Democracy is the ‘big idea’ of the contemporary moment, part of a ‘fourth wave’ of democratization of the world. Democracy, in that sense, has long since left social theory and become a vernacular term and a form of vernacular political practice. What might these varieties of democracy tell us about where democracy is going globally?
This workshop invites presentations that look at the variety of ways in which democracy is understood, discussed, practiced, and contested globally. Democracy is, as Derrida has suggested, always deferred, always somewhere off in the future. Always ‘in the future’, democracy is therefore in constant need of improvement, perfection, and elaboration. The contemporary turn to deliberative democracy might be described as an example of such an attempt to ‘democratize democracy’ – in this case through a kind of technicalization. Democracy is however ‘altered’ and reformed in numerous other ways in local settings. The workshop invites presentations that provide ethnographic accounts and analysis of such political attempts to ‘perfect’ democracy, to ‘accommodate it’ to local conditions. What kinds of tools go into these attempts to localize or perfect democracy? Sometimes these tools are forms of political technique (participatory forums or consensus conferences); at other times these tools to ‘improve on democracy’ come from religion, tradition, or ‘local values’.
The aim of the workshop is to begin a comparative analysis of ‘democracy-to-come’; of the ways in which democracy is being worked on, vernacularized, and ‘hybridized’ within political attempts to improve it.
Meeting Room 2 (Conference Centre at Students House)
10:00-10:15 | Introduction by Nils Bubandt |
10.15-10:45 | Anders Sybrandt, (Aarhus University): “Purity and Corruption: Chinese Communist Party Applicants and the Problem of Evil” |
10.45-11.15 | Nils Bubandt (Aarhus University): “Democracy, Spirits, and the Ghosts of Corruption in Indonesia” |
11.15-12.15 | General Discussion |
Lecture Hall 5
10.00-10:10 | Introduction by Nils Bubandt |
10:15-10:30 | Stig Thøgersen (Aarhus University): “Do Chinese Village Elections Have a Future?” |
10.30-11.00 | Kimberley Coles (University of Redlands): “The Rise of International Electoral Observation and the Possibility of Vernacularization” |
11.00-11.30 | Maj Nygaard-Christensen (Aarhus University): “Negotiating Consensus in Timor-Leste: Democracy Promotion and Electoral Politics in a New Nation” |
11.30-12.00 | Steffen Dalsgaard (Aarhus University): “LPV: Experiences with preferential voting in Papua New Guinea” |
12.00-12.15 | General Discussion |
| 12.15-13.15 | Lunch |
| 13.15-13.45 | Hans Christian Korsholm Nielsen (Aarhus University): “Vernacular Democracy and Vernacular Law in Egypt” |
| 13.45-14.15 | Morten Valbjørn (Aarhus University): “From Transition to Nowhere to Transition to Somewhere: Post-Democratic (Self)Reflections after Tunisia” |
| 14.15-14.45 | Thomas Fibiger (Aarhus University and Moesgaard Museum): “Democracy and Martyrdom: The Long Struggle for Democracy in Bahrain” |
| 14.45-15.15 | Concluding discussion |
