Eric Iberri

Dr. Matthew Abraham

WRD 511
June 8, 2009
Rethinking Civic Participation: An Annotated Bibliography

My purpose in annotating these sources was to come to a better understanding of what it

means to be an active, involved democratic citizen. None of the pieces I read offered an
uncomplicated, simple view of civic participation, and I did not expect them to do so, either. In
annotating these resources, I am now in a better position to put together the teaching materials
for the rest of my project. I have been able to derive various assignment prompts, lessons, and
learning objectives from these sources, as well as from the readings we did for class and our in-
class discussions.
The main theme in the pieces I annotated has been in the importance of community
involvement for young people. It is my belief that traditional thoughts about civic participation
have been too broad and abstract. Traditionally, civic participation has been thought of as
“writing letters to political representatives, attending public forums, and voting” (DeLuca and
Peeples, 2002, p. 127). These readings have challenged such a simplistic view of civic
participation, localizing it in the communities of the social actors. In addition, the means for civic
participation are also being challenged and renegotiated. In Cameroon, the Ntambag Brothers
Association (NBA) organized clean-up operations in their neighborhood to clear roads and
footpaths (Fokwang, 2007, p. 320), an example of challenging what it means to be civically
involved citizens. Fokwang (2007) goes on to report that “Today, trashcans bearing the name of
NBA can be recognised in strategic spots in the neighbourhood” (p. 320), providing them with
publicity for their organization and agenda.
It is in these manners, I have started to realize, that as U.S. citizens, we must rethink our
roles not only in our democracy, but also in our local communities. I hope to approach the
syllabus and other teaching materials from this perspective, locating the focus of the imaginary
course in a situated, community context. I plan to have students consider the ways they can
meaningfully engage in their communities and how such involvement constitutes civic
participation. Part of the goal of the course will be to have students understand themselves as
valuable citizens who can affect positive change. We will examine the possibilities for affecting
change in unorthodox ways and venues. Borrowing from the work of Fokwang (2007) and
DeLuca and Peeples (2002), I hope to work with students to discuss the creation of sites of
political participation and action.
Guiding questions for the course will be, but are not limited to: How can we
meaningfully use the public screen, as a supplement to the public sphere, to participate in civic
activism? What barriers exist that prevent young people from fully realizing themselves as
valuable participants in a democracy? How can a university work within its surrounding
communities to achieve positive outcomes in the lives of the local populace?
 The overarching theme for the course stems from work on social constructivism, critical
pedagogies, and identity construction. That theme will be renegotiating what it means to be
civically active. Through a variety of writing assignments, group work, and interdisciplinary
collaboration, students will hopefully come to more fully understand their roles as civic
participants. As this would be an undergraduate, introductory course, I would not expect students
to begin working within their communities immediately; hopefully, a follow-up course could be
offered that would provide students the opportunity to earn credit for working within their
communities. But I do expect the course I am planning to have real outcomes. The final project
for the course would be to work together in groups to put together a plan for creating a
community-liaison center at their institution. This is working from the assumption that the school
where this imaginary course is to be taught lacks such a community-liaison center. Students
would work on this project throughout the term to research such partnership centers at other
schools. They would then put together a proposal and outline various projects that the center
would hope to undertake. They would also have to consider the various factors involved in
running a center, such as staffing and location.
In the end, this research has not only informed the construction of the teaching materials
for this imaginary course but it has informed my own understanding of being an active, involved
citizen. In some sense, this research has helped bring together the ideas from our required texts
for class and has helped me understand them in relation to respective contexts from which they
emerged.

References

Biesta, G., Lawy, R., & Kelly, N. (2009). Understanding young people’s citizenship learning in
everyday life: The role of contexts, relationships and dispositions. Education, Citizenship
and Social Justice, 4(1), 5-24.

