Full Description
Is there any place in America where passionate debate plays a more vital role in democratic discourse than local school board meetings? Karen Tracy conducted a thirty-five-month study of the board meetings of the Boulder Valley School District between 1996 and 1999 to analyze just how democracy operates in practice. In Challenges of Ordinary Democracy, she reveals the major role that emotion plays in real-life debate and discerns value in what might easily be seen as negative forms of discourse—voicing platitudes, making contradictory assertions, arguing over a document's wording, speaking angrily, attacking a person's character. By illuminating this one arena of "ordinary democracy," Tracy hopes to engender a new appreciation for how what she calls "reasonable hostility" can be a desirable ideal of communication for debating public policy issues.
Contents
Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
1. Public Meetings: Ordinary Democracy's Home
2. A Historical Snapshot: Three Years of BVSD Life
3. "Democracy": An Ideal with Traction
4. Citizen Participation, Doing Dissent
5. Newspapers in the Cycle of Political Upheaval
6. The Campaign: The Usefulness of Platitudes and Personal Attack
7. A Fight over Words and Policy
8. One Meeting: Six Observations
9. Reasonable Hostility in Ordinary Democracy
Postscript: Education Governance in Twenty-First-Century America
Appendix: The Method and Data
References
Index
