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Local Democracy under Siege
Local Democracy under Siege
Activism, Public Interests, and Private Politics
DOROTHY HOLLAND, DONALD M. NONINI,
CATHERINE LUTZ, LESLEY BARTLETT,
MARLA FREDERICK-MCGLATHERY,
THADDEUS C. GULDBRANDSEN,
AND ENRIQUE G. MURILLO, JR.
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
2007 by New York University
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Local democracy under siege : activism, public interests, and private politics / Dorothy Holland [et al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-3677-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8147-3677-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-3678-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8147-3678-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Political participationNorth Carolina. 2. Political anthropologyNorth
Carolina. 3. Political cultureNorth Carolina. 4. DemocracyNorth Carolina.
5. North CarolinaPolitics and government. I. Holland, Dorothy C.
JK4189.L63 2006
320.809756dc22 2006030098
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Democracy is still upon its trial.
The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
William James, Oration upon the Unveiling of the
Monument to Robert Gould Shaw
Contents
Appendix: Democracy and Political Theory:
Why Participatory Democracy?
Acknowledgments
The fact that this book has seven authors means that the debts and gratitude that any writer develops over the course of a project have been unusually multiple.
We need to begin, though, by acknowledging one another. Our gratitude to each other as collaborators begins with the recognition of the way we were able to develop a team atmosphere of great resilience, productivity, and mutual support. Meeting intensely for hundreds of hours over a number of years, we developed a group ethos that was remarkably harmonious and intellectually demanding. The meeting of many minds that occurred from the beginning of this project helped us create something that is much more than the sum of our abilities and time devoted to it. Collective work has its challenges, especially in academic cultures that continue to reward individualism and antagonistic display. None of us has come away unchanged or unimproved from the process of working together.
The group that we put together initially consisted of professors and graduate students, and it developed, to our pride and mutual admiration, into a cohort of seven colleagues. We especially thank the then graduate students who did the very hardest work of living in the field and took on the challenges of learning about a new place and its people.
We would particularly like to thank Kim Allen, whose administrative and intellectual contributions to the project were consistently of the highest order and integrity. We especially appreciate the model she provided for clear and compassionate communication. Gretchen Fox, Marsha Michie, Josh Boyer, and Marc David also provided superb research assistance.
We would like to thank Stuart Plattner of the Cultural Anthropology Program at the National Science Foundation for his good advice and his shepherding of a generous grant (SBR-9514912) that allowed us to carry out this ambitious project of multisited fieldwork. Funding also came from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hills College of Arts and Sciences and its University Research Council. Some of us received support from UNCs University Center for International Studies (UCIS), the Mellon Dissertation Writing Grant, UNCs Weiss Urban Livability Program, the Center for the Study of the American South, and the Latan Human Science Program.
Numerous colleagues gave feedback on the ideas presented here, commenting on early drafts of various chapters. We would like to thank John Clarke, Gretchen Fox, Jeff Boyer, William Lachicotte, Louise Lamphere, Brett Williams, Jim Peacock, Peter Redfield, and Raymond Parker, as well as audiences at UNC, Duke University, and the meetings of the American Anthropological Association and the Society for the Anthropology of North America. The book was greatly improved from the inception of our relationship with Eric Zinner, a very patient and enthusiastic editor at New York University Press, and, more recently, by the presss addition of Ilene Kalish as their executive editor for sociology, politics, and anthropology. We also benefited immensely from Karen Brodkin, who read the entire manuscript, and from three other terrific anonymous reviewers for the press, whose thoughts prompted us to undertake major rewriting of sections of the book. Karina Lutzs expert copyediting made the final result a much more readable document. Laura Oakes and Rebecca Schaffer also contributed valued editing work.
Most importantly, we would like to thank all of the hundreds of people who participated in the study. Some contributed by providing long, vibrant, and fascinating interviews, others by befriending us and helping us to learn our way around the towns and cities in which we worked. We hope this book honors their life stories and their commitments to democracy. Together they produced the wisdom and the productive dialogues and conflicts that are the core of any contribution this book will make to the readers understanding of local democracy and the challenges it faces today. As perhaps some kind of repayment to them, the authors royalties from this book are going to the organization Democracy North Carolina.
Finally, we would like to thank our families and friends for their support and love during the process of research and writing that took us away from them for so many hours.
Preface
Turn-of-the-century America was supposedly a place of widespread skepticism, cynicism, and disillusionment about government and about the possibilities for democratic input. We went out to live for a year in several communities spread across one state of the United States to see if
