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This volume explores political culture, especially the catastrophic elements of the global social order emerging in the twenty-first century. By emphasizing the texture of political action, the book theorizes how social context becomes evident on the surface of events and analyzes the performative dimensions of political experience. The attention to catastrophe allows for an understanding of how ordinary people contend with normal system operation once it is indistinguishable from system breakdown. Through an array of case studies, the book provides an account of change as it is experienced, negotiated, and resisted in specific settings that define a society's capacity for political action.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction Robert Hariman Chapter 1. The Communal Dilemma as a Cultural Resource in Hungarian Political Expression
David Boromisza-Habashi Chapter 2. Chronotopes of the Political: Public Discourse, News Media, and Mass Action in Post-Conflict Macedonia
Andrew Graan Chapter 3. The In-Between States: Enduring Catastrophes as Sources of Democracy's Deadlocks in the Balkans: The Case of Kosovo
Naser Miftari Chapter 4. Occupy Wall Street as Rhetorical Citizenship: The Ongoing Relevance of Pragmatism for Deliberative Democracy
Robert Danisch Chapter 5. Contemporary Social Movements and the Emergent Nomadic Political Logic
Peter N. Funke and Todd Wolfson Chapter 6. "Project Heat" and Sensory Politics in Redeveloping Chicago Public Housing
Catherine Fennell Chapter 7. Reading between the Digital Lines: Narrating the Political Rhetoric of Ethical Consumption
Eleftheria J. Lekakis Chapter 8. The Uncertainty of Power and the Certainty of Irony: Encountering the State in Kara, Southern Ethiopia
Felix Girke Chapter 9. Grassroots Discourses in Times of Scarcity: Debating the 2004 Locust Plague in Northwestern Senegal and the World
Christian Meyer Chapter 10. Too Too Much Much: Presence and Catastrophe in Contemporary Art
Monica Westin Conclusion: What Next? Modernity, Revolution, and the "Turn" to Catastrophe
Ralph Cintron Contributors
Index
About the author
Robert Hariman is Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of Political Style: The Artistry of Power and, with John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy, and The Public Image: Photography: Photography and Civic Spectatorship.
Ralph Cintron is Professor in the Departments of English as well as Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of Angels’ Town: Chero Ways, Gang Life, and Rhetorics of the Everyday; Democracy as Fetish; and co-editor/PI of 60 Years of Migration: Puerto Ricans in Chicagoland.
Summary
An array of case studies provide an account of how change is experienced, negotiated, and resisted in specific settings that define a society's capacity for political action.
