Rethinking democracy in times of crises: Towards a pragmatist approach to the geographies of emerging publics

Abstract

How do societies respond to ‘super wicked’ problems that often occur at very large spatial and temporal scales? On the one hand, there exists a tendency to conceive of liberal democracy as inconvenient, inflexible and as incapable of dealing with complex and elusive issues such as climate change or questions of environmental injustice. On the other, these issues have given rise to manifold ‘emerging public spheres’ inside and outside existing democratic institutions. Since both of these tendencies refer to the idea of sustainability, this contribution discusses the relationships between different future trajectories of sustainability and democracy in particular with regards to their inherent spatialities. Building on this, and following the works of contemporary political theorists and human geographers, it suggests conceptualizing democracy from a pragmatist point of view as coined by the North American philosopher John Dewey. In doing so, it becomes possible to reframe democracy in the Anthropocene and to conceive of it as an ever-evolving phenomenon of problem-solving communities that convene around different issues of shared concern. This perspective allows thinking beyond theorizations of global democracy, in favor of a democratic model that shows openness for social complexity and uncertainty and which accepts that the spaces of democratic action are not given from the outset but that they are brought into being by the emerging publics themselves.