Bonus Ep3 Deliberation Culture Context
Welcome to Episode 3 in this special bonus series of Real Democracy Now! a podcast about Deliberation, Culture and Context.
This bonus series has been made in collaboration with the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra here in Australia. In this series I speak with a number of people who participated in the Centre’s recent conference which brought together scholars from around the world to examine the different forms, meanings, and significance associated with deliberation in various cultures and contexts. A copy of the conference program is available here.
This Conference was supported by John Dryzek’s ARC Laureate Fellowship entitled “Deliberative Worlds: Democracy, Justice and a Changing Earth System.”
In this episode I’m speaking with Emmanuel Ani from the University of Ghana. I spoke with Emmanuel before the conference about his paper ‘Traditional Roots of Democratic Verbal Discipline: Insights from the Akan of Africa’ which he presented on day two of the conference.
In future episodes in this bonus series I’ll be speaking to other people who presented at the conference about their papers, as well as some of those who were on the final roundtable reflecting on the conference overall. I hope you’ll join me then.
I caught your podcast on Alexa and thought you might be interested that I wrote a book called “Does Everyone Want Democracy? Insights from Mongolia.” Based on my anthropological fieldwork in Mongolia in 1996, 1998 and 2003, researchers and I interviewed 1200 voting-age Mongolians. My basic findings are that when asked ‘what is democracy?’, Mongolians answered a different question: what is democracy for? Their answer: personal and national dignity, something they felt they could not attain under communist socialism. How could they attain dignity under democracy? By being part of the decision-making process, by self-determination which could only be achieved under a government system of justice, i.e., fairness and equality, and rule of law. Paula L.W. Sabloff, Professor Emeritus, Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe NM, USA.