[Air-l] howard dean, social movements and clay shirky

[Rhiannon Bury]

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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