[Air-l] howard dean, social movements and clay shirky
Rhiannon Bury
welshwitch75 at rogers.com
Tue Jan 27 09:59:14 PST 2004
Hmmmm. I read the piece and have a mixed reaction. On the one hand, I
agree with the first point that Dean may have "accidentally created a
movement (where what counts is believing) instead of a campaign (where
what counts is voting)." My interpretation of this statement is that
those who believe do so strongly but their numbers are alas insufficient
in our Western system where democracy gets reduced to showing up at a
polling system every fours years or so.
However, the remainder of the piece explicitly shifts to blaming Dean
supporters for not bothering to get their butts out in the cold to
vote. Even in my limited following of this story from newspaper (Globe
and Mail) and radio (CBC) in Toronto, I have read or heard nothing to
suggest that Dean supporters who were eligible voters in these
caucuses didn't do so. In fact, I thought Dean supporters shipped in to
help rally the troops (okay, bad choice of metaphor for the only real
anti-war candidate). Can anyone clarify?
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Bury, Ph.D.
Women's Studies
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario Canada
rbury at uwaterloo.ca
Barry Wellman wrote:
>Clary Shirky has a nice essay on the Howard Dean and Iowa situation, that
>fits nicely with what Chuck Tilly and I have posted here in complementary
>ways:
>
>http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/01/26/is_social_software_bad_for_the_dean_campaign.php
>
> Barry
> _____________________________________________________________________
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> Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director
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>
> Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto
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