In the United Kingdom a tendency that reached its nadir with the concept of ‘The Big Society’, can be seen in the extent to which ‘participation’, whether in the affairs of the community, the city or the nation, has come to be considered a responsibility of citizens.
Coming together can make it possible to live more and work less. Doing things collectively is the only way we can be free from the obligation to work so hard as self-exploiting individuals. This is not primarily a question of politics or protest.
Perhaps it is impossible to create a participatory democracy through participatory means. The solution developed here, in any case, was to draw on the external authority of a famous urban planner.
A good life, in this context, is not immortalised in either great poetry or grand monuments to heroic men, but is defined by how we go about our daily lives, our unremarkable habits and routines of life.
With our Indian collaborators we embarked on a creative campaign to defend the integrity of a process that had provided a platform for the informed views of some of the most marginalised rural people in India. It was not a comfortable experience for either of us.
True names have existed for millennia and can be traced through many cultural histories. What is the relevance of this process of correctly naming to practices of empowerment?
Authority is a capacity to inspire trust. This is what marks a participative inquiry apart from the liberal models which consult others, but never fully recognise, nor invite, their intelligence.
The discussion that follows will highlight the distinction between power and authority, and how power which privileges cooperation rather than domination might generate new forms of authority commensurable to a society that must work together.
We are the ones we have been waiting for. The importance of openness lies in creating spaces and times outside the dominant architecture and temporality of the past and present in order to create new alliances and subjectivities based on a common dignity.
If collaborative science or participatory budgeting does not incorporate some openness to calamity and creativity, to the world pushing back, then it will not have the effect of generating ‘real life’ experience and redistributing authority.
Our three debate editors provide you with a guide to this weeks debate: The struggle for a common life
