Populism and John Dewey Convergences and Contradictions

Notes

[^1] See Hedrick Smith, “Reagan’s Populist Coalition,” New York Times, March 16, 1980; I explore the contrasting populist rhetorics of the 2000 presidential campaign in Everyday Politics: Reconnecting Citizens and Public Life (Philadelphia: PennPress, 2004), chapter one.

[^2] “A Different Kind of Politics: John Dewey and the Meaning of Citizenship in the 21st Century,” Dewey Lecture, University of Michigan, November 1, 2001, on web at www.cpn.org; also published in A PEGS Journal: The Good Society , [^2004]: For evidence of millennials’ interest in such politics, see Nick Longo and Matt…, Students and Politics: A CIRCLE Working Paper (College Park: CIRCLE, 2005). I continued King’s charge to organize poor whites in Durham in 1966 working for Operation Breakthrough, a poverty program that many saw as simply a “Black Power” agency (I believe that Howard Fuller, the dynamic African American director with whom I had many conversations, also identified with southern populism). Dorothy Cotton recounted the excitement in SCLC when a group of poor whites came to the SCLC Dorchester Center, for a week of citizenship school training – a story that I believe remains untold. SCLC’s populism was very different than the politics of caution, evident in the national leadership of the NAACP, or the politics of alienation from American cultural traditions in the left wing of the movement, later widespread in the student movement. My own writings over the years on concepts and topics such as community organizing (The Backyard Revolution and Community Is Possible), the wellsprings of democratic movements (Free Spaces, with Sara Evans), the commonwealth tradition in American political culture (CommonWealth), citizenship as public work (Building; America, with Nan Kari), and reintegration of political practices into everyday life (Everyday Politics), as well as this lecture, can all be seen as efforts to develop the populism I learned in SCLC. In full disclosure, I should note that in addition to my own direct experiences in SCLC, my father, Harry George Boyte, a reporter for the Charlotte Observer, then manager of the Atlanta Red Cross, then on the Executive Committee of SCLC from 1963 to 1967, also identified with southern populism.

[^3] Both are questioned by economists such as Amartya Sen, Joseph Steiglitz, Omano Edigheji, and Peter Evans, partly because these approaches have failed in their own terms. As Evans said, “ Neither the original [state-centered] development project nor its neo-liberal successor managed to combine increased standards of living with increased inclusion in a way that came close to replicating the experiences of the industrialized North during the Post-War II “Golden Age of Capitalism.” The vast majority of the citizens of Africa and Latin America, as well as most Asian agriculturalists (outside of China) experienced little ‘catch-up’ in the sense of a diminished gap between their living standards and those of the North. Consequently, it is not surprising that the vision of increased capital accumulation in the presence of functioning markets as sufficient to deliver well-being no longer has the political or intellectual charisma that it did.” Peter Evans, “Population Health and Development: An Institutional-Cultural Approach to Capability Expansion,” paper for Successful Societies Volume of the Successful Societies Program, October 12, 2006 draft. It seems to me highly significant that a critique of statist and neo-liberal approaches is appearing from the heart of establishment institutions themselves such as the World Bank and UN Development Programmes. See for instance Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton, Eds., Culture and Public Action (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2004).

[^4] For a striking example of the convergence on a theoretical level of “progressive populist” and “conservative” economics, see Paul Krugman’s essay, “Who Was Milton Friedman?” in The New York Review of Books, February 15, 2007, pp. 27-[^33]: To make the case about the “predictive power” of rational choice theory, Krugman, like most rational choice theorists, takes mid- and late twentieth century America, with its highly individualist, hyper-competitive, consumer-oriented culture, as a universal depiction of the human condition.

