Can Tocqueville Karaoke? ─ Global Contrasts of Citizen Participation, the Arts and Development

Sociologists and other researchers from Europe, Asia, and North America who participated in international projects that feature local contexts (Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation and the Scenes Project) present 13 essays that outline a new framework for the analysis of democratic participation and economic growth that brings together Alexis de Tocqueville's ideas about democratic participation and innovation/bohemian ideas driving the economy from Joseph Schumpeter and Jane Jacobs. In the first section, they consider the basic model of civic participation to emphasize the context and rules in which local participants operate, looking at the the effects of voluntary associational participation in the US and South Korea; how voluntary participation differs in Seoul, Tokyo, and Chicago; differences in types of participation in organizations in the US and South Korea in encouraging collaboration and social trust; and the effects of civic and arts activities on elections in France and Europe. In the second section, they discuss how economic development is driven by innovations in ideas and how these innovations are generated by people and cities where there are more tolerant, non-traditional, and sometimes bohemian residents, considering the impact of local cultural policy on the link between the creative classes and local economic development in Spain, and subtypes of bohemia in Seoul, Tokyo, and Chicago. They end with a section on how buzz, arts, and culture can transform politics, economics, and social life, with discussion of Los Angeles; the effect of arts and culture on politics in Toronto and Chicago; theories of cultural participation; the contextual factors involved with citizens and cultural dynamics; the impact of local cultural amenities on the development of lifestyle practices in Spain; and how arts and culture participation operates in clientelist cultures, class politics, and the new political culture, and cultural traditions of Eastern religions, Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism, and Protestantism. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. Annotation c2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)