Colloque

Democracy and the Permeability of Place

Nicholas V. Entrikin

Membre a labase

Nicholas V. Entrikin

Résumé du colloque

Democratic theory incorporates two extreme views of place in modern society. The first associates place with traditional community and local solidarity. Communitarians have noted the persistence of these ties in contemporary life and have used them to support a position arguing for the «naturalness» of modern tribalism. The second emphasizes the placelessness of modern life and the individualistic and alienating qualities of a world devoid of particularistic attachments to place. In the first, place is part of a «thick» cultural world of interrelations, and in the second it disappears in the «thinness» of modern social relations. A potentially more fruitful conceptualization is one in which place is viewed in terms of relative degrees of permeability related to rules of inclusion and exclusion. A discussion of these rules and their variation involves central themes of democratic theory.