Lived Democracy: Inventing Alternative Public Discourses in a Quintessential Postmodern City

A significant challenge in contemporary life is how to deal with the volatile presence of diversity when people from different social, cultural, and economic positions come together to deliberate issues of shared concern. To move past scripted institutional alignments that cast conflict as a problem to be avoided, sponsors of inclusive public deliberation must learn to create a “collective We.” But here’s the catch. Where diversity persists, that collective "We" won’t work if it hinges on prevailing ideas about common ground, reaching consensus, shared identity politics, or even agreement as to what “the real” problem “is.” Here, even our best normative theories of deliberative democracy come up woefully short. For we need to deliberate not in our minds or in spirit (say, in a spirit of goodwill), but in inventive, invented action with others who are likewise finding their way into this decidedly contested space. That is, a collective We must emerge in light of the sometimes drastically different ways we are positioned in relation to an issue of shared concern. In fact, one of the most pressing purposes of public deliberation is to help participants to discover the concerns that could draw them together as a potential public in the first place and then to draw on their differences as resources for rather than obstacles to problem solving. Academics and other public workers are on the cusp of learning how to contribute to and to theorize the inventive work of public-world making. In this research cluster, colleagues from the Department of English and the School of Public Affairs/ Public Administration will consider together how international scholarship and ASU’s design aspirations as a New American University can speak to this significant challenge posed by diverse groups naming, framing and deliberating over common concerns.