It is important to note that democratic intellectuals with a citizen-centered orientation from elsewhere, such as Michael Edwards of the Ford Foundation, Omano Edigheji of the Centre of Policy Studies, and Xolela Mangcu, a leading South African public intellectual,

have differing views about “populism’s” global potential.  Thus Michael Edwards, British, director of the Global Governance and Civil Society Program of the Ford Foundation, argues that populism as a term has been too discredited to be truly useful as a descriptor of new forms of democracy (personal correspondence, 5 January, 2007). For his views on agency, see Edwards, “Looking back from 2046: Thoughts on the 80th Anniversary of the Institute for Revolutionary Social Science,” Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex, IDS Bulletin, March 2007. In contrast, as noted above, Mangcu and Edigheji believe that populism may turn out to be an effective way of describing citizen-centered politics in Africa, about which they have both written a great deal. For instance, Omano Edigheji, research director at the Centre for Policy Studies, argued in a paper for a 2006 seminar with staff from the President’s office for a “society-centric approach to development and government.” He proposed that “The success of the developmental state “will be dependent on its ability to promote a people’s contract in an empowering way”, coming to rely less on service delivery and much more on the ingenuity and creativity of communities and citizens. “This [means] an emphasis on cooperative work and deliberative traditions bringing people together across lines of different parties, racial backgrounds, class divides and other differences for the common good”. Omano Edigheji, “The Emerging South African Democratic Developmental State and the People’s Contract ,” Paper developed for the Democratic Develoment State in Africa Project, Centre for Policy Studies, presented at the seminar by Peter Evans and Omano Edigheji on the Developmental State with the Office of the President, August, 2006. See also footnotes 11 and 16, for the arguments of Gianna Pomata and Vladimir Khoros that a distinctive populist politics emerged globally in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

[^5] On Idasa’s work, see Harry C Boyte, Marie-Louise Ström and Bennitto Motitsoe, “Democracy as Social Responsibility: Debating the Role of the State,” Cape Times August 28, 2006; and  Marie-Louise Ström, Citizens at the Centre (Cape Town: IDASA, 2005).

[^6] Peter Levine, “Three forms of populism in the 2008 campaign,” February 7, 2007(www.peterlevine.ws/mt/); Obama quoted from Ibid., and also Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zelney, “Obama Formally Enters Presidental Race with Calls for Generational Change,” New York Times February 11, 2007, p. A[^22]: For a sampling of arguments about populism’s resurgence, see James Lardner, “Populism’s Revival,” Around the Kitchen Table: A Demos Journal, November, 2006; David Brooks, “The Fighting Democrat,” New York Times November 5, 2006, Paul Krugman, “True Blue Populists,” New York Times November 13, 2006; Timothy Egan, “Fresh Off the Farm in Montanta, a Senator-to-Be,” New York Times November 13, 2006. Evidence of populism’s re-appearance seems world wide. For instance, though it doesn’t use populist language, the special May, 2006, issue of the South African Communist Party, Bua Kominisi! on the presidential succession debates struck a populist tone. It revised a crucial tenet of Marxism, that the capitalist workplace with its productive relations are the image of the future (when socialized). Instead, the document called for turning the left’s view on its head, valuing as primary the sphere of “reproductive labor,” community life with its use values, including entrepreneurial activity, as the embryo of a different society. Bua Kominisi! Vol. 5:1, May 2006 Special Issue. Subsequent debates also called for an appreciation for “pre-capitalist values,” an enormous break with left wing theoretical orthodoxy, though one prefigured by the practices of the Popular Fronts later described.

[^7]   For theoretical and historical treatments of populism, see in Harry C. Boyte and Frank Riessman, Eds., The New Populism: The Politics of Empowerment (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986)

especially the articles by Sheldon Wolin, Robert Bellah, Mary Dietz, Lawrence Goodwyn, Manning Marable, Gar Alperovitz, Elizabeth Minnich, and Robert Coles,  as well as “populist testimonials” by Studs Terkel, Barbara Mikulski, Cora Tucker, and Tom Harkin. Vladimer G. Khoros detailed pre-modern themes that are precursors of populism. Despite his strained efforts to show support for populism in the writings of Marx and Lenin – the book was written in the Soviet period – Khoros parallels Gianna Pomata’s arguments, demonstrating that populism emerged as a distinctive modern political project, different than socialism, in many parts of the world in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Khoros, Populism: Its Past, Present and Future (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1984).  Also Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); and Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1995); Romand Coles develops a superb treatment of the “transformative populist” potential, as well as what he sees as limits, of broad based organizing in his review essay, “Of Tensions and Tricksters: Grassroots Democracy Between Theory and Practice,” Perspectives on Politics Vol. 4:3 (Fall, 2006), pp. 547-561.

