Animating Democracy PDF Download

Author: Barbara Schaffer Bacon
Publisher: Americans for the Arts Books
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
This report was commissioned by the Ford Foundation resulting from a study conducted by Americans for the Arts and its Institute for Community Development and the Arts. A condensed version is available in book form through Americans for the Arts and on its website, www.artusa.org.

Author: Pam Korza
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Civic Dialogue, Arts & Culture explores the power of the arts and humanities to foster civic engagement and demonstrates how arts and humanities organizations can be vital civic and cultural institutions.

Author: Sharon Ann Musher
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022624718X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
At its height in 1935, the New Deal devoted roughly $27 million ($320 million today) to supporting tens of thousands of needy writers, dancers, actors, musicians, and visual artists, who created over 100,000 worksbooks, murals, plays, concertsthat were performed for or otherwise imbibed by millions of Americans. But why did the government get so involved with the arts in the first place? Musher addresses this question and many others by exploring the political and aesthetic concerns of the 1930s, as well as the range of responsesfrom politicians, intellectuals, artists, and taxpayersto the idea of active government involvement in the arts. In the process, she raises vital questions about the roles that the arts should play in contemporary society."

Author: Suzanne Mettler
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226521664
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
“Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Such comments spotlight a central question animating Suzanne Mettler’s provocative and timely book: why are many Americans unaware of government social benefits and so hostile to them in principle, even though they receive them? The Obama administration has been roundly criticized for its inability to convey how much it has accomplished for ordinary citizens. Mettler argues that this difficulty is not merely a failure of communication; rather it is endemic to the formidable presence of the “submerged state.” In recent decades, federal policymakers have increasingly shunned the outright disbursing of benefits to individuals and families and favored instead less visible and more indirect incentives and subsidies, from tax breaks to payments for services to private companies. These submerged policies, Mettler shows, obscure the role of government and exaggerate that of the market. As a result, citizens are unaware not only of the benefits they receive, but of the massive advantages given to powerful interests, such as insurance companies and the financial industry. Neither do they realize that the policies of the submerged state shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans, exacerbating inequality. Mettler analyzes three Obama reforms—student aid, tax relief, and health care—to reveal the submerged state and its consequences, demonstrating how structurally difficult it is to enact policy reforms and even to obtain public recognition for achieving them. She concludes with recommendations for reform to help make hidden policies more visible and governance more comprehensible to all Americans. The sad truth is that many American citizens do not know how major social programs work—or even whether they benefit from them. Suzanne Mettler’s important new book will bring government policies back to the surface and encourage citizens to reclaim their voice in the political process.

Author: Tom Borrup
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040109314
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Democracy as Creative Practice: Weaving a Culture of Civic Life offers arts-based solutions to the threats to democracies around the world, practices that can foster more just and equitable societies. Chapter authors are artists, activists, curators, and teachers applying creative and cultural practices in deliberate efforts to build democratic ways of working and interacting in their communities in a range of countries including the United States, Australia, Portugal, Nepal, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The book demonstrates how creativity is integrated in place-based actions, aesthetic strategies, learning environments, and civic processes. As long-time champions and observers of community-based creative and cultural practices, editors Tom Borrup and Andrew Zitcer elucidate work that not only responds to sociopolitical conditions but advances practice. They call on artists, funders, cultural organizations, community groups, educational institutions, government, and others to engage in and support this work that fosters a culture of democracy. This book is intended for undergraduate and graduate students in the humanities and social sciences, activists, funders, and artists who seek to understand and effect change on local and global scales to preserve, extend, and improve practices of democracy.

Author: Joshua Block
Publisher:
ISBN: 0807764167
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
"This book shares a vision of project-based learning that is rooted in systemic understandings of social change and provides a pragmatic framework and tools for teachers to develop their practice in creative and sustaining ways. It demonstrates how to support different learners to produce intellectually rigorous and creative work by centering students' lives and experiences and offers the realistic perspective of a teacher working in an urban public high school. The text includes many classroom scenes and examples of curriculum design strategies"--

Author: Max O. Stephenson Jr.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317688562
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Arts and Community Change: Exploring Cultural Development Policies, Practices and Dilemmas addresses the growing number of communities adopting arts and culture-based development methods to influence social change. Providing community workers and planners with strategies to develop arts policy that enriches communities and their residents, this collection critically examines the central tensions and complexities in arts policy, paying attention to issues of gentrification and stratification. Including a variety of case studies from across the United States and Canada, these success stories and best practice approaches across many media present strategies to design appropriate policy for unique populations. Edited by Max Stephenson, Jr. and A. Scott Tate of Virginia Tech, Arts and Community Change presents 10 chapters from artistic and community leaders; essential reading for students and practitioners in economic development and arts management.

