Dr. Keith Gaddie, Professor of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma, has published a new book, Democracy’s Meanings: How the Public Understands Democracy and Why It Matters. Along with co-authors Nicholas T. Davis and Kirby Goidel, Dr. Gaddie challenges conventional wisdom regarding how the public thinks about and evaluates democracy.
The book, published by the University of Michigan Press, argues that Americans think about democracy in ways that go beyond voting or elected representation. Instead, citizens have rich and substantive views about the material conditions that democracy should produce, which draw from their beliefs about equality, fairness, and justice.
The authors construct a typology of views about democracy. Procedural views of democracy take a minimalistic quality. While voting and fair treatment are important to this vision of democracy, ideas about equality are mostly limited to civil liberties. In contrast, social views of democracy incorporate both civil and economic equality; according to people with these views, democracy ought to meet the basic social and material needs of citizens. Complementing these two groups are moderate and indifferent views about democracy. While moderate views sit somewhere in between procedural and social perspectives regarding the role of democracy in producing social and economic equality, indifferent views of democracy involve disaffection toward it. For a small group of apathetic citizens, democracy is an ambiguous and ill-defined concept.
Read more about Democracy’s Meaning and order the book at the link below.
Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture is proud to announce the promotion of Ph.D. student Rafael Hernandez to lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.
Gibbs College of Architecture Assistant Professor Dr. Ladan Mozaffarian, in the Division of Planning, Landscape Architecture and Design, has co-authored a new book chapter with Josh Newton and Andrew Born, published in De Gruyter Handbook of the Geographies of Race.
Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Design (PLAD) alumni Trey Ingram, AICP recently spoke with current PLAD student and graduate media assistant Molly Strobel to share his experiences with the Regional and City Planning program and current work with the Toyota Mobility Foundation.
