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though, alas, its appreciation is far from common amongst the general public and even
active politicians. It is by no means ingrained within Western culture where the tradition
of understanding democracy primarily, if not exclusively, as a matter of politics in terms of
the "technology of power and governance" prevails.
The current predicament concerning democracy in a global context may also serve as an
opportunity to explore new ways of development. Judging and testing specifically
Deweyan and more broadly pragmatist conceptions of democracy as promising candidates
for "global democracy" is the overall intention of the present book. The volume fits this
trend very well, and the authors attempt to add some further aspects to it. In most cases,
they do so ably and clearly. The idea of providing a Deweyan "passport" to all "democratic
travelers" across the globe in the current era is being fulfilled with similar Deweyan vigor,
intelligence, and creativity combined in many places with a unique sensitivity for "global
details" and a holistic vision stemming from the spirit of Eastern philosophy. The particular
focus-and prerogative-of the book is the specific "Asian dimension" of global Deweyan
democracy (certainly not only due to the fact that around half a dozen of the authors hold
positions at Asian universities), developed in an updated dialogue of Deweyan ideas
between both the past and contemporary discussants that Dewey accrued due to his
journeys to Japan and China (1919-1921). The present volume in principle shows that
Dewey is still relevant today, and even in the global context for the current reconstruction
of democratic culture; however, Dewey himself should be likewise reconstructed in the
face of present challenges and demands. This is not an impossible task, thanks to the
reconstructive and transformative spirit of Deweyan philosophy, which may at the same
time serve as a test of itself: due to the anti-dogmatic character of this philosophy, the
principle of reconstruction can do it no harm; rather, it is required.
The volume contains eleven contributions divided into three sections. These are preceded
by two opening texts, first by the personal recollections that serve as a tribute from Bruce
Robbins to Richard Rorty, who, at some point, was involved in the project of the present
book and to whose memory the whole volume is dedicated. Despite all the controversies
in Rorty's works, and especially with respect to political and cultural issues including
democracy, among his legacies are, according to Robbins, "his intelligent and selfcorrecting hopefulness" and his "private secularism" as "a belief in uncertainty or the
ultimate openness of things to future correction," which he tried to give "a larger public
place" (xiv). Secondly, the introductory chapter titled "Pragmatism's Passport-Dewey,
Democracy, and Globalization" (1-17), written by both editors, raises the crucial questions
that will subsequently occupy the majority of the contributors from various angles. But
they all embrace as their basis Dewey's conception that democracy is broadly cultural
rather than narrowly political, even if culture itself is part of the problem and not only its
simple solution. To move the issue of democracy into a broader cultural context may
make it more understandable indeed but at the same time also more complex.
Moreover, to reflect on culture and democracy in the contemporary world is to reflect on
the globalization of both phenomena. With respect to culture, does globalization mean its
standardization, homogenization, and unification in terms of establishing a single model of
planetary human culture (but what kind of a model)? And with respect to democracy,
does globalization mean its universalization also in terms of establishing a single model of
planetary human democracy common to all cultures and nations? The editors here
attempt specifically to outline a pragmatist (Deweyan) approach to all these issues, which,
according to them, is to be definitely "pluralistic" and "experimental" (2). In this sense,
democratization as a crucial part of globalized culture is by no means the mechanical
extension of Western-style modernization and application of one ready-made (lest liberaldemocratic) model of democracy to all countries. Rather, from a pragmatist (Deweyan)
standpoint, if "democracy really has a global destiny, it must grow out of, rather than
replace, the values of different cultures, for any democracy promoted by the West that is
construed as culturally hegemonic will be a democracy in name only" (3). Let us, then,
have a closer look at how the contributors to the volume succeed in showing the global
potential of Deweyan pragmatism in current multicultural contexts. Since, given the
number of individual authors and their interdisciplinary backgrounds, the volume is
naturally heterogeneous and includes some chapters which speak to its leading theme
only indirectly, in what follows I will mostly focus on the main line of argument and will
consider those other contributions only with respect to it.
