Gazela Pudar Draško - Böcker

This volume strengthens the dialogue between conceptual perspectives, approaches and fields on deliberative and participatory forms of democratic innovation and offers novel insights, focusing on the Southeast European space. Traditional forms of participation seem insufficient in satisfying the growing complexity of the democratic processes, especially in the context of autocratizing societies. It is crucial to examine the possibilities of democratic innovation in political research and practice, trying to establish a connection between the possibilities and limits of representative democracy and social movements as possible carriers of the process of democratic innovation. This book offers novel insights into practices of civil society and social movements and their pathways carved to initiate a deep change in political thinking and practice and compelling insights for scholars and students of Southeast Europe, social movements and democracy.

This volume strengthens the dialogue between conceptual perspectives, approaches and fields on deliberative and participatory forms of democratic innovation and offers novel insights, focusing on the Southeast European space. Traditional forms of participation seem insufficient in satisfying the growing complexity of the democratic processes, especially in the context of autocratizing societies. It is crucial to examine the possibilities of democratic innovation in political research and practice, trying to establish a connection between the possibilities and limits of representative democracy and social movements as possible carriers of the process of democratic innovation. This book offers novel insights into practices of civil society and social movements and their pathways carved to initiate a deep change in political thinking and practice and compelling insights for scholars and students of Southeast Europe, social movements and democracy.

Addressing the relationship among social critique, violence, and domination, Violence and Reflexivity: The Place of Critique in the Reality of Domination examines a critique of violent and unjust social arrangements that transcends the Enlightenment/postmodern opposition. This critique surpasses the “reflexive violence” of classical enlightenment universalism without committing the “violence of reflexivity” by negating any possibility of collective radical social engagement. The unifying thread of the collection, edited by Marjan Ivkovic, Adriana Zaharijevic, and Gazela Pudar-Draško, is a sensitivity to the field of tension created by these extremes, especially for the issue of how to articulate a non-violent critique that is nevertheless “militant,” in the sense that it creates a rupture in an institutionalized order of violence. In Part One, the contributors examine the theoretical resources that help us move beyond the reflexive violence of the classical Enlightenment social critique in our quest for justice and non-domination. Part Two brings together nuanced attempts to reconsider the dominant modern understandings of violence, subjectivity, and society without succumbing to the violence of reflexivity that characterizes radically anti-Enlightenment standpoints.