Deliberating Democracy in a Polarized World
As our societies become increasingly complex and polarized, electoral democracy often seems like a game that is anything but democratic. This lecture invites us to understand democracy differently by introducing the tradition of deliberative democracy. Together we move through the theoretical grounds as laid down by some of its founding thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, the institutional innovations (e.g. citizen assemblies) it has inspired, and the challenges raised by critics like Iris Marion Young. By the end, we will be prepared to not only re-evaluate our democratic systems but also imagine new democratic possibilities.
Research Talk - November 1, 12pm-1pm Weingart 117
The Entanglement of Peoples through Institutions
What is a people? It is commonplace, in both academic and popular discourses, to presuppose the people as an entity bounded by a shared culture, place, or set of institutions. In this talk I contend, however, that peoples are fundamentally entangled rather than bounded. Through an interpretation of the legal histories of two colonized peoples, Hong Kongers and Puerto Ricans, I put forward the concept of institutional entanglement, which marks a relationship within which neither the colonizing nor colonized peoples are solely self-determining. The framework of institutional entanglement can be taken beyond contexts of colonialism, and radically changes how we should understand and evaluate claims to peoplehood.
