Reimagining Democracy: Communication Activism, Social Justice, and Prefiguration in Participatory Budgeting

(Hardback)

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Description

Reimagining Democracy: Communication Activism, Social Justice, and Prefiguration in Participatory Budgeting presents findings from a multi-year, community-based, critical ethnography of two participatory budgeting (PB) processes in Denver, Colorado. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with PB participants, Vincent Russell argues that the PB processes served as sites of prefigurative communication activism, where participants reimagined how government should operate, and activists transformed social and power relations through their in-group deliberations. Participants from oppressed populations emphasized forging relationships and feelings of solidarity among each other as they struggled for liberation, dignity, and social justice. Reimagining Democracy teaches important lessons about the state of democratic culture in the United States and offers alternative pathways for public decision making that hold the promise of restructuring practices, processes, and outcomes to be more socially just. Written in an engaging style with a focus on narratives about social change, this book is an important contribution for scholars, practitioners, and community members passionate about social justice activism.

Reviews

At a time of cratering institutional trust, Vincent Russell meticulously and humanely documents how participatory budgeting can point the way toward repair and transformation. Through this careful and compassionate book, Russell establishes himself as a leading new voice in the study of democratic communication, demonstrating clearly that the future of economic democracy depends on research like this. * Nathan Schneider, Assistant Professor of Media Studies, University of Colorado Boulder, USA. *

Author Bio

Vincent Russell is assistant professor in the Communication Department at Western Carolina University.