[^8] For an argument that populism is a “persuasion,” not a political project, see Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1995). For critiques, see for instance, instance Bruce Palmer, Man Over Money: The Southern Populist Critique of American Capitalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Jeff Lustig, “Community and Social Class,” democracy 1:2 (Spring, 1981), pp. 96-108); Jim Green, “Culture, Politics and Workers’ Response to Industrialization in the US,” Radical America 16:1&2 (January-April, 1982; Carl Boggs, “The New Populism and the Limits of Structural Reform,” Theory and Society Vol. 12:3 (May, 1983) and Boggs, Social Movements and Political Power: Emerging Forms of Radicalism in the West (Philadelphia:  Temple University Press, 1986); Cornell West, “A Black Socialist Critique,” in Boyte and Riessman, The New Populism, pp. 207-12; Joseph M. Kling and Prudence S. Posner. Eds, Dilemmas of Activism (1990); and Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (London: Verso, 1997). Denning is sympathetic to populist language, but argues that socialist-oriented “labor populism” is preferable.

[^9] Stephanie Devitt described this in an essay about what led her to work with politicians who had a populist outlook:,

“At the end of my sophomore year in college, I read the book There’s Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos by political satirist Jim Hightower. His twangy drawl leapt off of the page and, after spending too much time for a 19 year old knee-deep in feminist theory, the book spoke to a part of my life that academics had forgotten. It reminded me of the conversations in my parents’ kitchen between my dad and the local bean salesman, bailer or combiner who stopped by for business and a chat…At the end of the day, populism for me is a politics of getting things done... …The presence of “common sense” is a key barometer for true populist movements in my understanding.”

Stephanie Devitt, “Reflections on Populism,” November 28, 2006, in author’s possession.

[^10] Sheldon Wolin, “Contract and Birthright,” Boyte and Riessman, Eds., The New Populism, pp. 285-[^6]:

[^11] John Dewey, Collected Works (Vol. 6), p. [^232]: Many thanks to Jim Farr for finding these references to Dewey’s explicit views on populism. I owe a large debt to Jim for his arguments in our conversations over the years about the importance of Dewey and the need to explore his thought in more detail.

[^12] Nan Kari and I trace these cooperative work traditions in the experiences and cultures of immigrant groups in Building America: The Democratic Promise of Public Work (Philadelphia: Temple, 1996).

[^13] Ibid., pp. 35, [^38]:

[^14] Gianna Pomata, “A Common Heritage: The Historical Memory of Populism in Europe and the United States,” in. Boyte and Riessman, The New Populism: The Politics of Empowerment, 30-[^31]:

[^15] History taken from Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment; also Thedore C. Blegen, “Agrarian Crusade Started with Granger Move and Later Populist Revolt,” St. Paul Pioneer Press Special 75th year commemorative history issue, December 31, 1933; and Omar H. Ali, “The Making of a Black Populist: A Tribute to the Rev. Walter A. Pattillo,” Oxford Public Ledger Vol. 121:25 (March, 2002, accessed on web November 16, 2006).

[^16] Manning Marable, “Black History and the Vision of Democracy,” in Boyte and Riessman, New Populism, p. 202-[^3]:

[^17] Alabama House Journal, 1898-99 (Jacksonville, FL: Vance Printing Company), p. [^459]:

[^18] Eric Foner, “Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?” History Workshop 17 (Spring, 1984), pp. 57-[^80]:

[^19] Robert Nisbet, “The Total Community,” in Marvin Olson, ed., Power in Societies (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. [^423]:

[^20] Robert Nisbet, quoted in Harry C. Boyte and Nan Kari,” “The Commonwealth of Freedom,” Policy Review #86, November, 1997, accessed 12/17, 2006

http://www.policyreview.org/nov97/freedom.html

[^21] Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy (Washington, D.C: American Enterprise Institute, 1977), quotes taken from George Will, “Trinchiness at Christmas Time, Minneapolis Tribune, December 24, [^1979]:

