Power and Persuasion from Below: Civic Renewal, Youth Engagement, and the Case for Civic Studies

1. Theme Panel: “Power and Persuasion from Below: Civic Renewal, Youth Engagement, and the Case for Civic Studies,” Aug 30, 2013, 4:15 PM-6:00 PM
Chair: Peter Levine, Tufts University. Participants: Paul Dragos Aligica, George Mason University; Carmen Sirianni, Brandeis University; Karol E. Soltan, University of Maryland; Filippo A. Sabetti McGill University; and Meira Levinson, Harvard University

“Civic renewal” refers to an international set of movements and practices that enhance citizens’ agency and may therefore strengthen persuasion over raw power. In the US, it includes public deliberation, broad-based community organizing, and collaborative governance, among other efforts. Its values have also been reflected in aspects of the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring, to name just two recent global movements. Youth are at the forefront of some of these efforts and must always be incorporated in them. “Civic Studies” is an emerging scholarly field inspired by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom and the Bloomington School, by social science as phronesis, by the new constitutionalism, by theories of public work and democratic professionalism, by research on deliberative democracy, and by related academic movements that take civic agency seriously. Civic education should draw on Civic Studies and support civic renewal.

Open-Access to our newest issue: “Alternatives to Capitalism”

The Good Society 22.1 is now live in both MUSE and JSTOR and is available for free on the JSTOR site. This year, we’re experimenting with an open-access window: the issue will remain open on the JSTOR site until the end of August.

Gar Alperovitz and Steve Dubb offer proposals for “a community-sustaining economy.”

Thomas M. Hanna explores the simple-yet-radical idea of public ownership of “too big to fail” corporations.

Joe Guinan identifies the problems with austerity in Europe.

Marjorie Kelly explains how to shift to “generative ownership” of corporate enterprise.

Thad Williamson develops the constitution of what Rawls called the “property-owning democracy.”

Joel Rogers articulates the specific state and local policies that could enable this transition.

Hard copies of the issue are in the mail. (Subscribe here.)

APSA 2013 Panel: Democratic Theory and Mass Incarceration

Many of the participants in our upcoming symposium on Mass Incarceration will be presenting related papers at the APSA in Chicago this year, co-sponsored by the Division of Political Thought and Philosophy.

Chair: Albert W. Dzur, Bowling Green State University

Visible and Invisible Hands: Seeing the State and its Prisoners

Bernard E. Harcourt, University of Chicago

The Rural Prison Economy

Rebecca U. Thorpe, University of Washington

Sociolegal Positivism and Mass Incarceration

Marianne Constable, University of California, Berkeley

Jonathan Simon. University of California, Berkeley

Doing Ill by Stealth? On the Wisdom of Stealth Penal Policy-making

David A. Green, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Abolition Democracy and Prison Activism: From the New Jim Crow to the New Civil Rights Movement

Lisa Guenther, Vanderbilt

Discussants:

Richard K. Dagger, University of Richmond

Albert W. Dzur, Bowling Green State University