THE POLITICS OF SMALL THINGS

摘要

A distinctive dimension of political life, power as the capacity for people to act in concert, was a key in understanding one of the major transformations of the late twentieth century-the democratic aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet empire in central Europe. In this paper, the way this dimension-the politics of small things-provides alternatives in the United States is analyzed. A new media regime, with significant interactions between virtual and embodied social interactions, has opened up the opportunity for a new democratic politics. The antiwar movement and the Dean campaign are shown to have constituted alternative political possibilities for those critical of hegemonic discourses and practices.