Charles Taylor is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at McGill University. Author of The Language Animal, Sources of the Self, The Ethics of Authenticity, and A Secular Age, he has received many honors, including the Templeton Prize, the Berggruen Prize, and membership in the Order of Canada. Patrizia Nanz is the Scientific Director at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies and Professor of Transformative Sustainability Studies at the University of Potsdam. She is a coauthor of No Representation Without Consultation: A Citizen’s Guide to Participatory Democracy. Madeleine Beaubien Taylor is the Chief Executive Officer of Network Impact and coauthor of Connecting to Change the World: Harnessing the Power of Networks for Social Impact. She previously taught with the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University.
This is an urgent manifesto for the reconstruction of democratic
belonging in our troubled times. In their theorizing of democracy
as a resonant dynamic of local engagements, civic practices, and
forms of collective agency, Charles Taylor, Patrizia Nanz, and
Madeleine Beaubien Taylor offer robust philosophical and empirical
solutions to the deep need for reestablishing a sense of trust in
citizen participation and solidarity.
*Davide Panagia, author of The Political Life of
Sensation*
Reconstructing Democracy at first glance seems modest in its scope
and aim, but it is actually quite ambitious. Taylor, Nanz, and
Taylor find compelling examples of how engagement by citizens with
other citizens at the most basic level of discussion and
consultation can reshape communities, and in reshaping communities,
reform the public sphere. The various citizen councils, grassroots
organizers, and NGOs they highlight are those that don’t simply
listen to citizens but encourage their active participation. The
effect is to open up a fresh range of ideas for enabling ordinary
citizens to shape the priorities of the places where they live.
*Thomas Dumm, author of Home in America*
This little book serves as a reminder of what’s missing from public
life.
*Inside Higher Ed*
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