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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

Empire: localism & deliberative democracy « Previous | |Next »
June 17, 2004

Hardt & Negri argue against the localism of the left:


"We maintain, however, that today this localist position....is both false and damaging. It is false first of all because the problem is poorly posed. In many characterizations the problem rests on a false dichotomy between the global and the local, assuming that the global entails homogenization and undifferentiated identity whereas the local preserves heterogeneity and difference. Often implicit in such arguments is the assumption that the differences of the local are in some sense natural, or at least that their origin remains beyond question. Local differences preexist the present scene and must be defended or protected against the intrusion of globalization. It should come as no surprise, given such assumptions, that many defenses of the local adopt the terminology of traditional ecology or even identify this "local" political project with the defense of nature and biodiversity. This view can easily devolve into a kind of primordialism that fixes and romanticizes social relations and identities."

This is a dogmatic localism. The paragraph reeks of dualsm with globalization good and localism bad.

Yet an ecological localism of place does not need to work with the natural or an origin that remains beyond question. An ecological localism of place can work with a constructed understanding of place that has been shaped by the way the landscape has been changed by irrigated agriculture, economic reforms, and an opening out to the global market.

That localism or regionalism is what underpins a federal polity since the states within a ferderal political structure are based on different kinds of regionalism. That federalism then fosters a deliberative democracy in which there is an ongoing be debate (deliberation) about public decisions.

That conception of democracy is worthy of defence in the face of older conceptions, such as those that emphasize the aggregration of preferences or voting and representation. Deliberative democracy highlights the capacity to participate in decision making, substantive democratic control and critical reflection and changing judgements, non-coercive deliberation that involves humor, emotion, storytelling and political gossip.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:27 PM | | Comments (0)
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