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Learning in Democracy: Deliberation and Activism as Forms of Education

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Abstract

The press and scholars alike often bemoan the failure of civil public deliberation. Yet this insistence on civility excludes people who engage in adversarial tactics, limiting the ideas that are heard within deliberation. Drawing on a deliberative dialogue that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the aftermath of the deadly White Supremacist rally of 2017, this article reveals how the capacity of deliberation to be inclusive of diverse voices depends upon deliberators’ orientation to learn from people who do not participate in deliberation. While much scholarship attends to learning for democracy, as in the preparation of young citizens, this article shows the significance of learning in democracy, as in the capacity of adults to learn in the midst of political strife.

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Notes

  1. “Privilege” is a popular but complex construct. It can be reductive, seeming to collapse complex personal histories into one-dimensional characteristics such as race or sex. However I refer to it here to acknowledge that (particularly non-Jewish and non-Muslim) White men experience a different relationship to the threat of violence posed by the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville than do groups who were targeted. Deliberative theorists have also written extensively on how dominant groups occupy a higher status position within public discourse (e.g. Mansbridge et al. 2010; Young 2002).

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Correspondence to Rachel Wahl.

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Wahl, R. Learning in Democracy: Deliberation and Activism as Forms of Education. Stud Philos Educ 38, 517–536 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09671-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09671-2

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