Expressive Rationality

A Different Approach for Understanding Participation in Municipal Deliberative Practices

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12918565
AutoresJ Svensson (0000-0002-5097-6218, Lund University, autor correspondente)
Ano2008
Volume1
Fascículo2
Páginas203-221
Data de publicação2008-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCommunication Culture and Critique (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1753-9137 • E-ISSN: 1753-9129
EditoraOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1753-9137.2008.00019.x
OpenAlexW2100494149
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas6
Referências citadas20

Why do people engage in municipal deliberative practices? The aim of this article is to explore inhabitants’ motivations for participating in deliberations organized by Civic Committees in the south Swedish municipality of Helsingborg. I have done this through an ethnographic study, observing deliberative practices and interviewing inhabitants, politicians, and municipal officials in Helsingborg. This study is also theoretically inspired. I argue that the Civic Committees are inspired by deliberative theories of democracy in order to address changing patterns of political participation in late modernity. It is especially the deliberative focus on rationality as communicative, rather than instrumental, that is attractive for a municipality trying to reorient civic participation back to its institutions. However, by focusing on the issue of motivation, I argue that neither the instrumental nor the communicative account of rationality is satisfactory in fully understanding inhabitants’ motivations for participating in municipal deliberative practices in late modernity. With a focus on identity, I therefore suggest a more expressive account of rationality

Aesthetics · Deliberation · Deliberative democracy · Democracy · Epistemology · Identity (music · Interview · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Rationality · Sociology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Public Administration · Social Capital and Networks · Social Media and Politics