Spaces of Democracy: Geographical Perspectives on Citizenship, Participation and Representation

Clive Barnett · Murray Low

Aug 2004 · SAGE

About this eBook

′This volume successfully exposes the "ghostly presence" of democracy in the field of geography and shows the value of thinking about democracy geographically. It is a major contribution to serious examination of a normative political issue from a geographical perspective. This is welcome above all because geography is a field whose cultural and economic branches, though often claiming the appellation "critical", are currently dominated by unexamined radical political fantasies′ - John Agnew, University of California, Los Angeles

In an historically unprecedented way, democracy is now increasingly seen as a universal model of legitimate rule.This work addresses the key question: How can democracy be understood in theory and in practise?

In three thematically organised sections, Spaces of Democracy uses a critical geographical imagination (informed by thinking on space, place, and scale) to interrogate the latest work in democratic theory. Key ideas and concepts discussed include globalization and transnationalism; representation; citizenship; liberalism; the city and public space; and the media.

This volume comprises commissioned work by leading academics investigating democracy. Historical and comparative, animated by wider debates on globalization, it will facilitate the critical discussion of core questions on citizenship, the state, and democracy. Spaces of Democracy is essential reading for students of human geography, political science/international relations, and political sociology.

About the author

Clive Barnett works on the geographies of democracy and public life. He is author and editor of books and scholarly articles on colonial and postcolonial discourses, critical theory and the public sphere, political philosophy, popular media cultures, poststructuralism, and social movements. This includes empirical research on the UK, South Africa, USA, and Europe. His current research focuses on emergent forms of public action and their implications for understandings of democracy. Clive is a member of the OpenSpace Research Centre, and is Co-Director of the Publics Research Programme in the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG) in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the OU. He is also a Member of the Open University′s Ethics Centre.

Murray Low′s research focuses on relationships between geography and democracy including institutional and spatial aspects of elections, changing practices of accountability and legitimacy in cities, and the geography of political party organisations and social movements. His work has dealt with the relationships between global networks and democracy, constructions of globalization and states in geography, and geographical aspects of political representation. He has recently completed research funded by the Leverhulme Foundation into city democratisation in South Africa. He is co-editor of Spaces of Democracy: Geographical Perspectives on Citizenship, Participation and Representation (Sage, 2004), and of The Sage Handbook of Political Geography (Sage, 2008)