Author: Brian Wallis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : AIDS (Disease) and the arts
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
A Village Voice Best Book of the Year, this collection of essays covers a range of topics, from "Education and Democracy" and "Politics and Election" to "Cultural Participation" and "AIDS and Democracy: A Case Study."With contributions by: Erma Bombeck Noam Chomsky Alexander Cockburn David Deitcher Lisa Duggan Barbara Ehrenreich Deirdre English Stuart Ewen Henry Louis Gates Jr. Group Material bell hooks Gary Indiana Catherine Lord Bill Moyers William Olander Mark P. Petracca Yvonne Rainer Vito Russo Ira Shor Tom Stoddard Polly Thistlethwaite Brian WallisDiscussions in Contemporary Culture is an award-winning series co-published with the Dia Center for the Arts in New York City. These volumes offer rich and timely discourses on a broad range of cultural issues and critical theory. The collection covers topics from urban planning to popular culture and literature, and continually attracts a wide and dedicated readership

Author: Stephen Duncombe
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 1531506534
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
The first book to seriously identify how artistic activism works and how to make it work better The past decade has seen an explosion in the hybrid practice of “artistic activism,” as artists have turned toward activism to make their work more socially impactful and activists have adopted techniques and perspectives from the arts to make their interventions more creative. Yet questions haunt the practice: Does artistic activism work aesthetically? Does it work politically? And what does “working” even mean when one combines art and activism? In Æffect, author Stephen Duncombe sets out to address these questions at the heart of the field of artistic activism. Written by the co-founder and current Research Director of the internationally recognized Center for Artistic Activism, Æffect draws on Duncombe’s more than twenty-five years of experience in the field and one hundred in-depth interviews with artistic activists worldwide. More than a mere academic exercise, the theory, research, and tools in this book lay the groundwork for artistic activists to evaluate and strengthen their practice and to create better projects. The exploration of good artistic activism is grounded in three sets of concerns. 1) Change: Upon what theories of change is artistic activism based? 2) Intention: What do we hope and expect artistic activism to do, and how does it do this? 3) Evaluation: What actually happens as the result of an artistic activist intervention? Can it be measured? Æffect is rich with examples that demonstrate successful artistic activism, including Undocubus, an old bus painted “No Fear” across its side that was driven cross-country by a group of undocumented immigrant activists; Journal Rappé, a video show created by Senegalese rappers who created long-form investigative reports by rapping the current news in French and Wolof; and War on Smog, a staged a public performance piece by artistic activists in the city of Chongqing in Southwest China. Scannable QR codes are included to provide tools that help readers assess the æffect of their artistic activism.

Author: Michael Lind
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593083709
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
In both Europe and North America, populist movements have shattered existing party systems and thrown governments into turmoil. The embattled establishment claims that these populist insurgencies seek to overthrow liberal democracy. The truth is no less alarming but is more complex: Western democracies are being torn apart by a new class war. In this controversial and groundbreaking new analysis, Michael Lind, one of America’s leading thinkers, debunks the idea that the insurgencies are primarily the result of bigotry, traces how the breakdown of mid-century class compromises between business and labor led to the conflict, and reveals the real battle lines. On one side is the managerial overclass—the university-credentialed elite that clusters in high-income hubs and dominates government, the economy and the culture. On the other side is the working class of the low-density heartlands—mostly, but not exclusively, native and white. The two classes clash over immigration, trade, the environment, and social values, and the managerial class has had the upper hand. As a result of the half-century decline of the institutions that once empowered the working class, power has shifted to the institutions the overclass controls: corporations, executive and judicial branches, universities, and the media. The class war can resolve in one of three ways: • The triumph of the overclass, resulting in a high-tech caste system. • The empowerment of populist, resulting in no constructive reforms • A class compromise that provides the working class with real power Lind argues that Western democracies must incorporate working-class majorities of all races, ethnicities, and creeds into decision making in politics, the economy, and culture. Only this class compromise can avert a never-ending cycle of clashes between oligarchs and populists and save democracy.