[^22] Peter Berger, with Brigette Berger, Facing Up to Modernity: Excursions in Society, Politics, and Religion (New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. [^53]:

[^23] Ronald Reagan, quoted from William Schambra, The Quest for Community and the Quest for a New Public Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1983), p. 30; Michael Joyce, from Project Public Life, the newsletter of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship, December, [^1992]:

[^24] Weil and some of those others who observed and challenged this pattern of left deracination are described in CommonWealth: A Return to Citizen Politics (New York: Free Press, 1980); in Building America: The Democratic Promise of Public Work with Nan Kari (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), and in Everyday Politics: Reconnecting Citizens and Public Life (Philadelphia: PennPress, 2004).

[^25] See Harry C. Boyte, The Backyard Revolution: Understanding the New Citizen Movement  (Philadelphia: Temple, 1980), and more extensively, Boyte, "Populism versus the Left," democracy, spring, 1981; and CommonWealth, chapter two.

[^26] Karl Marx, The Holy Family (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishers, 1956), p. 123; Friedrich Engels, The Housing Question (Moscow: Progress, 1970), p. [^29]:

[^27] Pomata, “A common heritage,” pp. 35-[^36]:

[^28]   Michael Harrington, The Twilight of Capitalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976), 291; Ralph Miliband, Marxism and Politics (Oxford: Oxford Univerity Press, 1977), 44; Stanley Aronowitz, “The Working Class: A Break with the Past,” in Divided Society: The Ethnic Experience in America, Colin Greer, ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 312-[^13]: Gary Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self Made Man (New York: New American Library, 1969), pp. 463, 468. This analysis of the left wing stance of outside critic and the theories of social change involved was outlined in Harry C. Boyte, “Populism and the Left,” democracy 1,2 (April, 1981): 53-66, and developed in CommonWealth: A Return to Citizen Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989), especially chapter 3.

[^29] I describe this dynamic in Everyday Politics, building in part on an unpublished article on “the new populism” written for The Nation with Nan Kari.

[^30] I develop this argument in Harry C. Boyte, “Public Work: Civic Populism versus Technocracy in Higher Education,” in David Brown and Debbi Witte, Eds.,  HEX: A Ten Year Retrospect (Dayton: Kettering Foundation, 2007).

[^31] With brilliant insight, the social historian and theorist David Scobey, chair of Imagining America, has observed that one of the invisible sources of discontent among scholars in academia is the contrast between their own privatized experiences and the vibrant subaltern publics they have discovered among poor and working class communities that were involved in democratic movements and action. Citation.

[^32] Robert Coles, the Harvard psychologist, gives a fascinating account of his own realization of this dynamic as he worked in a Freedom House in Mississippi in 1964, in “A Working People’s Politics,” Boyte and Reissman, The New Populism, pp. 83-[^99]:

[^33]   I saw the power of the prophetic imagination first hand as a young field secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It was Martin Luther King’s genius to draw on and radically rework core American and southern symbols, traditions, and themes – “freedom,” “democracy,” “citizenship,” “Christianity,” “the southern tradition,” and many

others -- to frame the goals and  meaning of the movement itself. Sara Evans and  I made this point about the prophetic imagination in contrast to the stance of left wing critic in Harry C. Boyte and Sara M. Evans, "Democratic Politics and a Critique of the Left," Tikkun (Summer, 1987). For a parallel treatment also contrasted the prophetic stance with the stance of outside critic see Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987).

[^34] E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1966), 2nd edition.

[^35] Sara M. Evans and Harry C. Boyte, Free Spaces: The Sources of Democratic Change in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1986; Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992); Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1980); Frederick Harris, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken? The Erosion and Transformation of African American Civic Life,” Report for the National Commission on Civic Renewal (College Park, Md: Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, 1999).

[^36] Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton, “Culture and Public Action,” in Rao and Walton Eds. Culture and Public Action (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 5

[^37] James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1998).

[^38] Arjun Appadurai, “The Capacity to Aspire,” in Rao and Walton, Eds., Culture and Public Action, pp. 60-62, [^69]: Appadurai’s account also underlines populism’s practical qualities. This practical focus on “getting things done” and common sense  – closely associated with the felt need to sustain the communal values and ways of life under threat – emerges in Appadurai and all other populist accounts.

