David Graeber: The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement (2013)

A bold rethinking of the most powerful political idea in the world—democracy—and the story of how radical democracy can yet transform America

Democracy has been the American religion since before the Revolution—from New England town halls to the multicultural democracy of Atlantic pirate ships. But can our current political system, one that seems responsive only to the wealthiest among us and leaves most Americans feeling disengaged, voiceless, and disenfranchised, really be called democratic? And if the tools of our democracy are not working to solve the rising crises we face, how can we—average citizens—make change happen?

David Graeber, one of the most influential scholars and activists of his generation, takes readers on a journey through the idea of democracy, provocatively reorienting our understanding of pivotal historical moments, and extracts their lessons for today—from the birth of Athenian democracy and the founding of the United States of America to the global revolutions of the twentieth century and the rise of a new generation of activists. Underlying it all is a bracing argument that in the face of increasingly concentrated wealth and power in this country, a reenergized, reconceived democracy—one based on consensus, equality, and broad participation—can yet provide us with the just, free, and fair society we want.

The Democracy Project tells the story of the resilience of the democratic spirit and the adaptability of the democratic idea. It offers a fresh take on vital history and an impassioned argument that radical democracy is, more than ever, our best hope.

Publisher Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random House, New York, 2013
ISBN 081299356X, 9780812993561
326 pages
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Evgeny Morozov: To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism (2013)

“Our society is at a crossroads. Smart technology is transforming our world, making many aspects of our lives more convenient, efficient and – in some cases – fun. Better and cheaper sensors can now be embedded in almost everything, and technologies can log the products we buy and the way we use them. But, argues Evgeny Morozov, technology is having a more profound effect on us: it is changing the way we understand human society.

In the very near future, technological systems will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions into many more areas of public life. These are the discourses by which we have always defined our civilization: politics, culture, public debate, morality, humanism. But how will these disciplines be affected when we delegate much of the responsibility for them to technology? The temptation of the digital age is to fix everything – from crime to corruption to pollution to obesity – by digitally quantifying, tracking, or gamifiying behavior. But when we change the motivations for our moral, ethical and civic behavior, do we also change the very nature of that behavior? Technology, Morozov proposes, can be a force for improvement – but only if we abandon the idea that it is necessarily revolutionary and instead genuinely interrogate why and how we are using it.

From urging us to drop outdated ideas of the Internet to showing how to design more humane and democratic technological solutions, To Save Everything, Click Here is about why we will always need to consider the consequences of the way we use technology. ”

Publisher PublicAffairs, 2013
ISBN 161039139X, 9781610391399
433 pages

review (Kevin Driscoll, LA Review of Books)
review (Siva Vaidhyanathan, Bookforum)
review (Steven Poole, The Guardian)
review (Pat Kane, The Independent)
review (Adam Thierer, Reason.com)
Interview (with Terry Winograd, Boston Review)

Publisher

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transversal, 03/13: Flee Erase Territorialize (2013) [EN, DE, FR, ES, Arabic]

“The refugee protests in many EU countries have succeeded in drawing widespread public attention and produced a strong media echo. There is hope that the activism of the refugees and their supporters will at least produce improvements in regards to the violation of human rights in asylum procedures which even contradict rules established by the Geneva Convention.

However, the protests far surpass the legal realm. They raise the fundamental question if and how today’s governmental procedures are compatible with democracy, if and how democracy can be viewed and realized in a globalized order that is influenced by dramatic social, economical and political injustices.

In whatever this “we” of those with documents may consist, genuine democratic citizenship today can only be realized /with/ those who have no documents, with Sans-Papiers. In this sense fleeing is a movement that erases the traces and mechanisms of identification, but at the same time it also means to take refuge – not as an object or a victim, but as self-determined occupation of territories, be they protest camps, churches or new homes.” (from the Editorial)

With contributions by Etienne Balibar, Stefan Nowotny, Amine Germaine, Simo Kader, Adalat Khan, Numan Muhammad, Brigitta Kuster, Tina Leisch, Gin Müller, Ilker Ataç, Brigitta Kuster / Vassilis S. Tsianos, Helmut Dietrich, Monika Mokre, Peter Waterhouse.

Editors: Andrea Hummer, Birgit Mennel, Raimund Minichbauer, Monika Mokre, Stefan Nowotny, Gerald Raunig
Developed in cooperation with the journals Kulturrisse and Malmoe
Publisher eipcp – European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies, Vienna/Linz
Copyleft
ISSN 1811-1696

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