"Freedom Is an Endless Meeting" offers vivid portraits of American
experiments in participatory democracy throughout the twentieth
century. Drawing on meticulous research and more than one hundred
interviews with activists, Francesca Polletta challenges the
conventional wisdom that participatory democracy is worthy in
purpose but unworkable in practice. Instead, she shows that social
movements have often used bottom-up decision making as a powerful
tool for political change.
Polletta traces the history of democracy in early labor struggles
and pre-World War II pacifism, in the civil rights, new left, and
women's liberation movements of the sixties and seventies, and in
today's faith-based organizing and anti-corporate globalization
campaigns. In the process, she uncovers neglected sources of
democratic inspiration--Depression-era labor educators and
Mississippi voting registration workers, among them--as well as
practical strategies of social protest. But "Freedom Is an Endless
Meeting" also highlights the obstacles that arise when activists
model their democracies after familiar nonpolitical relationships
such as friendship, tutelage, and religious fellowship. Doing so
has brought into their deliberations the trust, respect, and caring
typical of those relationships. But it has also fostered values
that run counter to democracy, such as exclusivity and an aversion
to rules, and these have been the fault lines around which
participatory democracies have often splintered. Indeed, Polletta
attributes the fragility of the form less to its basic inefficiency
or inequity than to the gaps between activists' democratic
commitments and the cultural models on which they have depended to
enact those commitments. The challenge, she concludes, is to forge
new kinds of democratic relationships, ones that balance trust with
accountability, respect with openness to disagreement, and caring
with inclusiveness.
For anyone concerned about the prospects for democracy in America,
"Freedom Is an Endless Meeting" will offer abundant historical,
theoretical, and practical insights.
"This is an excellent study of activist politics in the United
States over the past century. . . . Assiduously researched,
impressively informed by a great number of thoughtful interviews
with key members of American social movements, and deeply engaged
with its subject matter, the book is likely to become a key text in
the study of grass-roots democracy in America."--Kate Fullbrook,
"Times Literary Supplement"
"Polletta's portrayal challenges the common assumption that
morality and strategy are incompatible, that those who aim at
winning must compromise principle while those who insist on
morality are destined to be ineffective. . . . Rather than dwell on
trying to explain the decline of 60s movements, Polletta shows how
participatory democracy has become the guiding framework for many
of today's activists."--Richard Flacks, "Los Angeles Times Book
Review
"
"In Freedom Is an Endless Meeting, Francesca Polletta has produced
a remarkable work of historical sociology. . . . She provides the
fullest theoretical work of historical sociology. . . . She
provides the fullest theoretical picture of participatory
democracy, rich with nuance, ambiguity, and irony, that this
reviewer has yet seen. . . . This wise book should be studied
closely by both academics and by social change activists."--Stewart
Burns, "Journal of American History
"
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