[^39] Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (New York: Macmillan, 1974).

[^40] See for instance, Andrew Ross, Universal Abandon: The Politics of Postmodernism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988). As Linda Alcoff has described, these perspectives reflect despair over loss of agency, or the capacity to act to shape the world. See “Cultural Femnism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 13:3 (1988), pp. 405-[^36]:  Postmodernist and poststructuralists reify “The Power,” and in the process remove it from “the people,” embodying what organizers call a “unilateral notion” of power and its operations.

[^41] As Susan Sterett commented about a draft of this lecture, “it is a good idea to recognize that the world is a mess. But then we need to ask, ‘so what are we doing to do about it?’” commentary on Populism and Dewey, Denver University public lecture, January 18, [^2007]:

[^42] Edward Chambers with Michael Cowan, Roots of Radicals: Organizing for Power, Action, and Justice (New York: Continuum, 2003) , pp. 28, [^31]:

[^43] This argument about relational power was developed in Bernard Loomer, “Two Conceptions of Power,” Criterion, 15:1 (1976), pp. 12-29, a piece widely used in organizing, especially the Industrial Areas Foundation. See Rom Coles, “Of Tensions and Tricksters,” for splendid treatment of power and the IAF approach. For descriptions of views of Chambers, Cortes, Taylor, and Stephens, see Boyte, Community Is Possible, Chapter Five, CommonWealth, Chapters Six, Seven, and Eight, and Everyday Politics, Chapter Three.

[^44] See for instance Harry C. Boyte, “Civic Populism,” Perspectives on Politics, 1,4 (2003).

[^45] Xolela Mangu, Personal conversation, Johannesburg, South Africa, 7 December, [^2006]: Drawing on his own experience as well as the views of Black Consciousness leaders, Mangcu describes the spaces in the BCM that developed democratic consciousness, power and capacities. “The BCM started community development projects throughout the country [that] ranged from community health clinics to schools to home-based industries. In addition [it] concentrated on intellectual dimensions of development…the leitmotif was the philosophy of self-reliance which was popularized through slogans such as ‘black man you are on your own’”. The cultural themes of the BCM were communicated powerfully to larger audience by BCM publications. Mangcu describes how “as a little boy I was one of the vendors of one of these newspapers [of the BCM], the VOICE. Through these

publications Biko prefigured a new generation of black writers, poets, and intellectuals in what has oftentimes been described as the Black Renaissance of the 1970’s.”  Thus, Black Review, a leading journal, editorialized that “the projects created had led to a creative environment for objective reflection and formed a basis for communal action." Xolela Mangcu, “Civic Capacity in a Democratic South Africa,” paper delivered to Lessons from the Field, Roundtable on Building Citizen Capacity,” Pretoria, IDASA, June, 2004, p. 7; Xolela Mangcu, “Technocratic Creep in South Africa,” unpublished paper in author’s possession, pp. 16-17.

[^46] See Azzahir’s reflections in Atum Azzahir and Janice Barbee, “Powderhorn Phillips Cultural Wellness Center: Cultural Reconnection and Community Building for Personal and Community Health,” in The End of One Way (Minneapolis: The McKnight Foundation, 2004), pp. 44-61; also Boyte, Overcoming the Citizenship Gap: The Civic Life Movement in Minnesota (St. Paul, Minnesota Historical Society with the Kettering Foundation, forthcoming). The need for a “populist alternative” to both essentialism and liberalism constantly strikes me in South Africa.  For instance, Frederic Van Zyl Slabbert, former leader of the Parliamentary opposition to  finds it easy enough to level devastating critiques of the “identity mysticism,” based on the penchant of some ANC leaders to divert attention from their policy failures and to reinforce their own positional power by invoking “the right kind of blood.” But his solution -- to “tell history like it was” and for political leaders to simply “get on with it” – begs as many questions as it answers. Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, The Other Side of History: An Anecdotal Reflection on Political Transition in South Africa (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2006), especially chapter one.

