The politics of everyday life : making choices, changing lives / Paul Ginsborg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ginsborg, Paul, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political participation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (190 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Carlton, Victoria, Australia : Melbourne University Press, 2005.

Summary:

Concern over the present state of the world -its tensions and disparities- fosters in many people the uneasy combination of two sensations: urgency and powerlessness. The solution lies in our own hands. We need to re-think the choices we make on a day-to-day basis, choices affecting the ways we use our time, the family lives we live, the sorts of goods and services we consume, the quality of democracy we are able to exercise. The individual, the local and the global are inextricably intertwined, in positive and in negative ways. Passivity and indifference at the individual level contribute greatly to collective dismay at the condition of the world. This book explores the choices we have. It considers the options for civil society, and for the individual within today's political culture.

Contents:

Intro

The Politics of Everyday Life

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 We can't go on like this

Riches and poverty

Power and powerlessness

Male and female

Profits and ethics

Legality and illegality

Human consumption and environmental conservation

Consumption

Procreation

War and peace

2 Individuals, Choice and Consumer Capitalism

Freedom and self-interest

Choice and constraints

Time

Individualisation, 'flexibility', risk

Choice and consumer capitalism

The Western model

The spread

Imaginative hedonism

Romance and advertising

Alternative readings and passages of everyday life

The bonfire of the vanities

Nature

Shopping: producer and consumer alliances

Difficulties

Conclusion

3 Families

Home, sweet home

Privacy, everydayness and dreaming

A world apart

Familism

The American model

The effects of television

'Only connect'

Gender (and other) relations

Sharing

Sharing everything

Conclusion: families and civil society

4 The Possibilities of Civil Society

Key words

Texture and daily practice

Civil society, dictatorship and democracy in the global South

The enemies of civil society

Patron-client relations

Overpowerful families

Corporations and media empires

Conclusion: civil society and the state

5 Making Democracy Work

Some problems in modern democracy

Expansion, crisis and disaffection

Media and the politics of the person

Political parties

Electoral spending

The facilitating mechanisms of a democractic state

The local state and civil society

States and families

Reinventing the public

Deliberative democracy and Porto Alegre

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780522863826

0522863825

OCLC:

1261323019