Author: Paul Ginsborg
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 214
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143100599
Description
Concern over the tensions and disparities prevalent in the world today fosters in many people the uneasy combination of two sensations: those of urgency and powerlessness. We feel that something must be done before it is too late, but have little idea of what we as individuals, or as families, or as groups of friends, can possibly do to stem the tide.
The Politics of Everyday Life explores the options civil society and the individual have within today’s political culture, offering a strong critique of the prevailing model of modernity in developed countries—one that is being exported and imposed on the rest of the world. We must rethink the choices we make on a day-to-day basis—the ways we use our time, our family lives, the sorts of goods and services we consume, and the quality of democracy that we are able to exercise. The solution, says Ginsborg, lies in our own hands.
REVIEWS
Ginsborg is never judgemental, though he is devastatingly thorough and occasionally mischievously witty.
-Times Literary Supplement
An Attractive and imaginative work.
-Times Literary Supplement
Ginsborg, argues, with lots of vivid detail, that participatory democracy is an essential complement to representative democracy.
-Timothy Garton Ash, Guardian
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
We can’t go on like this
Individuals, Choice and Consumer Capitalism
Families
The Possibilities of Civil Society
Making Democracy Work
INDEX