[^47] A number of these examples of cultural and community capacity and civic professionalism are described in my forthcoming Closing the Citizenship Gap: The Civic Populism Movement in Minnesota (St. Paul, Minnesota Historical Society, 2008), and form the basis for Minnesota Works Together, a new populist and civic organizing effort in Minnesota.

[^48] Alan Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), pp. 296, [^245]:

[^49] Freedom and Culture (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1939), pp. 155-[^56]:

[^50] John Dewey, “Ethics of Democracy,” Early Works 1: p. [^244]:

[^51] Ibid., pp. 246, [^248]:

[^52] John Dewey, John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1934, pp. 6-7, [^8]:

[^53] Ibid., pp. 12, [^4]:

[^54] Ibid., p. 5, [^342]:

[^55] Walter Lippmann, quoted here from William Schambra, The Quest for Community and the Quest for a New Public Philosophy (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1983,), p. [^5]:

[^56] Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York: Macmillan, 1909), pp. 139; [^453]:

[^57] Lasswell and Meier, quoted from Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 284; Shepard, quoted Ibid., p [^285]:

[^58] Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Free Press, 1965), pp. 11, 18, 55, 132-22, [^328]: Lippmann, Phantom Public (New York: Macmillan, 1925), p. 106.

[^59] Lippman, Public Opinion, 196-[^97]:

[^60] The Philosophy of John Dewey Edited by John McDermott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 357, [^382]:

[^61] Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology, Middle Works 14:31-[^32]: 286.

[^62] Deborah Meier, “So What Does It Take to Build a School for Democracy?” Phi Delta Kappan 2003, p. 16 and personal interview, Boston, November 1, [^2001]:

[^63] Lee Benson, Ira Harkavy, and John Puckett, Dewey’s Dream: Universities and Democracies in the Age of Educational Reform (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, forthcoming 2007).

[^64] John Dewey, Later Collected Works 2: 314; The Public and Its Problems (Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press, 1954), pp. [^185]:

[^65] Dewey, Later Collected Works 2:[^306]:

[^66] Ibid., [^255]:

[^67] Dewey, Public and Problems, pp. 212-[^13]:

[^68] Robert Westbrook, Dewey and American Democracy pp. 317-[^18]:

[^69] Ryan, Dewey and the High Tide, pp. 105-[^06]:

[^70] Quoted Ibid., p. [^205]:

[^71] Dewey quoted in Ibid, p. 201; Ryan, Dewey and High Tide, pp. 194-[^95]:

[^72] My understanding of agency draws on Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mishe’s careful, detailed treatment of the concept, “What Is Agency?” American Journal of Sociology Vol. 103: 4 (January, 1998), pp. 962-[^1023]: Identifying several theoretical traditions that feed the concept – those that focus on habit or routine; on purposive and goal oriented behavior; and on public and communicative action -- Emirbayer and Mishe propose a reconceptualization of agency a “as temporally embedded process of social engagement informed by the past (in its habitual aspect), but also oriented toward the future (as a capacity to imagine alternative future possibilities) and toward the present (as a capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within the contingencies of the moment).” They stress that agency is always temporally located and, “more radically,” press the case that “the structural contexts of action are themselves temporal as well as well as relational fields,” an emphasis that highlights that structures are created, not fixed, and thus open to continuous shaping and reshaping (“What Is Agency,” pp.  963-4.) I would add that the concept of agency is enriched by sustained attention to relational, generative power, especially attuned to its cultural aspects.

[^73] Dewey, Culture and Freedom p. 148; more generally see his discussion in this chapter, Six, “Science and Free Culture.”

[^74] I develop this with examples in “Public Work: Technocracy versus Civic Populism in Higher Education, The Public Academy: A Ten Year HEX Retrospect (Dayton: Kettering, 2007, forthcoming).

[^75] See for instance, Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America (New York: Vintage, 1965).

