Civic Hope
How Ordinary Americans Keep Democracy Alive
by Roderick P. Hart
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Pub Date May 01 2018 | Archive Date Apr 24 2018
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Description
Hope among the ruins. But why? And how? Hope, I will argue, is not optimism; it is deeper, more enigmatic. It is the product of intense struggle and it means nothing without that struggle. The letter writers I will profile here exemplify that. They become energized when life seems dark, when problems abound, when the arena beckons. What makes them different from their neighbors? Why do they care? Why do they persist? This book addresses those mysteries.
Civic Hope: How Ordinary Americans Keep Democracy Alive is Rodrick P. Hart’s stunning account of what the everyday American personally says about the government and a refreshing change from the cynicism that often accompanies discussions about politics. Covering seventy years of United States history as told through over 10,000 letters to the editor, Hart overcomes the limitations of survey data by revealing the reasons for people's attitudes.
Civic Hope: How Ordinary Americans Keep Democracy Alive is a powerful reminder that the vitality of a democracy lies not in its strengths, but in its weaknesses, and in the willingness of its people to address those weaknesses.
Advance Praise
Professor Hart is amongst the most well-known and highly-regarded students of political language. It should come as no surprise, then, that his recent book offers a careful analysis of political language, this time in letters to the editor. And his findings - focused on 'civic hope' even in a period of heightened political polarization - offer a unique perspective, not just on what we can learn from newspaper content, but on the centrality and importance of a 'culture of argument' in American democracy.
Stuart
Soroka, University of Michigan
Civic Hope sheds light on an often-overlooked
but, as Hart compellingly argues, foundational aspect of American democracy.
Drawing on a stunning collection of letters to the editor from a dozen US
cities, as well as a rich set of associated surveys and interviews, Hart
demonstrates what the humble letter to the editor can tell us about timely
issues in contemporary political communication and timeless questions about
democracies and publics. A masterwork of substance and style, this book should
be essential reading for anyone interested in understanding and promoting
healthy public discourse.
Michael
A. Xenos, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Hart offers a corrective to the gloom and
cynicism that suffuses discourse about politics and democracy today. Despite
its undeniable problems, American democracy is surviving due to argumentative,
sometimes cantankerous citizens and their humble acts of democratic
citizenship. Hart wants us to look away from the spectacles that seem to be the
stuff of daily politics and look instead to how ordinary people make sense of
politics through a lens of their own.
Regina
Lawrence, University of Oregon
How is participatory democracy maintained and
renewed? Rodrick P. Hart persuasively argues that it is through the expression
of ordinary citizens, their concerns, their arguments and their complaints, as
found in the letters to the editors of local newspapers. In tracing these texts
across 60 years and a range of geographic contexts, he reveals and reminds that
citizen discourse is often the best indicator of public opinion, and that the
voices of ordinary people are critical to the health of democracy.
Dhavan V. Shah, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Available Editions
| ISBN | 9781108422642 |
| PRICE | $29.99 (USD) |
