Social activism and dissent have become global phenomena for our times. Ordinary people across the world are fighting back. This newly potent political force has defeated governments in India and Spain, and has brought down the EU draft constitution. Disaffected by the triumph of markets, public goods, public interest and public spaces are regaining political ground.
Daniel Drache argues that, feeding off distrust and suspicion of governments, and assisted by the new cultural flows of people, ideas and information, this is a political phenomenon without historical precedent. No-one owns the new public, elites remain baffled by its power and impact. No-one can contain its innovative, inclusive and rapidly evolving organizational style. No-one can determine when the current cycle of dissent will peak.
This lively and engaging book is a must-read for anyone interested in the role of protesters and publics in contemporary politics.
Table of Contents:
List of figures vii
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: Goals and Values that are Inescapably Public 1
1 The Crowded Public Sphere and its Discontents 24
2 Market Fundamentalism and the Worried Public 54
3 Digital Publics and the Culture of Dissent 89
4 Nixers, Fixers, and the Axes of Conformity 115
5 Infinite Varieties of the Modern Public: Novelty, Surprise, and Uncertainty 144
Appendix: Critical Human Rights Conventions of the Global Public Domain 172
A Note on Sources 179
Select Bibliography 184
Index 187
About the Author :
Daniel Drache is Director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies and Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto.
Review :
“Drache is well read and committed to his subject, and the book is littered with excellent quotations from leading contemporary thinkers and activists.”
Times Higher Education “On reading this book, the activist will understand how to arouse wider political participation, and the skeptic will be concerned that established power uses the same technology to manipulate a passive public. For a broad and non-specialized audience, the book opens a discussion about the nature of politics in the twenty-first century.”
Robert Cox, York University
“Drache makes a courageous and controversial stand against much that is taken for granted by elites in our global order. He is optimistic that fluid but ‘Defiant Publics’ are moving towards an unknown but different world, seeking citizenship in a diverse and renewed global public domain. Yet his analysis leaves us aware we should also keep an eye on the possible unintended consequences of what might now be occurring.”
Geoffrey Underhill, Universiteit van Amsterdam
“Widespread military adventurism, resurgent violent populisms, faux democracies drenched in cynicism, and looming ecological crises on an unimaginable scale: the world we inhabit seems to be one absent of hope or possibility. Daniel Drache’s fascinating Defiant Publics jolts us out of our too-easy dystopian imaginings by showing us the ways in which multiple publics are struggling to create dynamic new futures.”
Imre Szeman, McMaster University
“Daniel Drache’s new book builds on the best of democratic theory developed in the twentieth-century nation-state, to conceptualize a non-territorial, non-traditional account of global democratic politics for our time. Defiant Publics identifies the new social actors in a de-hierarchized polity and challenges our ways of understanding political deliberation.”
Peer Zumbansen, York University
