Practicing Democracy

This book is about the mundane, local, every day practices that constitutes democracy. It defines politicization as the key process in understanding democracy in different cultural contexts throughstudies ofFrance and Finland. By means of comparative ethnographic, media, and visual analysis that focuseson how democracy is actually practiced in different contexts, thiswork sets outa more nuanced and controversial picture of two opposite models of European politics. The familiar juxtaposition of Southern and Northern political cultures is set in a new perspective through comparative analyses of politicizations: the processes of opening political arenas and recognizing controversy.The book explores the ways in which people in different contexts deliberate, resist, and politicize, and hence practice, challenge, and transform democracy in ways that are of relevance to all political systems.

EEVA LUHTAKALLIOResearch Fellow at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and a member of the Helsinki Research Group for Political Sociology. She is specialized in comparative political sociology, and has published on local democracy, gender and politics, practices of everyday politics and citizenship, and methodological issues in political sociology.