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Author Cruikshank, Barbara, author.

Title The Will to Empower : Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects / Barbara Cruikshank
Published Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [1999]
©1999

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Description 1 online resource (viii, 149 pages)
Series Cornell paperbacks
Contents Introduction: Small Things -- 1. Democratic Subjects -- 2. The Liberal Arts of Governance -- 3. The Will to Empower: Technologies of Citizenship and the War on Poverty -- 4. Revolutions Within: Self-Government and Self-Esteem -- 5. Welfare Queens: Ruling by Number -- Conclusion: Iteration
Summary How do liberal democracies produce citizens who are capable of governing themselves? In considering this question, Barbara Cruikshank rethinks central topics in political theory, including the relationship between welfare and citizenship, democracy and despotism, and subjectivity and subjection. Drawing on theories of power and the creation of subjects, Cruikshank argues that individuals in a democracy are made into self-governing citizens through the small-scale and everyday practices of voluntary associations, reform movements, and social service programs. She argues that our empowerment is a measure of our subjection rather than of our autonomy from power. Through a close examination of several contemporary American "technologies of citizenship"--Welfare rights struggles to philanthropic self-help schemes to the organized promotion of self-esteem awareness-she demonstrates how social mobilization reshapes the political in ways largely unrecognized in democratic theory. Although the impact of a given reform movement may be minor, the techniques it develops for creating citizens far extend the reach of govermental authority. Combining a detailed knowledge of social policy and practice with insights from poststructural and feminist theory, The Will to Empower shows how democratic citizens and the political are continually recreated
Notes First published 1999 by Cornell University Press. First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 1999
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
Online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Nov 2019)
digitized 2021. HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
SUBJECT Universidad Sergio Arboleda gnd
Subject Political participation -- United States
Democracy -- United States
Power (Social sciences) -- United States
PHILOSOPHY -- Political.
Democracy
Political participation
Power (Social sciences)
Demokratie
Partizipation
Politische Beteiligung
Political participation -- United States.
Democracy -- United States.
Power (Social sciences) -- United States.
United States
USA
Form Electronic book
LC no. 98046489
ISBN 9781501733918
1501733915