Challenges of Ordinary Democracy : A Case Study in Deliberation and Dissent - Karen Tracy

Challenges of Ordinary Democracy

A Case Study in Deliberation and Dissent

By: Karen Tracy

Paperback | 24 September 2010

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Is there any place in America where passionate debate plays a more vital role in democratic discourse than local school board meetings? Karen Tracy conducted a thirty-five-month study of the board meetings of the Boulder Valley School District between 1996 and 1999 to analyze just how democracy operates in practice. In Challenges of Ordinary Democracy, she reveals the major role that emotion plays in real-life debate and discerns value in what might easily be seen as negative forms of discourse--voicing platitudes, making contradictory assertions, arguing over a document's wording, speaking angrily, attacking a person's character. By illuminating this one arena of "ordinary democracy," Tracy hopes to engender a new appreciation for how what she calls "reasonable hostility" can be a desirable ideal of communication for debating public policy issues.

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“Karen Tracy’s perceptive analysis stays at the ground level; ‘ordinary’ means ‘local’ and ‘observable’ speech that reflects routine concerns--speech that aims to do a solid day’s work in the public world. . . . Her central goal is simply to describe and make sense of the ordinary democratic talk of local government, something as understudied as it is celebrated in political theory. . . . Challenges of Ordinary Democracy posits ‘reasonable hostility’ as the appropriate communicative ideal for local deliberative forums such as school board meetings. . . . Passionate expressions of dissent are to be expected in functioning democratic politics, Tracy concludes, rather than avoided and neutralized. In advocating realism over idealism and by paying close attention to details, Tracy rightly directs those interested in understanding contemporary democracy to the sometimes messy everyday practices in the unassuming places all around us.”

—Albert W. Dzur, Political Science Quarterly

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