At a moment when the term "Democracy " is evoked to express inchoate aspirations for peace and social change or particular governmental systems that may or may not benefit more than a select minority of the population, this book examines attempts from ancient Mesopotemia to the democratic movements of the early twenty-first century to sustain and improve their own lives and those of outsiders who have migrated into territory they regard as their own. Democratic activists have formed organizations to regulate the distribution of water, to restore the environment, and to assure that they and their children will have a future. They have organized their relations with deities and those who held secular power, and they have created particular institutions that they hoped would help them shape a good, free, and creative life for themselves and those who follow. They have also created laws and representative bodies to serve their needs on a regular basis and have written about the difficulties those they have elected to office have maintaining their ties to those who brought them to power in the first place. Since early times, proponents of direct or participatory democracy have come into conflict with the leaders of representative institutions that claim singular power over democracy. Patriots of one form or another have tried to reclaim the initiative to define what democracy should mean and who should manage it. Frequently people in small communities, trade unions, repressed, exploited, or denigrated racial, religious, political, or sexual groups have marched forward using the language of democracy to find space for themselves and their ideas at the center of political life. Sometimes they have re-interpreted the old laws, and sometimes they have formulated new laws and institutions in order to gain greater opportunities to debate the major issues of their time. Whatever conclusions they come to, they are only temporary since changing times require new solutions, assuring that democracy can only survive as a continuous process. As such and as a system of beliefs, democracy has many flaws. But looking cross-culturally and trans-historically, it still seems like democracy still holds promise for improving the lives of all the world's people.

Through a mosaic of personal accounts, newspaper articles, feminist theory and critiques of social and legal philosophy, Temma Kaplan aims to show the faces behind grassroots democracy who are changing the notion of human rights.

Andalusian anarchism was a grassroots movement of peasants and workers that flourished in Cadiz Province, the richest sherry-producing area in the world, from about 1868 to 1903. This study focuses on the social and economic context of the movement, and argues that traditional interpretations of anarchism as irrational, spontaneous, or millenarian are not justified. The extensive archival research undertaken for this book leads Temma Kaplan to a major reinterpretation of the nature of anarchism. Using the police reports in local archives to reconstruct the lives of more than three hundred rank-and-file anarchists, Temma Kaplan shows that the Andalusian movement was highly organized and dedicated to defending the interests of workers and peasants through a wide variety of organizations. These included trade unions, workers' circles, and women's societies, all of which favored general strikes and insurrections rather than terrorism. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Andalusian anarchism was a grassroots movement of peasants and workers that flourished in Cadiz Province, the richest sherry-producing area in the world, from about 1868 to 1903. This study focuses on the social and economic context of the movement, and argues that traditional interpretations of anarchism as irrational, spontaneous, or millenarian are not justified. The extensive archival research undertaken for this book leads Temma Kaplan to a major reinterpretation of the nature of anarchism. Using the police reports in local archives to reconstruct the lives of more than three hundred rank-and-file anarchists, Temma Kaplan shows that the Andalusian movement was highly organized and dedicated to defending the interests of workers and peasants through a wide variety of organizations. These included trade unions, workers' circles, and women's societies, all of which favored general strikes and insurrections rather than terrorism. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In Red City, Blue Period, Kaplan combines the methods of anthropology and the new cultural history to examine the civic culture of Barcelona between 1888 and 1939. She analyzes the peculiar sense of solidarity the citizens forged and explains why shared experiences of civic culture and pageantry sometimes galvanized resistance to authoritarian national governments but could not always overcome local class and gender struggles. She sheds light on the process by which principles of regional freedom and economic equity developed and changed in a city long known for its commitment to human dignity and artistic achievement. Although scholars increasingly recognize the relationship between so-called high art and popular culture, little has been done to explain what opens the eyes of artists to folk figures and religious art. Kaplan shows how artists like Picasso and Joan Miro, playwright Santiago Russinyol, the cellist Pablo Casals, and the architect Antonio Gaudi, as well as anarchists and other political activists, both shaped and were influenced by the artistic and political culture of Barcelona.