Section one sets the tone for the whole volume. It examines the question of whether a
universalization of Deweyan democracy (or any kind of democracy, for that matter) is
possible and even desirable. The answer, I take it, is unobtrusively suggested in the very
title of the section "Universalizing Democracy Pragmatically," that is suggesting that (i)
there is something universal to democracy such as its key features and criteria, which
cannot be only local and particular, but (ii) the universal itself is not necessarily immutable
and eternal and may be changing (at least in the long term), and (iii) universalizing
democracy as pragmatists might envision it is based on the manifold participatory
practices of particular communities whose need as well as result is what any real
democratization can only be. Pragmatists do not oppose universalization in abstracto;
they just demand that this process be the creation of "democratic norms" that are
generated from experimental ethical and political practices, i.e., "active, systematic, and
controlled attempts to determine . . . , which forms of life . . . are best positioned to
achieve the desired balance between the goals of freedom and equality" (25). Thus
universalization is legitimate "under certain conditions." This is the position Larry Hickman
espouses in his chapter "The Genesis of Democratic Norms: Some Insights from Classical
Pragmatism" (21-30), briefly outlining these Deweyan conditions.
Sor-hoon Tan, avowedly the progenitor of the whole book project, offers in her chapter,
"Reconstructing 'Culture': A Deweyan Response to Antidemocratic Culturalism" (31-52), a
more detailed analysis of the global cultural conditions for Deweyan democracy. On the
one hand she warns us to be alert to those culturalist conceptions of culture (adopted
from cultural anthropology and cultural studies) that are "reductionist, static, essentialist,
totalizing, and consequently hegemonic" leading to the "closed" vision of any particular
culture and advocating that it "should preserve its own norms and traditions, including
antidemocratic norms, and reject democracy as a Western cultural norm" (33). On the
other hand she develops Dewey's conception of culture- likewise close to cultural
anthropology-which is non-ethnocentric, pluralist, interactionist and transactionist, open
and dynamic. The interplay of multiple elements inherent in culture "determines whether
a culture is free", and only "free cultures . . . employ the experimental method, the
method of intelligence, to resolve disagreements and conflicts, and to guide action", that
is "the democratic method" to solve problems "democratically through consultation,
persuasion, negotiation and cooperative intelligence" (37).
According to Tan, the emergence of such "democratic culture" can only be the result of a
"humanizing process" through the creative and intelligent transformation of cultural
traditions and the redefining of inherited cultural identity, which are never complete or
fixed (40-43). Dewey's conception of democratic culture provides a balance between
conservative and transformative, old and new, stable and dynamic, "own" and "foreign,"
"indigenous" and "assumed" features of culture. Cultural change does not necessarily
mean the loss of cultural identity, much like cultural diversity does not mean cultural
relativism. Tan would prefer pragmatists to "speak in terms of general ideals and
generalization rather than universal ideals and universalization" (45), but, nonetheless,
she considers democracy "as a universal ideal" to remain "a hypothesis" (47). She comes
to the concisely formulated conclusion that "democratic culture is still something to
achieve and to create . . . on a worldwide scale . . . , but not by coercion, economic
domination of one country over others, or by hegemony of one culture over others" (48).
Thus universalization of democracy across the current multicultural world as part of
globalization is by no means identical with Westernization or Americanization.
Further development of this idea forms the core of Section Two, titled "Imposing
Democracy," which includes the next four chapters. Sun Youzhong ("Globalizing
Democracy: A Deweyan Critique of Bush's Second-Term National Security Strategy", 5362) and James Scott Johnson ("Can Democratic Inquiry be Exported? Dewey and the
Globalization of Education," 63-80) convincingly show that such processes as the military
[Footnote]
NOTES
1. See for example Frank Cunningham, Theories of Democracy (London and New York:
Routledge, 2002); Ian Shapiro, The State of Democratic Theory (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2003); David Held, Models of Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006);
John Dunn, Democracy: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006); Charles Tilly,
Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy
Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Georg Sorensen, Democracy and
Democratization: Processes and Prospects in a Changing World (Boulder: Westview Press,
2008); Larry Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies
throughout the World (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2008); etc.
2. See for example William Caspary, Dewey on Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2000); Eric A. MacGilvray, Reconstructing Public Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2004); Robert B. Talisse, Democracy after Liberalism (London and New
York: Routledge, 2004); Robert B. Westbrook, Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the
Politics of Truth (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005); Christopher J. Voparil,
Richard Rorty: Politics and Vision (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006); Edward Grippe,
Richard Rorty's New Pragmatism: Neither Liberal nor Free (London: Continuum, 2007);
etc.
3. See for example Barry Holden, Global Democracy: Key Debates (London: Routledge,
2000); Daniele Archibugi, The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan
Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); TorbjrnTnnsj, Global
Democracy: The Case for a World Government (Edinburgh University Press, 2008); etc.
[AuthorAffiliation]
Emil Visnovsk
SlovakAcademy of Sciences
ksbkemvi@savba.sk