"Burnt by Democracy: Youth, Inequality, and the Erosion of Civic Life is based on a research endeavour that encompasses the thoughts and experiences of young activists and homeless youth (ages 16 to 29) living in five liberal democracies: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom. These five countries have distinct geographies, histories, political leadership, and education systems, yet they share broadly similar approaches to government, shaped first by British liberalism exported to the ...
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"Burnt by Democracy: Youth, Inequality, and the Erosion of Civic Life is based on a research endeavour that encompasses the thoughts and experiences of young activists and homeless youth (ages 16 to 29) living in five liberal democracies: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom. These five countries have distinct geographies, histories, political leadership, and education systems, yet they share broadly similar approaches to government, shaped first by British liberalism exported to the colonies, then later by British neoliberalism taken up by those same former colonies. Jacqueline Kennelly's central argument is that these shared ideological premises, built upon similar political histories and strengthened by the globalization of neoliberal common sense, or doxa, generate a specific set of conditions that shape the possibilities and proscriptions, the points of access and barriers, to participate meaningfully in civic life. She posits that current structures of inequality are inexorably contributing to a destructive disjuncture between knowledge and action, leaving our democratic ideals in tatters. If those at the bottom of the opportunity structures are unable to express their fundamental needs and insights through existing democratic processes, then those processes are not actually democratic. Instead, liberal democracy has become yet another structure to maintain the division between the haves and the have-nots. Kennelly proposes way to bridge these disjunctures and establish pathways towards the equality that is often touted but not achieved."--
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