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Commons Democracy : Reading the Politics of Participation in the Early United States / Dana D. Nelson.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2015]Copyright date: ©2017Description: 1 online resource (232 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780823268382
  • 9780823268412
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 306.2097309033 23
LOC classification:
  • E310 .N457 2016
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Commons Democracy: An Introduction -- 1. Telling Stories: Vernacular versus Formal Democracy -- 2. Between Savagery and Civilization: The Whiskey Rebellion and a Democratic Middle Way -- 3. The Privatizing State: The Pioneers and the Closing of the Legal Commons -- 4. Settler Self-Governance: Democratic Politics on the Frontier -- 5. Indian Question, and the Triumph of Liberalism -- Conclusion: "The Wayward, Multitudinous People" -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary: Commons Democracy highlights a poorly understood dimension of democracy in the early United States. It tells a story that, like the familiar one, begins in the Revolutionary era. But instead of the tale of the Founders' high-minded ideals and their careful crafting of the safe framework for democracy-a representative republican government-Commons Democracy examines the power of the democratic spirit, the ideals and practices of everyday people in the early nation. As Dana D. Nelson reveals in this illuminating work, the sensibility of participatory democratic activity fueled the involvement of ordinary folk in resistance, revolution, state constitution-making, and early national civic dissent. The rich variety of commoning customs and practices in the late colonies offered non-elite actors a tangible and durable relationship to democratic power, one significantly different from the representative democracy that would be institutionalized by the Framers in 1787. This democracy understood political power and liberties as communal, not individual.Ordinary folk practiced a democracy that was robustly participatory and insistently local. To help tell this story, Nelson turns to early American authors-Hugh Henry Brackenridge, James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Montgomery Bird, and Caroline Kirkland-who were engaged with conflicts that emerged from competing ideals of democracy in the early republic, such as the Whiskey Rebellion and the Anti-Rent War as well as the enclosure of the legal commons, anxieties about popular suffrage, and practices of frontier equalitarianism. While Commons Democracy is about the capture of "democracy" for the official purposes of state consolidation and expansion, it is also a story about the ongoing (if occluded) vitality of commons democracy, of its power as part of our shared democratic history and its usefulness in the contemporary toolkit of citizenship.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780823268412

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Commons Democracy: An Introduction -- 1. Telling Stories: Vernacular versus Formal Democracy -- 2. Between Savagery and Civilization: The Whiskey Rebellion and a Democratic Middle Way -- 3. The Privatizing State: The Pioneers and the Closing of the Legal Commons -- 4. Settler Self-Governance: Democratic Politics on the Frontier -- 5. Indian Question, and the Triumph of Liberalism -- Conclusion: "The Wayward, Multitudinous People" -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Commons Democracy highlights a poorly understood dimension of democracy in the early United States. It tells a story that, like the familiar one, begins in the Revolutionary era. But instead of the tale of the Founders' high-minded ideals and their careful crafting of the safe framework for democracy-a representative republican government-Commons Democracy examines the power of the democratic spirit, the ideals and practices of everyday people in the early nation. As Dana D. Nelson reveals in this illuminating work, the sensibility of participatory democratic activity fueled the involvement of ordinary folk in resistance, revolution, state constitution-making, and early national civic dissent. The rich variety of commoning customs and practices in the late colonies offered non-elite actors a tangible and durable relationship to democratic power, one significantly different from the representative democracy that would be institutionalized by the Framers in 1787. This democracy understood political power and liberties as communal, not individual.Ordinary folk practiced a democracy that was robustly participatory and insistently local. To help tell this story, Nelson turns to early American authors-Hugh Henry Brackenridge, James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Montgomery Bird, and Caroline Kirkland-who were engaged with conflicts that emerged from competing ideals of democracy in the early republic, such as the Whiskey Rebellion and the Anti-Rent War as well as the enclosure of the legal commons, anxieties about popular suffrage, and practices of frontier equalitarianism. While Commons Democracy is about the capture of "democracy" for the official purposes of state consolidation and expansion, it is also a story about the ongoing (if occluded) vitality of commons democracy, of its power as part of our shared democratic history and its usefulness in the contemporary toolkit of citizenship.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 02. Mrz 2022)