationality dichotomy

Revisited - not least because of the deliberative turn

Jakob Svensson

Instrumental Rationality

Rationality as an instrument for reaching pre-defined purposes

Particitipation as an instrument for self-centered purposes

E-administration

Problems: Free riders - costs higher than benefits

Jakob Svensson

Communicative Rationality

Rationality to overcome our inherent subjectivity, strive for enlightenment

Particitipation as a way to talk to each other, form opinions and agre on

courses of action

E-participation

Problems: utopic, motivation

Jakob Svensson

Civic disinterest becomes difficult to explain from from a CR tradition

Late modern civic engagement is difficult to explain from a IR tradition

Jakob Svensson

Civic disinterest becomes difficult to explain from from a CR tradition

Late modern civic engagement is difficult to explain from a IR tradition

Even though deliberating citizens rarely meet the theorists’ strict standards of

communicative rationality, these citizens do speak together, produce and

maintain meanings (communities), identities in a way that theories yet have to

capture

Jakob Svensson

Civic disinterest becomes difficult to explain from from a CR tradition

Late modern civic engagement is difficult to explain from a IR tradition

Even though deliberating citizens rarely meet the theorists’ strict standards of

communicative rationality, these citizens do speak together, produce and

maintain meanings (communities), identities in a way that theories yet have to

capture

hence we need other analytical tools in order to understand citizenship and

political participation, analytical tools that also considers cultural and

technological changes in digital late modernity

Jakob Svensson

•Citizenship

•Digital Late Modernity

•Rationality

•Expressive Rationality

Jakob Svensson

Processes of identification, reflexive self-realization in digital late modernity

Jakob Svensson

Processes of identification, reflexive self-realization in digital late modernity

Expressive preferences ≠market preferences

Jakob Svensson

Processes of identification, reflexive self-realization in digital late modernity

Expressive preferences ≠market preferences

Networked individualism Castells 2001 / the looking glass self Cooley 1902

Jakob Svensson

A focus on self realization and processes of identification concern expressing, maintaining and redefining discourses in order to make participation and deliberation meaningful and relevant for the citizens.

Jakob Svensson

A focus on self realization and processes of identification concern expressing, maintaining and redefining discourses in order to make participation and deliberation meaningful and relevant for the citizens.

This is neither communicative nor instrumental rationality. Citizens are motivated by a will to express, perform, maintain, create and recreate identities and their meanings

Jakob Svensson

A focus on self realization and processes of identification concern expressing, maintaining and redefining discourses in order to make participation and deliberation meaningful and relevant for the citizens.

This is neither communicative nor instrumental rationality. Citizens are motivated by a will to express, perform, maintain, create and recreate identities and their meanings

From this perspective we can understand participation both if citizens are motivated by pre-established self-interest or not, and wether these will change during the deliberation or not

Jakob Svensson

Participation is understood as an act of identity expression

Participation provides participants with meaning

Communities are sustained by such participation

In political communities - citizens participation and meaning making practices/

identity constructions, revolves around the structure and organization of society

Thank you for listening!

jakob.svensson@kau.se

www.kau.se/en/humanit

www.facebook.com/jakob.svensson

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