Biesta et al. discuss the implications of claims made in recent literature on the status of
young people as democratic citizens: “Recent discussions have been fuelled by concerns
about low levels of political participation and engagement and by worries about the
erosion of the moral and social fabric of society” (p. 6). The authors address the concerns
made in these discussions and deconstruct the crisis recent literature suggests Western
societies face by critiquing the problematic line of thinking that suggests that such a crisis
“can be adequately addressed by (re)educating young people so as to make them ready
for their roles as democratic, participating, and active citizens” (p. 6). Beginning with the
treatment of young people as individuals in isolation, the authors argue that young
people’s citizenship does not exist in isolation and must be treated in relation to their
contexts, relationships, and dispositions. Next, the authors argue that citizenship does not
result as an outcome of education, as some literature they reviewed suggests. Instead, the
key is to critically interrogate citizenship and consider the status of young people as
 “always already participat[ing] in social life and…in the wider social, economic, cultural
and political order” (p. 7). The last problem the authors identify is the teaching of
citizenship, if it is to be taught, and the nature in which it is taught: “Proponents of the
idea of ‘effective schooling’ may want us to believe that it is only a matter of time before
research provides us with teaching strategies that will guarantee success” (p. 7). The
authors argue that students must be involved in making “sense of the curriculum and the
activities they are engaged in,” furthering the earlier point about critically interrogating
citizenship and what it means to young people (p. 7). The teaching of citizenship,
therefore, “needs to be supplemented with a more thoroughgoing understanding of the
ways in which young people actually learn democratic citizenship through their
participation in the communities and practices that make up their everyday lives” (p. 8).
This point is raised and argued similarly in the pieces by Fokwang (2007), Gordon
(2008), Ostrander (2004), and Sanders (2003). Biesta et al. argue that teaching citizenship
must be situated in the context of everyday life in order to “make clear how these lives
are themselves implicated in the wider social, cultural, political and economic order” (p.
8). The authors support such an argument by examining the lives of various young
people, highlighting the stories of two, Matt and Kelly, who had markedly different
experiences because of their respective contexts, relationships, and dispositions: “We
have shown – through the ‘triad’ of contexts, relationships and dispositions – that young
people learn from the opportunities for action, participation and reflection that are
afforded by the practices and communities in their everyday lives” (p. 21).

Davies, I., Flanagan, B., Hogarth, S., Mountford, P., & Philpott, J. (2009). Asking questions
about participation. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 4(1), 25-39.

In this article, the authors “use project evaluation data to raise questions about young
people’s [civic] participation” (p. 25). The project from which the evaluation data comes
was initiated by various United Kingdom governmental departments and agencies “acting
to regenerate the public sphere…[and] the introduction of citizenship education into the
National Curriculum in England” (p. 26). The project involved a variety of participants
who undertook different mini projects, all aimed at equipping students with “a broad
knowledge and understanding of the issues relevant to the notion of active citizenship;
the skills to research further into the topic; and, a method by which students can influence
and take responsible action” (pp. 26-27). The participants in the project worked first to
develop a definition for ‘active citizenship’; the settled on “young people, working within
the context of – and hoping to learn about, and develop further – a pluralistic democracy”
(p. 26). It is worth noting that this negotiation of the meaning of active citizenship is
similar to that of the interrogation of citizenship and the status of young people called for
by Biesta et al. (2009). The project team proposed a list of practices through which to
achieve democratic citizenship; of importance in this list is the call for bringing young
 people and adults together, a key to the success of the youth activist groups in Gordon’s
(2008) work. Project teams worked in and beyond schools, however, participants
generally saw the work within “schools [as] a starting point” and, as one member of a
project team responded, “hope[d] that they would actually move out of school[s] and
engage with wider society” (p. 32). Davies et al., in a manner similar to that of Biesta et
al. (2009), highlight the importance of contexts by arguing that “citizenship and
citizenship education are contested areas with meanings that shift across time and
contexts” (p. 32). They go on to say that the project teams considered a variety of notions
regarding citizenship and how to enact citizenship depending on their contexts at a
moment in time. The authors also raise questions about the efficacy of participatory
activities, questioning whether all activities could “be seen as relating usefully to the
enhancement of democratic potential[.] Would an agreement about the development of a
personal leisure activity, for example, be seen as being part of the democratic process and
if so why?” (p. 34). Biesta et al. (2009) might argue that such personal leisure activity has
democratic potential, especially in the case of their participant Matt who related his own
leisure activities to an increased awareness of the relationship building required in
democratic participation. Davies et al. call for an exploration of the status of young
people in the process of participation as they raise concerns about the possibility that the
voices of young people “can be distorted or that they can be manipulated through the
process of participation” (p. 34).

DeLuca, K.M., & Peeples, J. (2002). From public sphere to public screen: Democracy, activism,
and the “violence” of Seattle. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 19(2), 125-151.

