Soc 335 - Study Guide

Democracy:

• What happens when a word synonymous with a range of possibly contradictory, political values?
• DI: what makes up democracy?
• Democracy: has various different meanings/perspectives

• Rather than starting with abstract ideas, politics can be best understood as a process by which actual people, over time, advocated their own interests in relation to an existing (perceived distribution of power)

• Collective action: therefore the driver political change → therefore democracy

• Relies on ideals/concepts that express common goal
• Political terms (ex. democracy) are political/theoretical

• Democracy = paradox

• To study CA: we can observe what people do/we can interpret the signs of signs/symbols people use to make sense of what they do

• Bill: C-51s

• Official democracy

• Formal system, all complaints should be addressed to MP
• Canadian Democracy

• Citizenship test + Civics textbooks
• Constituted by laws, defined by legal rights/obligations

• Democracy from below

• More expansive idea of self-government based on popular power in all areas of life

• Chomsky: scepticism about any form of authority domination/submission
• Not free of all problems but always asking is there a more inclusive way to address problems

• Athenian democracy: no ideal

• Aims for deeper levels of freedom/equality/self-determination
• Embraces the questioning of existing social relations

• Making Democracy

• Neither framework exists without the other
• The elaboration of each framework is always in process, and present when democratic ideals are invoked
• These debates always have long histories

• Ex. The Arab Spring did not come from nowhere
• Debates over democracy are always political
• Cameron: the Libyan people cannot reach democratic future on their own

• Language of democracy frames modern politics

• What is Politics?

• Aristotle: humans are political animals, people inherently need to live together → think about how to do this → common good
• Machiavelli: politics is a competition for power
• Mosca: politics is a natural process of elite rule

• Early science of politics: elite groups always form out of larger groups

• Weber

• Politics = changes in the political associations organized around legitimate authority
• Democracy: language of legitimacy
• Weber studies emergence of modern democratic states
• Interested in why people do things

• Why people allowed themselves be ruled/follow laws
• What makes political institutions legitimate

• Authority

• Traditional authority

• Habitual conformity based on sanctity of ancient ancestors (Catholic schools)

• Charismatic authority:

• Devotion/obedience based on the grace/heroism/personal characteristics (Justin Trudeau)

• Legal-rational authority

• Conformity based on validity of rational rules, modern state

• Modern

• Relies on a combination of these types of authority
• While the combinations of these types may vary, function of modern state is to organize authority
• As states grew in size and complexity, a new notion of politics emerged: politics became a covation

• Weber

• 2 ways a person can make politics a vocation: life for/off politics
• How this plays in contemporary democratic state (Canada
• How this shapes official democracy vs. democracy from below in Canada?

Lecture 3

Traditional Democratic Theory

• From Athens to Enlightment

Changes to European Society During the enlightenment

• Shifting emphasis towards natural laws vs. divine law (Newton)
• Questioning the divine power of royalty/church (Hobbes)
• Questioning nature of social/political systems (Voltaire)
• Emergence of a new merchant class that challenged the existing systems of authority (Smith)

Paintings

• Change, progress, moving forward
• Classical imagery

2 phases of liberal democracy (Macpherson)

• Post-war waves of liberal/social democracy

• Rise of liberal state 1650s-1850s
• Democratization of the liberal state 1850s-

• Reoccurring waves of Social Democracy
• The challenge of Socialist Revolution

• Postwar waves of liberal/social democracy

• Postwar consensus (1940s-1950s) democracy vs. totalitarianism
• Civil rights era: 1950s – 1970s, social inequality

Democracy and Colonialism

• Exploitation of uncharted areas of the world

World System Theory

• Core societies dominate/exploit societies on the periphery
• Periphery societies provide resources and labour
• This creates a dynamic social relationship that produces profit in the core/dependency in the periphery
• History

• Developed over time as integration of economic/political/tech processes
• Effected core/periphery societies (economically/politically)
• Contemporary economic/political conditions → product of long history
• Wallerstein: history is always a construction of the present. We should always question given historical narratives

• Narrative example: Modernization Theory

• Very popular postwar theory of development
• Assumed natural laws of economic political modernization
• Rostow’s 5 stages of economic development

• Traditional society
• Preconditions to take-off
• Take-off
• Drive to maturity
• Age of high mass consumption