Abstract
This article proposes a lens to understand and contextualise the emergence of the participatory claim, to situate its specificity in relation to the model of representative democracy and also with regard to other models based on critique of this model. It highlights the importance of Jurgen Habermas’s thinking which questions the tension and articulation between participative and deliberative democracies. It then describes both its successes and critiques but also the spread of the participatory model in spheres extending largely beyond politics, especially its impact on the economic and entrepreneurial realms and that of the new social movements. It then shows how the rise of ecological thinking has found it to be a natural ally but also how it has helped redefine it, especially by redesigning the limits of the community and its legitimate ‘participants’ and by requiring a renewal of the articulations between participation and representation.
Translation by Gail Ann Fagen.
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Notes
- 1.
See the entry “anthropological mutations”.
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Genard, JL. (2023). Participation. In: Wallenhorst, N., Wulf, C. (eds) Handbook of the Anthropocene. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25910-4_208
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