List of Tables -- List of Photos -- Check-in -- A Sociological Travelogue -- Local Scenes of Global Action: Group Styles of Local Collective Action and the Place of Politics -- Citizenship and Gender in Local Activism -- Visual Frames of Representing the Local Society -- Framing Democracy: Participation and Representation by Activists and Politicians -- Justifying in the Local Public Sphere: Newspaper Representations of Encounters between Citizens and Cities -- The Souvenirs: Politicization and Local Civic Practices in France and Finland -- Methods Appendix -- Data Appendix -- Bibliography -- Endnotes -- Index
Summary
This book is about the mundane, local, every day practices that constitutes democracy. It defines politicization as the key process in understanding democracy in different cultural contexts throughstudies ofFrance and Finland. By means of comparative ethnographic, media, and visual analysis that focuseson how democracy is actually practiced in different contexts, thiswork sets outa more nuanced and controversial picture of two opposite models of European politics. The familiar juxtaposition of Southern and Northern political cultures is set in a new perspective through comparative analyses of politicizations: the processes of opening political arenas and recognizing controversy. The book explores the ways in which people in different contexts deliberate, resist, and politicize, and hence practice, challenge, and transform democracy in ways that are of relevance to all political systems