DeLuca and Peeples discuss the transformation of the public sphere, recounting various
critiques of Habermas’s (1989) idealized form of the public sphere, and offer a
supplement to notions of the public sphere in the form of the public screen, an
envisioning of television, the Internet, and other forms of new media as an emerging site
for political participation and activism. The authors use the Seattle WTO protests in 1999
as a case study to show the need for an understanding of the public screen as a
supplement to the public sphere. They also examine the use of violence in Seattle and at
other protests and how it factors into civic participation and publicity. DeLuca and
Peeples reference Nancy Fraser among others in critiquing Habermas’s idealized public
sphere but recognize the importance of his public sphere for “critical social theory and
democratic political practice” (p. 128). The authors argue that contemporary Western
societies tend to privilege words in the formation of the public sphere: “The public sphere
is imagined as a place of embodied voices, of people talking to each other, of
conversation” (p. 129). The authors critique such a privileging of spoken and written
communication in the public sphere, citing work by Jacques Derrida and John Peters that
“offer[s] dissemination as the primordial form of communication, the first turn before
 dialogue” (p. 130). In this vein the authors argue for the emergence of the public screen
because “the fondness of bodily presence and face-to-face conversations ignores the
social and technological transformations of the 20th century that have constructed an
altogether different cultural context, a techno-epistemic break” (p. 131). The public
screen is defined as a technological concept that recognizes the importance of public
discussions that “that place via ‘screens’ – television, computer and the front page of
newspapers” (p. 131). The authors state that the emergence of the public screen does not
mean the death of the public sphere, “though it may suggest its eclipse” (p. 132). A
reimagining of the public sphere, as a result, calls for a reconsidering of legitimate
political activity if “citizens engaged in rational dialogue with the goal of consensus is no
longer [the] dominant mode” (p. 134). In the case of the Seattle WTO protests,
symbolically violent tactics were used to draw the attention of mainstream media outlets.
Protesters engaged in uncivil disobedience as a means of political activity, but not in the
traditional means of dialogue and debate; alternatively, the activists (mainly anarchists)
exacted violence against property that represented the multi-national corporations
involved in the WTO conference. Also, police violence against the protesters drew more
attention from media outlets, allowing non-violent protesters more coverage for their
airing of grievances. The authors describe the way coverage of the WTO protests
increased in newspapers and TV news programs as symbolic violence was used. They
compare this situation to other protests where symbolic violence was not used and
consequently where media coverage was not as thorough.

Fokwang, J. (2007). Youth involvement in civil society in Cameroon since 1990. Africa Insight,
37(3), 308-326.

Fokwang begins his piece by attempting to renegotiate the conception of youth as more
than just group of people defined by an age range: “It needs to be emphasised that youth
does not depend on actual physiological development so much as on cultural factors,
which vary from society to society and from age to age” (p. 309). This view of youth is
important to Fokwang’s argument because he analyzes the involvement of youth as they
are understood in Cameroon, focusing on “the ways in which young people have
challenged their marginalisation in the public sphere, and [he] argues that they have
responded to their exclusion by imagining and creating alternative sites of action where
their own agenda, anxieties and aspirations are articulated” (p. 309). In analyzing the
various groups within which young people practice civic participation, Fokwang, like
Biesta et al. (2009) and Davies et al. (2009), recognizes the positionality of the self, “that
is, [youth] as conspicuous social actors, imbued with agency, whose abilities to act are
dependent on changing context and periods” (p. 310). The author provides a guiding
question for his research: “How have young people dealt with the problems that confront
them and what implications do their actions have for their identity and agency?” (p. 312).
 The circumstances for civic participation in Cameroon are especially complex due to its
history of colonization, first by Germany (from 1884-1916), and then by both France and
Britain after Germany lost control following World War I. The French-administered
territory was the first to gain its independence in 1960, and British South Cameroon
gained its independence 21 months later by joining the already independent Republic of
Cameroon (the former French territory). As leaders seized power and attempted to
solidify their authoritarian rule, young people’s participation declined as they came to
realize that their actions had little lasting effect in the way the country was governed. The
youth of Cameroon reacted by forming their own activist organizations. In the
anglophone southern region of Cameroon, some groups pushed for autonomy and
freedom from the rule of the francophone northerners. The Southern Cameroons Youth
League (SCYL) was one such group that carved out their own sites of action, in one
instance, creating their own pirate radio station out of the reach of the authoritarian
government. In another example, a group of male youth known as the Ntambag Brothers
Association formed to try to address the problems they faced. These groups served as a
way to respond to their exclusion from the traditional, formal socio-political and
economic processes: “Creating alternative sites in which young people engage in their
own agenda, constitutes a crucial coping strategy within contexts of socio-economic
crisis akin to Cameroon’s current experiences” (p. 319). Fokwang also seeks to challenge
the common misconception that young people in developing countries are unable to
engage actively in civic participation; alternatively, he argues that “the concerns of young
people in Cameroon have frequently been driven, not by hunger or disease, but by
economic and socio-political issues that affect their lives in various ways” (p. 321).