[^76] Ryan, Dewey and High Tide. As he puts it, “James’ sense of the irreducible plurality of human passions and his interest in the quirkiness and peculiarity of individual lives…made James much readier than Dewey could ever be to appreciate the furious emotions that led people into war and the yet more furious emotions that war stirred up. P. [^157]: I have learned about Esther Thelen’s relation to the pragmatic tradition generally and Dewey and James specifically from David Thelen, her husband, former editor of the Journal of American History and a wonderful populist historian in his own right. David and I are old friends and have had many conversations on these themes. I also greatly benefited from spending several days with her students and co-researchers in Bloomington, Indiana, in June, 2006, discussing the parallels between Esther Thelen’s science and democracy. For Esther’s discussion of her intellectual debt to John Dewey, see Esther Thelen and Linda B. Smith, A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action (Boston: MIT Press, 1995), p. 328.

[^77] John P. Spencer, Melissa Clearfield, Daniela Corbetta, Beverly Ulrich, Patrick Buchanan, Gregor Schröner, “Moving Toward a Grand Theory of Development: In Memory of Esther Thelen,” 2005 Presidential Address, SRCD, Atlanta, pp. 15, [^17]:

[^78] Rom Coles, “Of Tensions and Tricksters,” p. [^550]:

[^79] Harry C. Boyte, CommonWealth: A Return to Citizen Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989).

[^80] Nan Skelton and Nan Kari, Eds, Alive with Hope: The Story of the Jane Addams School (Dayton: Kettering Foundation, forthcoming 2007).

[^81] Robert Hildreth, “Theorizing Public Achivement,” on CDC web site www.publicwork.org under research/working papers, also note dissertation for a “Deweyan” take on PA.

[^82] See for instance Hildreth, “Theorizing,” Boyte, “Tale of Two Playgrounds,” and the links to the Mankato Public Achievement web site, where Joe Kunkle chronicled the many changes in self-concept, skills, and perceptions of the environments that young people develop through PA.

[^83] Jennifer O’Donoghue, “Powerful Spaces: Urban Youth, Community Organization, and Democratic Action,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 2006, pp. 101-[^06]:

[^84] Ibid., p. [^45]:

[^85] Dewey, Public and Its Problems, p. [^149]:

[^86] Youngblood quoted from Jim Sleeper, “East Brooklyn’s Second Rising,” City Limits, December, 1982, p. [^13]:

[^87] For a detailed discussion of Dewey and the Polish community, see Westbrook, Dewey and Democracy , pp. 212-23; for discussion of Dewey’s war with Catholics, Ryan, Dewey and High Tide, pp. 336-43; quote from [^336]:

[^88] On organizing versus mobilizing, see Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) – a book that has become a favorite of broader based organizing networks; interview with Christine Stephens, San Antonio, July 4, 1983; also drawn from interviews with Ernesto Cortes, July 4, 1983 and Beatrice Cortes, July 8, 1983, both in San Antonio.

[^89] Nick Longo, Community forthcoming, 139; Stein, quoted in Longo, p. [^138]:

[^90] Dewey, Public and Its Problems, p. [^142]:

[^91] Westbrook, Dewey and Democracy, on Dewey’s stance toward the Deal, pp. 440-52; on his role as a critic of Stalin and the Show trials, pp. 480-81, 485; see also Ryan, Dewey and High Time , pp. 284-[^95]:

[^92] Dewey quoted from Ryan, Dewey and High Tide p. [^296]:

[^93] Dewey quoted in Westbrook, Dewey and Democracy, p. [^444]: Westbrook has an excellent discussion about Dewey’s efforts to conceptualize a nonstatist radical alternative to unbridled capitalism, pp. 452-58.

[^94] I made this argument in CommonWealth: A Return to Citizen Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989), building on Eric Foner’s proposal that the reason socialist and labor movements had never made much headway in America was not due to an absence, such as relative affluence or the divided working class, but rather a presence of a tradition of democratic radicalism based on small property. This argument expands the arguments of like Michael Denning, following James Green, that populism is about “rent, credit and taxes” and takes the tradition as a positive, not a sign of lesser politics.

