Reimagining Democracy: Communication Activism, Social Justice, and Prefiguration in Participatory Budgeting

Reimagining Democracy: Communication Activism, Social Justice, and Prefiguration in Participatory Budgeting presents findings from a multi-year, community-based, critical ethnography of two participatory budgeting (PB) processes in Denver, Colorado. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with PB participants, Vincent Russell argues that the PB processes served as sites of prefigurative communication activism, where participants reimagined how government should operate, and activists transformed social and power relations through their in-group deliberations. Participants from oppressed populations emphasized forging relationships and feelings of solidarity among each other as they struggled for liberation, dignity, and social justice. Reimagining Democracy teaches important lessons about the state of democratic culture in the United States and offers alternative pathways for public decision making that hold the promise of restructuring practices, processes, and outcomes to be more socially just. Written in an engaging style with a focus on narratives about social change, this book is an important contribution for scholars, practitioners, and community members passionate about social justice activism.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: This Machine Has a Soul: Participatory Budgeting Comes to Denver, Colorado Chapter 2: Auraria Participatory Budgeting: Students' Struggles for Justice Chapter 3: Cole Has a Soul: People Power, Community Connection, and Relationship Chapter 4: Transformations: Changes in Participants' Capacities for Social Justice Chapter 5: Implementing Participatory Budgeting for Social Justice

About the Author :
Vincent Russell is assistant professor in the Communication Department at Western Carolina University.

Review :
At a time of cratering institutional trust, Vincent Russell meticulously and humanely documents how participatory budgeting can point the way toward repair and transformation. Through this careful and compassionate book, Russell establishes himself as a leading new voice in the study of democratic communication, demonstrating clearly that the future of economic democracy depends on research like this. Russell's critical ethnographic study of Participatory Budgeting shows a new generation how to collectively confront powerful institutions, challenge oppressions, and advance social justice. Russell illuminates the engaging stories of individuals in two distinct public processes who were willing to dream, wrestle with differing views, and along the way learn more about local governance, community needs, and democracy. This book offers an inside look into how communication can build community solidarity, nurture meaningful relationships, confront obstacles and frustrations, and importantly, boost public participation so crucial for upholding democracy. I recommend this book to all who despair about ongoing efforts worldwide to undermine liberal democracy and struggles for social justice. Russell reminds us that democracy survives through democratic practices. His meticulously researched, empirically rich qualitative study of participatory budgeting in the United States shows that democracy finds its clearest expression in public deliberation among everyday people who care about the wellbeing of their communities and the possibility of a more equitable society. If you could peak behind the curtain of community leadership, would the communication processes related to budgeting indicate evidence-based reasoning pursued in the cause of the common good or private interests seeding a world of inequality? Would those communication processes reflect an ethos of democratic inclusion and mutual respect or would they mirror systemic patterns of exclusion and exploitation? Vincent Russell's Reimagining Democracy: Communication Activism, Social Justice, and Prefiguration in Participatory Budgeting answers these questions by diving into case studies of participatory budgeting, a process that foregrounds the lived experiences of community members. More than just including local communities in budgeting debates, the participatory model pursues what Russell calls “an ethos of deliberative reciprocity.” Instead of slumming through mass-produced disinformation and the numbing world of social-media-induced apathy, Russell's case studies show neighbors coming together to discuss their needs, to share their visions, to learn from each other-in short, he shows us deliberation in action, at the grassroots level, where we do the hard work of reimagining democracy.