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• HATS OFF TO THE ANGEL PHOTOGRAPHERS!!! CHECK THESE IMAGES OUT.
  by Alateia

  I was so impressed with the shots taken at the Angels staged last week. They are phenomonal. *Please take a moment to check these imag…

  I was so impressed with the shots taken at the Angels staged last week. They are phenomonal. Please take a moment to check these images out and pop over to the photographers site to see more…...they did a huge job…... it wasnt easy shooting as there were alot of factors to take into consideration. / here are a few of my favourites. Introducing: / PHOTOGRAPHER, MISSYMISS / / / / INTRODUCING: FELINEMIND / / / ...more to come…. / / by me

• Any Models In Los Angeles?
  by shawhouse

  Any redbubblers in the L.A. area interested in modeling? I’m ready to tackle nudes. Let me put that another way…. I’m inspired by…

  Any redbubblers in the L.A. area interested in modeling? I’m ready to tackle nudes. Let me put that another way…. I’m inspired by and envious of the remarkably creative, stunning work produced from redbubble collaborations in Australia. More than a few generations of creative types have made magic, if not a living, celebrating and interpreting the beauty and grace of the female form – the shape of the violin comes to mind. I think I’m ready to add to the conversation. My chief interest is portraiture – the street “photojournalist” stuff I do comes from an interest in capturing emotions, little dramas, in images. Since I don’t think that Jo is remotely interested in flying to Southern California for the joy of working with me & two passes to the Universal Studios tour, I’m writing this note. If you’re in, or coming to, L.A., ready to roll up your sleeves and get naked, expect a serious, professional collaboration full of laughs, lots of shadows, in every color of the palette so long as it’s tasteful black and white.

• About Me
  by bchrisdesigns

  I love art. I can’t even define what type of art I love best, because I am moved by so many different forms of expression. Film, Music, a…

  I love art. I can’t even define what type of art I love best, because I am moved by so many different forms of expression. Film, Music, and Theater have always been mediums that have influenced me. However, I love the written word almost more than any other art form out there. I feel like sometimes I have so much to say. Sometimes, having that much to say can make a person chaotically mute. Living and growing up in Southern California can be frustrating and awesome all at once! It is a muse beyond muses and, yet, sometimes I feel like everything is so overly suburban. Maybe that is because I live in the burbs? I hail from the San Gabriel Valley, one of the most culturally diverse areas of the entire nation, which is why I am open-minded to all types of foods and cultures. I love living here, but sometimes I wish I were somewhere else because of the “go-go-go” atmosphere around here. Either way, I have a love-hate relationship with my wondrous state! The only other place I have lived was in London, which I loved beyond belief and miss everyday! I am slightly bohemian by nature and a true Pisces!!! For me, “Art” is everything, “creativity” is a driving force, and I have a feeling that, no matter what I do, I will always be creating something because that is what I am drawn to do. My second love is photography – digital photography in particularly. I am never without my digital camera (and even when I am, my cell phone has one built right in, so I am never truly without one). A few times I have been left stranded – no camera, no phone – and it feels like sickness, like part of me is missing. I need to capture images as much as I need to put thought onto paper. It is like a secret drive deep inside. I can hardly explain it or expect anyone else to understand it. It is like, when I am driving and see a beautiful sunset or a building whose lines arch across the horizon like some beautiful poem made into design and then not being able to pull over and capture that onto film makes me sick and leaves me empty. As you might imagine, I am a pain to travel with because I can spend hours in one spot capturing its essence over hundreds of clicks of the camera’s shutter. I particularly love to photograph architecture, cityscapes, nature, and people in those environments. I also have a love for common items that most people surpass, but when studied they offer some insight into humanity and some inner beauty that only the lens of a camera can capture. I am also getting the hang of this graphic arts thing. I love Photoshop. I would not be able to go on without it. It is almost becoming as valuable as my camera…or my pen. My favorite digital art mediums/techniques are: photo illustration, creative portraiture, pop art, composites, collage, lomography, cross processing, tilt shift photography, selective coloring, mixed media design, vector art, and t-shirt design. In fact, one goal is to eventually have my own t-shirt line under my design name: b.christopher designs. My creativity also flows beyond the computer, camera, and page. I have a soft spot in my heart for all things handmade. I am currently learning to sew because I love plush and want to design some. I like working with paper arts, mixed media, and jewelry. I am also a fan of ATC’s and ACEO’s and have created a few. Greeting cards also speak to me. Another goal of mine is to have a greeting card line. Greeting cards make everyone happy. I like that about them. As you can see, I have so many areas of interest. And, because of this, I am constantly busy with something or other. But, I always have time to make new friends and give feedback – so, don’t be shy. I would love to know what you think about my artwork. There is more to come, so stay tuned! And, if you are interested in hiring me or commissioning/purchasing one of my works, please contact me at b.christopherdesigns@yahoo.com. Thanks! Best Regards ~b.christopher

