The expressive turn of political participation in the digital age
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Transcript of The expressive turn of political participation in the digital age
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!
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