Participatory democracy

see also Deliberative Democracy

"Participatory Democracy"

The term was coined by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the 1960s. In the study referenced below, Polletta follows the use of and abandonment of participatory democracy by student social activists' Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the mid 1960s. She concludes that the organizational form 'Participatory Democracy' was viewed as practical, political, and black (as in ethnicity) when the SNCC started and was abandoned when that perception changed to a view that participatory democracy was ideological, oriented to personal self-transformation and not coincidentally- "white".

Once that perceptual shift occurred, it shaped subsequent activist generations' view of participatory democracy's strengths and liabilities. "Once a nondirective organizing style was now associated with white freedom highs' penchant for endless, unproductive talk, it made sense to abandon that style..... ...Under the mantle of radicalsim SNCC began to revert to a more traditional notion of leadership...."

The SNCC's brand of community organizing (radical democracy) continued strongest in the community organizing led followers of Saul Alinsky (Polletta 2002; Warren 2001).

"Today, Alinsky-styled organizing, much of it based in congregations, counts upward of three million participants..."
"Participatory democracy has enjoyed renewed populartiy among activists, especially in the anticorporate globalization and social justice movements (Polletta 2002; Klein 2000)" Some critics of participatory democracy claim that a problem with consensus-based decision making reflects a middle-class, white culture that is unfamiliar to people who are not middle-class and white. "...consensus based decision making is one of the 'cultural trappings' of middle-class, white, progressive activism (Tarleton 2001); in a sense, it is white."

http://www.hhh.umn.edu/centers/pnlc_old/pdf/TeresaTerrellarticle3-09.pdf

Francesca Polletta, associate Professor Dept. of Sociology, Columbia Univeristy

Religious Culture and Political Action
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:rSazAVFLdhwJ:www.clas.ufl.edu/users/kenwald/pos6292/wood.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjYeJhV5Jxn0IhimBmBPu9TkHOSl7eHp9XjO7y9c_f7uDCX7nW281OuIza6BWdebZCnEx8KD91VT6LkuctvRo-0Peu0TljZy9RPjarzm-qKRpDFkl53Qz-dFnTah2omTNpKx6En&sig=AHIEtbRLPydPTxIlypqhEIe_PYowLb-8VQ

Émile Durkheim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Durkheim