Democratization and Struggles Against Injustice

Justo Serrano Zamora

doi:10.5771/9781538151570

Summary

In specialized literature as well as in the eyes of regular citizens, social movements are often considered to be actors of democratization. Among other things, social movements criticize existing deficits in democratic systems; they promote practices of deliberation and enact non-hierarchical structures that challenge existing democratic institutions. Very often, these challenges emerge from the context of struggle against unjust situations involving social exclusion, economic inequalities or the violation of fundamental rights.

Democratization and Struggles Against Injustice draws on the insights of one of the greatest American philosophers, John Dewey, as well as on some central intuitions of Frankfurt School Critical Theory to account for the connection between the democratic potential of social movements and their capacity to articulate injustice and promote just social relations. Particularly, it develops the idea that this double capacity can be explained by introduction of the pragmatist notion of experimental inquiry into the analysis of the epistemic practices of the mobilized. By introducing pragmatist epistemology to the study of social movements, Democratization and Struggles Against Injustice broadens the possibilities for their emancipatory potential.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2021
ISBN-Print: 978-1-5381-5154-9
ISBN-Online: 978-1-5381-5157-0
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 208
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. 1. Argument and Structure of the Book No access
1. 1. Political Learning Processes: Normative Disclosure and Appropriation No access
  2. CONCLUDING REMARKS No access
2. 1. The Method of a Theory of Justice (I) No access
  2. Social Freedom as Cooperative Activity No access
  3. Honneth’s Normative Reconstruction of Democracy: An Overview No access
  4. Democracy as Reflective Cooperation: Pure Epistemic Democracy in the Work of John Dewey No access
  5. Public Rationality as a By-Product of Political Freedom: Democracy in Freedom’s Right No access
  6. The Dynamics of Progress in the Public Sphere No access
  7. The Method of a Theory of Justice (II) No access
  8. A Last Effort of Integration No access
  9. “A Social Tendency with Evolutionary Power”: Reconsidering Problem-Solving No access
  10. Concluding Remarks No access
3. 1. The Epistemic Path to Democracy: From Feudalism to Individualistic Liberalism No access
  2. The Epistemic Path within Democracy: From Individualistic to Social Liberalism No access
  3. The Epistemic Path to a More Social Democracy: The Ideal of Democracy No access
  4. Dewey’s Systematic Argument No access
  5. Excursus: Habermas’ Genealogy of a Postmetaphysical Need for Justification No access
  6. When Problem-Solving Does Not Advance Democracy No access
  7. Hannah Arendt and the Epistemic Path to Political Perversion No access
  8. Peter Wagner and the Epistemic Path to Political Blockade and Regression No access
  9. CONCLUDING REMARKS No access
1. 1. Toward an Epistemic, Practice-Based Approach to Social Movements No access
  2. Epistemic Exclusion as a Form of Internal Exclusion No access
  3. James Bohman: Social Movements and World-Disclosure No access
  4. Hegemonic and Counter-Hegemonic Epistemic Practices No access
  5. The Notion of Epistemic Practices in Social Movements No access
  6. Concluding Remarks No access
2. 1. The Most General Methodology No access
  2. The Prescriptive Force of Logical Forms No access
  3. The Pattern of Inquiry No access
  4. Facts and Ideas No access
  5. The Basic Operations of Inquiry No access
  6. Experimentalism in the Broad Sense No access
  7. Inquiry and Articulation—The Link between Critical Theory, Pragmatism, and Hermeneutics? No access
  8. Exploring Experimentalism’s Counter-hegemonic Potential I: Democratic Deepening No access
  9. Experimentalism and the Building of Oppositional Consciousness: Adorno and Dewey No access
  10. Adorno’s Characterization of Reified Thinking No access
  11. Dewey and Adorno on Nonreified Thinking No access
  12. Inquiry and the Feeling of Injustice No access
  13. Hypothesis-Formation: The Work of Imagination No access
  14. Concluding Remarks No access
3. 1. Consciousness-Raising Meetings No access
  2. Testimonio No access
  3. Recategorization Work in the Chilean Dictatorship No access
  4. The “Consensus-Process” No access
  5. Conricerca and Inchiestas No access
  6. The Human Microphone No access
  7. Assemblies as Experimental Settings No access
  8. Horizontal Democracy and Efficiency in a Climate Camp No access
  9. Concluding Remarks No access
1. 1. Hermeneutical Injustice No access
  2. Overcoming Pathologies in Cultural Life No access
  3. Concluding Remarks No access
2. 1. John Dewey’s Three-Stage Theory of Social Struggle—Epistemic and Normative Dimensions No access
  2. The Act of Expression No access
  3. From a Sense of Powers to Articulated Aims: The Act of Expression in Social Struggle No access
  4. Concluding Remarks: Learning from the Learning Process of the Oppressed No access
Conclusion No access Pages 191 - 196
Bibliography No access Pages 197 - 204
Index No access Pages 205 - 208