Table Of ContentListening for Democracy
other books by andrew dobson
An Introduction to the Politics and Philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset
Jean-Paul Sartre and the Politics of Reason: A Theory of History
Justice and the Environment: Conceptions of Environmental Sustainability
and Dimensions of Social Justice
Citizenship and the Environment
Green Political Thought (4th edition)
The Green Reader (edited)
The Politics of Nature: Exploration in Green Political Theory (edited with
Paul Lucardie)
Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social
Justice (edited)
Environmental Citizenship (edited with Derek Bell)
Citizenship, Environment, Economy (edited with angel Valencia)
Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge (edited with robyn
eckersley)
The Politics of Protection: Sites of Insecurity and Political Agency (edited
with Jef Huysmans and raia Prokhovnik)
Biosecurity: The Socio-Politics of Invasive Species and Infectious Diseases
(edited with Kezia Barker and sarah taylor)
Listening for
Democracy
Recognition, Representation, Reconciliation
anD rew DoBson
1
1
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Acknowledgements
i am indebted to colleagues and friends who have invited me to give
papers on themes in this book and responded generously to queries
and requests for help while i was writing it. in particular i would like to
thank Daniel andersen, Jo Berry, ingolfur Blühdorn, gideon calder,
stephen coleman, nick couldry, carolyn cusick, Brian Doherty, John
Dryzek, yogi Hendlin, John Horton, mat Humphrey, Kasia Klein,
richard Luther, Karen mitchell, monica mookherjee, concha Pérez
moreno, John Durham Peters, Hans-Jürgen Puhle, angel rivero, Lucy
sargisson, and mike saward.
i would also like to thank participants in seminars i gave on listen-
ing and democracy at the universities of Keele, Leeds, nottingham,
and salford between 2010 and 2013, and at the european consortium
for Political research Joint sessions in reykjavík in 2011. Dominic
Byatt at oxford University Press has, as ever, been very supportive in
getting the book to this point, not least in conjuring up three anony-
mous readers at the proposal stage, each of whom provided me with
food for thought which i have spent the last two years trying to digest.
i hope i have, in some measure, repaid both Dominic for his faith in
the project and the readers for their thoughtful reflections on my early
plans for the book.
i could not have completed this project without the generosity
of the Leverhulme trustees who awarded me a research fellowship
from 2011 to 2013 (grant number rf-2011-572). in these days of
large grant consortia it is a great pleasure to record my thanks for
this lone scholar support. i am grateful to staff at Keele University
who have managed the grant and its consequences, and, of course,
to my colleagues in Keele’s school of Politics, international
relations and Philosophy who have supported my work in myriad
ways—often without realizing it.
finally i thank the Political Studies journal for permission to use
material from ‘Democracy and nature: speaking and listening’,
Political Studies 58 (2010), no. 4, pp. 752–68, and ‘Listening: the new
democratic deficit’, Political Studies 60 (2012), no. 4, pp. 843–59, and to
routledge for permission to use material from ‘Do we need (to protect)
vi Acknowledgements
nature’, in Jef Huysmans, andrew Dobson, and raia Prokhovnik
(eds), The Politics of Protection: Sites of Insecurity and Political Agency
(London: routledge, 2006).
andrew Dobson
Keele University, UK
May 2013
Contents
introduction 1
1. why Listening? 17
2. Learning about Listening 48
3. Listening and Democracy 81
4. Deliberative and Dialogic Democracy 109
5. Listening to whom? Listening for what? 140
6. institutionalizing Listening 170
Bibliography 197
Index 211
introduction
on 22 may 2013 a member of the UK armed forces, Private Lee rigby,
was killed by two attackers on the streets of south London. The assault
was carried out in broad daylight in full view of the passing public, and
the now ubiquitous camera phone ensured that the aftermath of the
attack was captured by passers-by and made available for all to see. one
citizen journalist recorded the extraordinary scene of a witness, ingrid
Loyau-Kennett, apparently engaging one of the assailants in conversa-
tion as he held a bloodied meat cleaver in his hand. when asked later
why she did this, she replied: ‘instinctively, and through my scout train-
ing, i like to keep calm and respectful. so i thought, oK, let’s listen to
what he has to say. i tried to engage him in a conversation.’1 no one
knows exactly what would have happened if Loyau-Kennett hadn’t got
off her bus to attend to rigby, only to find him dead and, instead of tend-
ing him, listen to his alleged killer; but she was widely credited with hav-
ing calmed the situation down and avoided potential further bloodshed.
rigby’s killing set off a wave of anti-muslim actions around the UK,
at the head of many of which was the english Defence League (eDL), a
far-right protest movement. one of these actions was a protest outside
a mosque in the city of york in late may 2013. once they learnt of the
imminent protest, members of the mosque sat down to work out what to
do. They decided that confrontation was inappropriate and determined,
instead, to provide a calm space in which they could listen to, and hear,
one another.2 The result? ‘when we listened, we realised the eDL may
have thought that we supported extremist behaviour and the taliban. we
1 Leo Hickman, ‘woolwich attack witness ingrid Loyau-Kennett: “i feel like a
fraud” ’, The Guardian, 27 may 2013, available at <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/
may/27/woolwich-witness-ingrid-loyau-kennett> (accessed 29 June 2013).
2 mohamed el-gomati, ‘invite the eDL to tea’, The Guardian, 1 June 2013, p. 42.
Description:Although much prized in daily conversation, good listening has been almost completely ignored in that form of political conversation we know as democracy. This book examines the reasons why so little attention has been paid to the listening aspect of democratic conversation, explores the role that l