• Carole Pateman - Feminism, Democracy & Political Theory (see comments at end of World Leadership article in this journal)
  by Suzanne German

  Carole Pateman / —-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-— / Biographical Information Carole Pa…

  Carole Pateman / —-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-— / Biographical Information Carole Pateman was born to working class parents in a village in Sussex, England. She passed the 11+ examination at her village school and attended the local girls grammar school but left at 16. She is still the only member of her family to have attended university. She began her academic career when she won a place at the adult eduction Ruskin College in 1963 (the College was founded in 1899). She was the only woman to sit for her Diploma (one of her classmates is John Prescott, former Deputy Prime Minister of Great Britain) and then went on to Oxford Unviersity, where she obtained her PhD. Pateman’s career has been an international one, with teaching appointments and research fellowships in Europe, Australia, and North America. She has been active in the profession of political science, serving as President of the Australasian Political Science Association, ont he Council of the American Political Science Association, and as the first woman President of the International Political Science Association from 1991-1994 (IPSA was founded in 1949). She was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996. She currently teaches in the Department of Political Science at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Publications: / Books The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Political Theory. Polity Press, 1989. / The Sexual Contract. Polity Press, 1988. / The Problem of Political Obligation: A Critical Analysis of Liberal Theory. John Wiley and Son, 1979. / Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970. Edited books / Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory. (co-edited with M. Shanley) Polity Press, 1991. / Feminist Challenges: Social and Political Theory. (co-edited with Elizabeth Gross) Allen and Unwin, 1986. / Women, Social Science, and Public Policy. (co-edited with J. Goodnow) Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, 1985. / Politics (special political theory issue of the journal of the Australasian Political Studies Assoc.) , Vol. 18, No. 2 (1983). / Directory of Women Political Scientists in Australia. (co-edited with M. Sawer) Australasian Political Studies Association, 1981. Videos / The Equivalent of the Right to Land, Life, and Liberty? Democracy and the Idea of a Basic Income / ...................................................................................................................................................... / Participatory Democracy and Citizenship: An Interview with Carol Pateman By Carlos A. Torres and Eden C. Flynn, 2004 —-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-— Editor’s Note: Carole Pateman is a professor of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she teaches political theory. Her first book, Participation and Democratic Theory (1970), has been reprinted 19 times and is one of the most important contributions of the 20th century to the field of participatory democracy. In this conversation with Torres and Flynn, Carole Pateman revisits Participation and Democratic Theory almost 35 years after its publication, including the factors that led her to the writing of the book, and the reactions in academic and non-academic circles. Then, she talks about her subsequent work, especially the very influential The Sexual Contract (1988). Carlos Alberto Torres is a Professor of Social Sciences and Comparative Education, Director of the Latin American Center, and Director of the Paulo Freire Institute, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Eden Celeste Flynn is a graduate student in the Division of Social Sciences and Comparative Education, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The conversation took place on April 15, 2004. / —-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—- CT/ECF: What was the impetus that led you to write your first major book in the 60s? It came from two directions. The first was that I discovered political theory – maybe I should explain that I have a fairly unusual background. My parents left school when they were 14, and I left at 16. Until about 6 or 7 years ago, I was the only person in my entire extended family to attend university and I got there by a series of accidents. I started at an adult education college in Oxford, Ruskin College, now over 100 years old, and that is where I discovered political theory. I had no idea that people had written all these famous books about ideas, and I just loved it as soon as I discovered it. So that was one side of it. The other was that I had been active in the anti-nuclear movement in England. This was the sixties and everybody was talking about participation and democratizing institutions – the long march through the institutions – and so after a bit of searching around to find the right topic for my doctoral work I settled on democratic theory. I started by looking at what contemporary theorists had to say about democracy and participation, and at some of the classic texts, which is the first part of the book. I remember that at a certain point after that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with this material. Brian Barry was my thesis supervisor in Oxford, and I remember we were sitting in his office and after a bit he said to me, “you should take a look at G.D.H Cole”, and so I started reading Cole and somehow the whole thing came