Provides an in-depth summary for all required readings for the course Politics of Difference. I averaged an 8.5 on the quizzes for it and I only used these readings. All texts have been summarised.
Politics of Difference UvA Y2 202 1
Lecture 2: 2
Young: “Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy” 2
Bennett & Livingston: “A Brief History of the Disinformation Age: Information Wars and the
Decline of Institutional Authority 4
Lecture 3: 7
Habermas and Taylor: Dialogue 7
Mahmood: “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the
Egyptian Islamic Revival” 8
Lecture 4: 10
Malkki: “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National
Identity among Scholars and Refugees” 10
Scott: “Cities, People and Language” 11
Lecture 5: 13
Anderson: “What is the point of Equality? 13
Lecture 6: 16
Piketty: Introduction 16
Scholz: “Wage Labour and the end of Unemployment” 19
Lecture 7: 20
Wekker: “...For Even Though I am Black as Soot, My Intentions are Good” 20
Quijano: “The Coloniality of Power” 22
Hall: “Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities” 23
Lecture 8: 24
Appiah: “Classification” 24
Polletta & Jasper: “Collective Identity and Social Movements” 25
Lecture 9: 26
Pateman: “Contracting In” 26
Hooks: “Rethinking the Nature of Work” 26
Connell: constructions of masculinity 27
Celis, K. et al.: “Introduction: Gender and Politics: A Gendered World, a Gendered
Discipline” 27
Lecture 10: 27
Philips: “Descriptive representation revisited” 27
Aydemir and Vliegenhart: “Minority Representatives in the Netherlands: Supporting,
silencing or suppressing?” 28
Dahlerup: “Gender Quotas” Report by international IDEA 29
Lecture 11: 29
Pelka: “Introduction: What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights
Movement” 29
Aciksoz: “Sacrificial Lambs of Sovereignty: Disabled Veterans, Masculinity and Nationalist
, Politics in Turkey” 30
Lecture 2:
Young: “Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy”
Aim: proposing revisions to the approach of deliberative democracy
This is done by:
1. Understanding differences of culture, social perspective as resources to draw on for researching
democratic discussion rather than divisions
2. Expanded conception of democratic communication
The Model of Deliberative Democracy
- Deliberative democracy is contrasted with interest-based model of democracy
- Interest-based conception: democracy as a process of expressing one’s preferences and demands
and voting for them (which decisions will serve the greatest number of people)
→ self-interested votes
- Deliberative conception: democracy as a process that creates a public sphere
→ citizens come together and discuss their own problems
→ rather than competing for the private good of each, the common good is discussed
→ through deliberation private preferences are transformed according to public-minded ends
→ politics as the way of meeting of people to decide public ends and policies in a rational way
→ promotes a conception of reason over power in politics
→ democracy requires an equal voice for all citizens to press their claims, regardless of social
position or power
→ to be rational, participants need to be free and equal
Exclusionary Implications of the Deliberative Model
- The social power prevents people from being equal speakers (economic and political domination
but also from an internalized sense of whether they have the right to speak)
- Even if we eliminate the influence of economic and political domination, we will also have to
eliminate their cultural differences and different social positions because this model assumes
deliberation is culturally neutral and universal
→ the norms of deliberation are culturally specific and will devalue speech of some people on the
basis of their origins (there is value on what is considered to be the most desirable choice for the
public)
- Deliberation becomes a competition in parliamentary debates
- Norms of deliberation privilege speech that is general and formal (specific to culture)
→ politicians who exhibit the speech present in the dominant culture tend to be favored
- Different type of speech tends to be favored: neutral, not expressive, strong, controlled
She proposes: a model of communicative democracy
, Deliberative Model Assumes Unity
- Unity as a prior condition of deliberation
→ but we cannot assume that there are many shared understandings in a modern society to which
we can appeal to in times of conflict
→ Ignores self-transcendence
- Unity as the goal of political discourse
→ differences are transcendable then
→ the perspectives of the privileged are likely to dominate the discussion
Considering a Different Resource
- Some unity is a condition for successful democratic discourse (i.e. living in the same polity)
- Commitment to respecting one another is necessary
- Procedural rules and fair decision-making and discussion must be agreed upon
- Significant interdependence
- We can better understand how interactions transforms preferences in a commutative democracy
because we will encounter differences rather than presupposed neutrality
→ perspectives are not reducible to the common good
- Condition of publicity → situating own experiences for the sake of understanding the
implications of policy decisions
- Experience and perspective can transcend own subjectivity → understanding this leads to a
transformation in preference
This occurs through:
1. Confrontation with a different perspective, my own experience then becomes a perspective
2. Knowledge that I am in a situation of collective problem solving it with others who are different
from me
→ respecting this
→ forces me to transform my expression of self-interest into justice
3. Expressing, questioning and challenging different knowledge adds to the social knowledge of all
participants
→ new things are understood about the proposals from different POVs (your own perspective
doesn’t need to change)
The Breadth of Communicative Democracy
- Rhetoric: knowing how to please an audience
→ but there is a difference between good rhetoric and bad rhetoric
- Critical thinking: displeases the audience but leads them to shed comfortable falsehoods
3 elements that can broaden the conception of communicative democracy:
- Greeting: aim is to reach understanding during dialogue where the parties recognize each other’s
particularity (i.e. “nice!”, “how are you?”, “thank you!” as well as gestures, forms of flattery,
body language)
→ helps establish trust and respect
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