[^95] CCF quoted in Westbrook, Dewey and Democracy, p. [^485]:

[^96] Eric Foner, Story of American Freedom ; Gary Gerstle, American Crucible The wider problems on the left stemmed from the teleological assumptions built into its theory. The Marxist left – not only communists but also anti-Stalinists such as Sidney Hook -- saw organizing as a means to ends which were in fact hugely problematic, such as government ownership of the economy, and, in cultural terms, “the new socialist man” of the future, uprooted from traditions. This contradiction between democratic organizing practices at the left’s best and undemocratic ends can be seen as the left’s profound irony across the world, creating the terrible destructions of the sort described by James Scott. Despite this contradiction, in its great periods of organizing leftists generated lessons and theoretical insights about power, politics, and culture change of continuing relevance.  Nowhere was this clearer than in the 1930s and ‘40s.

[^97] The importance of cultural dynamics emerges clearly in Evans account. “Looking at the dynamics of health outcomes…validates a perspective on civil society that spotlights the role of culture…the construction of affect-laden cultural ties built around social imaginaries and collective narratives…” Culture change took place within public institutions as well as within civil society. “The changes in social relations that matter are not simply changes within civil society. They are also changes in the concrete social relations that connect civil society to public institutions…social imaginaries and collective narratives are as important to the functioning of public institutions as they are to the transformation of civil society.” Peter Evans, “Population Health and Development: An

Institutional-Cultural Approach to Capacity Expansion,” chapter for Sucessful Societies Volume (in author’s possession), forthcoming, pp. 27, 28, 29.

Here is a bit of suggestive anecdotal evidence: During the December 2006-07 holidays, on the Wild Coast of South Africa where my wife’s family has a place, we spent a good deal of time talking with Anu Idicula, a friend of my brother in law Bertil, about the state of Kerala and its social movements. Anu comes from an educated Indian family in Kerala, with lineage dating from the 12th century. Both her parents are medical doctors in a rural area– Anu follows suit in education, with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, now getting a degree in law. She says Kerala, as a result of culture change, now has a vital culture of public art, public discussion, and has a fierce ethic of public accountability that has greatly decreased corruption. Its people are extremely proud of Kerala. For instance, people will clean up public areas (there is a long tradition of people cleaning their own doorstep). Teachers go from Kerala all over India and many have come to South Africa. When I described the difference between socialism and populism – and how socialist movements have done populist organizing at certain times -- she agreed that it was populism that shaped Kerala’s culture. A well-functioning, socially concerned government has been important (and is itself largely the product of the popular movement), but the key was the movement organizing that developed popular power, drawing on Kerala traditions and culture. She says Kerala is now very well organized, with a lot of unions and other civic and social groups.  “Everyone takes part.” She described the local businesses where people gather in the mornings, laborers and professionals alike, to read papers,  and talk about world events – like a whole Indian state full of Humphrey drug stores. She says young people from Kerala are feeding the technology boom across India. Many of her friends are involved.

[^98] Gary Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile Town, 1914-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. [^163]:

[^99] Dewey, Public and Its Problems, p. [^216]:

[^100] Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2003), p. [^73]:

[^101] Lary May, The Big Tomorrow; Lisabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal, Denning, The Cultural Front, p. [^99]:

[^102] Melissa Bass, “The Politics and Civics of National Service,” Ph.D. dissertation Boston: Brandeis University, 2004).

[^103] Robert Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006); and H. Allen Orr, “A Mission to Convert,” New York Review of Books, January 11, 2007, pp. 21-[^24]:

[^104] For accounts, see my Log of Camp David on the CDC web site, www.publicwork.org and also Benjamin Barber, The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton Era (New York: Norton, 2001).

[^105] Benson, Harkavy, Puckett, Dream, xiii.

[^106] Alison Kadlec, Dewey’s Critical Pragmatism.

[^107] Scott Peters and his colleagues and students have found many agricultural scholars functioning in these ways. See for instance Scott Peters,  Nicholas R. Jordan, Margaret Adamek, Theodore R. Alter, Eds., Engaging Campus and Community: The Practice of Public Scholarship in the American Land-Grant University System (Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation, 2006). I detail these also in Boyte, “Citizenship as Public Work,” Joseph Tulchin and Meg Rosenthal Eds., Citizenship in Latin America (Washington:   Woodrow Wilson International Center, 2006).

[^108] This is the premise of the Toward Citizen Democracy Project that Omano Edigheji and I are organizing in association with CODESRIA, the organization of African social scientists.