together. One of the reasons I chose this topic was the distance between all the popular demands and actions for democratization in the 60s, and the prevailing argument among academics writing on democratic theory, which was that active citizenship was a danger and that apathy and as little participation as possible was required. They also claimed that if we looked at the empirical surveys of the electorate, it was clear that this was the only realistic view of democracy. As I recall, it was reading Cole that highlighted both the importance of tackling the evidence and the importance of the workplace. Most of the political theorists who were trying to defend a more participatory view of democracy were saying that we should keep this as an ideal, we mustn’t lose it. Now, I am obviously fond of ideas, I love analyzing and discussing them, but it has always seemed to me that if an idea, like participatory democracy, is really completely unrealistic then there is not a great deal of point in continuing to pursue it. So what I tried to do was to show that this idea was realistic, and could be supported by empirical evidence. You did not have to rely on invoking an ideal, but could turn around the arguments of the defenders of apathy and say that you are mistaken, empirical evidence shows that participatory democracy is realistic. CT/ECF: What were some of the reactions from say academics, Marxists, feminists, politicians, activists, in the early 70s to your thesis? CP: Well, it was right at the very beginning of the feminist movement, or, rather, the revival of the feminist movement, but I don’t know how many feminists actually read it at that point. I think the people who read it were mostly in universities in political theory and political science more generally. But there were people outside academic life who also read it, which is one thing that pleases me very much about the book. I really knew very little about academia at that time, so it took me a long time to realize that people had discovered it, and I was very surprised later on when I discovered that it had been read in Argentina for instance. CT/ECF: Is it the case that the book on participatory democracy marked the origins of your academic career insofar as it delineated some of the main boundaries of your research agenda? CP: Well not altogether. I have never had a “research agenda”. I work on problems that interest me at particular times, although democratic theory has remained my major interest, and a concern with the creation of a much more democratic society, with democratization, has always been there. I suppose one advantage of getting into this from outside of a middle or upper class background was that I didn’t really grasp that some academics did pretty much one thing for their entire lives. After Participation and Democratic Theory, the next book I wrote was on political obligation, and that was also an argument for participatory democracy. I argued that if you took ideas about self-assumed obligation seriously then they led to a participatory form of democracy rather than a purely representative form, so it was a related argument, although it grew out of a very different perspective. Still, all this time, while I working on this more standard political theory, even if my arguments were not standard, I had been very caught up in the women’s movement and all the new literature that had been coming out, but it took me quite a long time to work out how that fitted into what I was interested in. I was teaching some of the new feminist books in the seventies too. It’s hard to convey this to people now but those books and pamphlets were a complete revelation at the time, a complete revelation. Then I gradually started doing feminist political theory, which led to The Sexual Contract – and I think some people got quite a surprise when they discovered what I was doing. CT/ECF: Could you expand on this point? What do you mean that they were surprised? Was it because of the theoretical orientation, or the implications of your work for political theory and citizenship, or the fact that it relates to participatory democracy using contract theory? My reading of the Sexual Contract is that you criticize women’s dominance and subordination as the key elements of the lack of complete citizenship in contractual societies, and you link both processes to a dyadic master/subject model as Fraser argued is a template of patriarchal culture. Fraser criticizes your model arguing that the meanings of morality and femininity “do have some association with mastery and subjugation, but that those associations are neither exclusive nor fully authoritative” (Fraser, 1997, 233). Your answer is that your goal is to move beyond the notion of equality and difference and for you the central question is not sexual difference but women’s subordination. What you want to do is to transform the relationships between equality and difference. Is this the point that was so controversial about your book? We see your book the “Sexual Contract” as an almost natural extension of some of the arguments in Participation and Democratic Theory. Do you agree? CP: You may see it as an extension, but very few other people do. And Fraser, in my view, has completely misunderstood my argument in The Sexual Contract – but you have asked a lot of questions so let me try and deal with them. The people who were surprised to discover that I was writing feminist political theory were in political science. Feminist work has been quite slow to make an impact on political science. I am not saying that things haven’t changed between 1970, when my first book was published and now, they have, but not nearly as much as