Keynote: Caring Democracy to Overcome Injustice
Introduction by/Mot de bienvenue par Ethel Tungohan (York University)
This paper will start with the question: how can citizens be persuaded to engage actively in political life? Reflecting especially upon experiences in the United States, but which are somewhat generalizable, I argue that politics has become about identity and other affective ties, leaving behind traditional political concerns and processes. As citizens, many people have lost any capacity to understand or to participate in political life. Citizens have been reduced, as Karl Polanyi long ago predicted they would become, to workers and consumers and have lost their ability to understand any forms of civic responsibility. But such concerns as justice and processes such a listening and compromise are still a part of people’s daily lives – in their care practices. The paper suggests that through exposing and focusing on how we might avoid bad care, in both private and public life, we can regain a collective sense of agency towards democratic life, including principles of inclusion to overcome injustice.