Gordon, H.R. (2008). Gendered paths to teenage political participation: Parental power, civic
mobility and youth activism. Gender & Society, 22(1), 31-55.

In this article, Gordon examines the ways in which young people emerge from their
conditions “as visible agents of social change in their communities” (p. 31), highlighting
the way that young people are influenced and affected by their parental relationships.
Gordon hopes to uncover the way that gender factors into parental relationships and as a
result affects the way young people are or are not allowed, encouraged, and able to
participate as active citizens: “This article focuses on...the family, and argues that teens’
gendered relationship to parental worry, opposition, and control plays a central role in
shaping their activism” (p. 32). Two youth activism organizations, the Coalition of
Student Activists (CSA) in Portland, OR and United Youth (UY) in Oakland, CA, are
used as case studies for the author’s work. A barrier to access that young people face
almost everywhere is that of mobility; “young people, as a demographic, are spatially
constrained in ways that differ from adults” (p. 33). If young people are expected to
participate civically in traditional ways, they may be unable to attend community
 meetings, protests outside of the community, and form meaningful relationships with
other activists. Gordon argues that seen through a gender lens, the relationship between
parents and youth can result in markedly different civic participation possibilities for
boys and girls: “this overarching disparity between boys’ and girls’ mobility and
independence compromises girls’ ability to become public, social movement actors” (p.
35). In both case studies, parents tried to exercise restraint in allowing their youth to
participate in either youth organization due to concerns over physical safety. In Oakland,
the concerns were for the safety of both boys and girls while in Portland the concerns for
safety were more pronounced for girls. Girls in Portland devised complex strategies to
allay parental concerns, in part for fears about the girls’ safety, but also because, unlike
the UY in Oakland, no adult participants were in involved in the organization. In the UY
group, adult allies worked with the youth to provide structure and guidance for their
political activities. The adult participants also helped to ease parental concerns about
safety because youth were able to say that adults would be present at their meetings and
activities. For the CSA girls, the difficulties with their parents not only affected their own
involvement, but it made the male members see them as not as motivated and serious
about activism: “Because white, middle-class CSA girls did not have access to adult
allies who could facilitate their role in community social movement activities, these
struggles with their parents became more visible to CSA boys....Some boys...viewed
these struggles as indicators of girls’ weaker commitment to political action” (p. 44). In
the end, CSA girls left the group because of the boys’ participation in more radical
activities that drew negative attention to the group: “The gendered split in the CSA
sparked by the incident...revealed to CSA girls the disparity between boys’ and girls’
mobility, familial autonomy, and their potential to participate on equal footing in adult-
dominated community politics” (p. 47).

Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere. Cambridge: MIT.

Ostrander, S.A. (2004). Democracy, civic participation, and the university: A comparative study
of civic engagement on five campuses. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 33(1),
74-93.

