Pathways for the Post-COVID New Old World
Part 5 of 5 of the COVID-19 Series. Some are openly proclaiming, “you don’t want to waste a crisis,” as they calculate how the crisis could become a…
Tag: Democratization
The Internet & Democracy: Have We Learned Anything?
In the first wake of the Egyptian uprisings, and their framing as a “Facebook” revolution or Twitter revolution or “social media revolution” there was a lot of Utopian discours…
Democratization vs. Liberalism in Canada
Many North Americans (leaving aside Mexico), would likely not know that the official acronym for “North Korea” is “DPRK,” and if they did then fewer still might realize…
What Did Hosni Mubarak Mean By “Democracy”
That democracy means different things to different people is a truism so obvious as to be banal. But the intercultural problem that raises remains perpetually interesting: what do…
Creating Participatory Democracy (Or Trying, Anyway)
In hindsight, the biggest problem with the extraordinary protests in Tahrir Square was the lack of a coherent plan for creating democracy once Mubarak stepped down. I hear that…
When We Assess Democracy In Egypt, Whose “Democracy” Are We Measuring?
“Bread, freedom, social justice!” What’s your definition of democracy? Yesterday, after a lecture on ethnographic fieldwork, a student came up to me to discuss the anthropological c…
“From Arab Spring to Arab Winter”: Special Journal Issue
Why didn’t the 2011 uprisings lead to democratization? That’s the question posed by articles in a special issue of the journal Democratization. Photo Credit: tolkien1914 via Compfight cc…
Democracy in Cuba and at Home
Review essay, Part 1 (see Part 2) Cuba and its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion. By Arnold August. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing; London: Zed Books. 2013. ISBN 978-1-55266-404-9. 267 pages…
Heroes of Freedom: Burma’s 88 Generation and the Legacy of Mandela
It is easy when a nation is modernizing as rapidly as Burma is to look only forward, rather than backward. Yet, perhaps one of the most important lessons…
Heroes of Freedom: Burma’s 88 Generation and the Legacy of Mandela
It is easy when a nation is modernizing as rapidly as Burma is to look only forward, rather than backward. Yet, perhaps one of the most important lessons…