Search Results

This chapter examines the way in which alterity is visually represented in Western media coverage of humanitarian disasters in the global South in terms of either pathologisation or victimization. It contends that the visual representation and mediation of distant events and persons have had an unprecedented constitutive power for the way that liberal democracy engages with alterity. This chapter establishes the representational and institutional conditions within which a humanitarian scopic regime operates and explores the aporetic nature of this regime's engagement with otherness and the dynamics through which it cannot but simultaneously negate and produce alterity in a manner that problematises the democratic imaginary. It also explores how cosmopolitan visuality posits alterity as both a fundamental problem and a challenge for democracy.

Chapters 3 traces how Interfaith’s and the Patriots’ shared commitment to the ideal of active citizenship began to refract into two different group styles of active citizenship. Specifically, this chapter identifies a key process through which the groups’ developed different ways of imagining what it meant to be an active citizen in practice. Both groups drew on American culture and history to develop narratives of active citizenship, yet the groups’ narratives highlighted different combinations of characters, events and plotlines that coalesced into different ideal-typical models of active citizenship—the prophet and the patriot. The fact that they told such different stories about the origins and development of the American democratic project reveals profoundly different democratic imaginaries—ways of understanding how democracy works and the proper role of active citizens in it. Consequently, when these narratives were referenced in the course of the groups’ efforts, they offered different blueprints for their action.

This concluding chapter reflects on how the theoretical and methodological threads running through book tie together to develop an imaginative criminology of space. It build on the authors’ previous work towards a radical democratic imaginary and, drawing on Hudson (2006), incorporates a discussion of transformative justice. The conclusion argues that an imaginative approach is necessary in order to comprehend the complexity of issues of transgression and space, and to ensure the continued reinvigoration of criminology as a discipline.

Chapter 4 demonstrates that Interfaith and the Patriots developed different ways of enacting active citizenship in the course of their work together, and specifically their efforts to put their faith in action. Although both groups asserted that there was a public role for religion in diverse and pluralistic democratic societies, they differed in their understandings of how this should work in practice. Interfaith’s efforts to put their faith in action were driven primarily by concerns about religious inclusion, while the Patriots were driven primarily by concerns about religious liberty. Participants in the groups thus emphasized subtly different religious values, developed different ways of engaging with religious others, and engaged in different kinds of religious (and civil religious) practices. The chapter concludes by tracing the groups’ choices about how to put their faith in action to differences in their democratic imaginaries—their ways of understanding how democracy works and the proper role of active citizens in it.

Chapter 5 demonstrates that Interfaith and the Patriots developed different ways of enacting active citizenship in the course of their work together, and specifically in their efforts to hold government accountable. Although holding government accountable was a central component of both groups’ efforts, the ways in which they organized their neighbors for collective action, described how accountability should work, became informed about political issues and processes, and interacted with public officials differed in significant ways. Interfaith’s efforts to work alongside public officials to solve shared problems were grounded in a vision of a covenantal relationship between moral communities, political authorities and God. Meanwhile, the Patriots’ confrontational relationship with government reflected a contractual model of citizenship, which framed their individual God-given rights as perpetually threatened by government control. The chapter concludes by demonstrating that the groups’ choices about how to hold government accountable reflected differences in their democratic imaginaries—their ways of understanding how democracy works and the proper role of active citizens in it.

The Epilogue concludes the book by emphasizing the importance of keeping a record of the political actors’ hopes and desires in the new ways of being that they staged in democratic moments, without tidying up the tensions and disorderly aspects of those events. While such alternative ways of being do not provide future actors with a blueprint, they call into question the inevitability of the social order as it exists. For this reason, it is politically significant to stand up against the current trivialization of these events, which, perhaps inadvertently, plays into the hands of the powers that be who seek to obliterate the memory of democratic moments. For, remembering the experiences of political actors, who created democratic events against all odds may be the only means to keep alive the emancipatory potential of the past, making it possible for it to become a citable source and an inspiration for future struggles.

Chapter 10, “15-M and Podemos: Explaining the Puzzle of the ‘Electoral Turn,’ ” explores the relationship between 15-M and Podemos to answer a central puzzle that arises from the case of 15-M: How did so many members of a movement that was radically committed to critiquing representative democracy embrace the Podemos electoral initiative less than three years later while still claiming allegiance to the spirit and identity of the 15-M movement? It argues that party strategists engaged in extensive discursive work to overcome their cognitive dissonance and realign their activist identities to embrace an electoral option without reneging their 15-M identity. Podemos managed to convince 15-M activists by offering the promise of integrating core elements of 15-M political culture into the party, including autonomy, feminism, and a digitally enabled hacker ethic.