Ostrander examines the ways five universities across the U.S. work to engage their
students and surrounding communities in civic participation. The research resulted in four
key findings, each of which has been discussed to some degree in the other annotations:
“the main components of [civic] engagement…vary and change in emphasis as the work
develops and as circumstances change” (pp. 74-75); barriers and enablers for engagement
are present in local communities and must be considered and understood; intellectual
reasoning and projects “are important to involving faculty” (p. 75); and, equitable
campus-community relationships depend on new organization structures. These findings
 lead Ostrander to argue that no single solution or model for civic participation can be
viable; in other words, “university civic engagement can perhaps be most fruitfully
understood and practiced in a dynamic and developmental framework” (p. 75). This point
echoes arguments made in the other annotations, especially those about renegotiating
civic engagement in terms of contexts, dispositions, and relationships (Biesta et al., 2009;
Davies et al., 2009). Ostrander measures the five universities in terms of their student
learning, curriculum transformation, community-defined priorities, and knowledge
production. Common throughout the discussion of the five universities is the need for
universities to take a leading role in increasing youth civic participation. To varying
degrees, each university collaborated with local community groups and organizations to
involve students and faculty in real-world issues. Two key factors in engaging faculty and
students with their local communities are: first, university-driven civic participation must
be founded on “a solid intellectual rationale that addresses and defines the intellectual
project of university civic engagement” (p. 84), and second, the university must be able
and willing to “share power, decision making, and material resources with local
communities and [must] actively and consistently demonstrate this in how the work is
organized” (p. 86). To accomplish these two points, universities can work with their
communities to create partnerships whose sole purpose is to bring the academic
community and the local community together. At the University of Pennsylvania, one of
the sites for Ostrander’s research, “three main interrelated organizational components” (p.
87) exist to carry out this function: “a university-based office…; an independent,
neighborhood-based, public-school-centered entity...; and a free-standing
association…that combines campus and community called the West Philadelphia
Partnership” (p. 87). The strength of such partnerships lies in the knowledge that staff at
such offices can bring together to put important issues on the table. At Bates College,
another site in the study, a bridge person is employed to link the local community and the
university: “This person lives in the community and knows the issues and other residents
well and is trained in the principles and practices of community-based learning and
research” (p. 87).

Sanders, M.G. (2003). Community involvement in schools: From concept to practice. Education
and Urban Society, 35(2), 161-180.

Sanders reviews what was then current research on community involvement in schools as
a form of civic participation. The author seeks “to identity key concepts, themes, and
issues” (p. 162) related to community involvement in schools. Similar to the interrogation
of civic participation that Biesta et al. (2009) and Davies et al. (2009) undertake, Sanders
argues that the role that schools play in our society needs to be critically reexamined.
Sanders addresses the way schools can form relationships in their communities in four
different ways: with businesses, universities, service learning partnerships, and school-
linked service integration. Looking at business partnerships with schools, Sanders
identifies concerns about the model used to structure relationships. In one example, IBM
provided technology and technical experts to collaborate with a school district in two
separate projects; however, “Neither initiative included school personnel or students’
parents and community members in the planning and development of the partnerships”
(p. 165). This lack of community, school staff, and parent involvement deeply
compromised the effectiveness of the projects, particularly because “the volunteer
technology specialists were not appropriately trained…, nor were the schools prepared
for the technology provided” (p. 165). In this case, a community bridge, as demonstrated
in Ostrander (2004), would have been particularly helpful in providing the necessary
context and concerns of all parties involved. Similar cases existed in the university
partnerships that Sanders reviewed; in one case, a high school worked with the Johns
Hopkins Medical Center to help students transition from school to health careers. The
implementation of the partnership was particularly difficult, though, because of a lack of
resources, exclusion of high school teachers in decision making, and an inability to create
an equitable leadership structure. In another example, Sanders highlights the benefits of
university partnerships, especially in bringing together the traditionally isolated
disciplines within universities. However, it is important that all stakeholders involved in
such partnerships are able to benefit meaningfully. Throughout Sanders’ discussion of the
various forms of community involvement, the key themes are the importance of
preparation for all involved parties, proper planning for and the selection of community
partners, and the need for reflection and evaluation through the partnership. Sanders
emphasizes that community partnerships are not events, but are processes that must be
reflected upon and evaluated; such “exercise will assist in the refinement of collaborative
efforts and the enhancement of collaborative skills” (p. 175). To facilitate such reflection
and evaluation, Sanders notes the importance of parties being able to meet and plan out
their partnerships before any collaborative activities take place. The author ends by
stating the prerequisites for successful school-community partnerships, such as both
“partners hav[ing] collaborative skills, common goals, structures for inclusive decision
making, and time for reflection and evaluation” (p. 176). Sanders is careful not to
proclaim school-community partnerships as the solution to all problems that schools
currently face; however, she does state that such partnerships, when done right, can
provide valuable supplemental learning and opportunities to improve the lives of
students.