Civil Disobedience (Un)Common Sense in Mass Democracies

by Quill, Lawrence

• ISBN13: 9780230555051
• ISBN10: 0230555055
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-04-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

What role might civil disobedience play in the politics of representative democracies as power 'leaks' from the nation state? If traditional politics has surrendered to the interests of global corporations what are the consequences? Quill proposes a reappraisal of civil disobedience and civil obedience in order to address these and other questions.

Author Biography

LAWRENCE QUILL is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at San José State University. He is the author of Liberty after Liberalism.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. ix
What Civil Disobedience is (and is not)	p. 1
Introduction	p. 2
Civil disobedience in the new century	p. 3
A contested concept	p. 7
Dimensions of disobedience	p. 19
Why (un)common sense?	p. 21
Overview	p. 23
Obedience: Ancient and Modern	p. 25
In the beginning...	p. 26
After 'the beginning': the case of Socrates	p. 31
A life of one's own?	p. 38
A 'Matter of fact' world	p. 43
Conclusion	p. 49
Appealing to Heaven	p. 52
The pirate and the emperor	p. 52
Old wine in new bottles	p. 56
A natural duty to obey	p. 62
'Resistance makes us what we are'	p. 68
Conclusion	p. 76
The Politics of Perception	p. 78
The collective imagination	p. 78
Theatrum mundi	p. 81
Contr'Un	p. 87
The political construction of contemporary reality	p. 93
Government interrupted	p. 98
Conclusion	p. 103
Civil Disobedience, Alienation, Political Rupture	p. 106
The end of revolutions?	p. 106
Life in one dimension	p. 109
The view from elsewhere	p. 116
Disobedience in our liquid world?	p. 123
Deviating from the script	p. 131
Disobedience: International or Cosmopolitan?	p. 134
When patriotism is not enough	p. 134
No externalities without representation	p. 137
'People power' or superpower?	p. 146
Institutionalizing resistance?	p. 154
Terra incognita	p. 161
Conclusion	p. 164
Notes	p. 167
Bibliography	p. 178
Index	p. 193
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