we had hoped in the late seventies and early eighties when feminist scholarship in political theory really got going. Everyone then was either rereading the classic texts or criticizing some of the fundamental assumptions on which political science was based. So we all had these high hopes that there would be a major reassessment of the discipline, but that did not ever happen. As a matter of fact, just this morning before I came to meet you I was teaching my undergraduate course in democratic theory, which I do regularly, and talked about Mary Wollstonecraft. One of the students came up to me at the end and said that he was in his fourth year and had taken a number of courses in political theory, but had never heard about Wollstonecraft before. CT/ECF: We teach her in education by the way. Douglas Kellner teaches her regularly. CP: The student’s comment illustrates how compartmentalized both political theory and political science still are. People can just go on doing what they do without taking any account of thirty or more years of feminist scholarship. On the other hand, many people working in feminist theory and women’s studies have no idea about my work before I turned to feminist theory. So it is rather rare for anyone to link my arguments in Participation and Democratic Theory with those in The Sexual Contract. The connection, of course, as you note is that both books criticize subordination. Incidentally, there is also a connection between The Sexual Contract and my book on political obligation because both deal with theories of an original contract. You asked why The Sexual Contract has been so controversial. Certainly, I think that the real question is not sexual difference but subordination, but that is not the only reason why I have been criticized from all sides. It seems to me that it is largely because my arguments do not fit easily into any of the standard classifications that are used to categorize work in political theory or in feminist theory. And let me add that I don’t find the classifications of feminist theory at all helpful. Many critics seem to want to cram my book into a box that already has a label, so it is often alleged to be a defense of “radical feminism”, for example, and since that is often used as a term of abuse within feminist theory it is a way to dismiss what I actually have to say without bothering to deal with the details of my argument. I might add that it was written as a book with an argument that begins at the beginning and runs through to the end, not as a series of discrete chapters as so many books are today. Since I’m critical not just of certain feminist arguments, but also certain socialist arguments, standard interpretations of theories of an original contract, and critical of the structure of major institutions, there is a good deal for critics to get their teeth into and plenty of scope for them to grind their own particular axes. One thing that has struck me about the criticisms is that so many ignore concepts that are central to my argument, such as civil subordination and property in the person. You referred to Fraser’s criticism in particular. Fraser in fact goes much further in her criticism than you suggest and she accuses me of reducing institutions to a series of “dyadic relations” between a master and a subject. She also says the same thing about theorists such as John Stuart Mill and Wollstonecraft, and argues that I stand in direct line from them. Pleased as I am to be included in such company, she has completely misunderstood both their arguments and my own. As in Participation and Democratic Theory, I was dealing in The Sexual Contract with authority structures within which power is exercised. In other words, I was interested in institutions, in this case particularly with the institution of marriage, but also with employment which is a link with my first book, although I have developed my criticism of the institution of employment considerably since 1970. In a marriage there are, of course, two individuals – but that is not to say that I was concerned with this “dyad”. My interest was in what it meant, in law and society, to be a “husband” or “wife” and with the power exercised by “husbands” and the subordination of “wives” within the institution of marriage. As both Wollstonecraft and Mill were well aware, a particular husband might or might not avail himself of the power available to him, but that is not the point. Relations between any particular husband and wife do not have much theoretical interest, and little can be learnt by “adding up” examples of the behavior of couples. He has that power by virtue of being a “husband”, of being a participant within an institution, in this case marriage. Marriage law has been reformed, but my argument was that the legacy of the legal and social power available to husbands lingers on, and unless we understand the past – and contemporary political theorists have usually ignored both marriage as a structure of power and its connections to women’s standing as citizens – we are robbed of knowledge essential in reforming the present. Let me add, that one of the reasons that I find marriage of such interest is that it, along with employment, are two major institutions that structure the modern state. CT/ECF: Let me now ask a question moving from the 70s to today and in this sense, we were talking a bit before about how the experience was more optimistic, utopian, you could see political mobilization and you could see the possibility of participatory democracy in the streets challenging representative democracy and the power of the elites. Now of course, in the 80s and 90s you have this development of the notion of the ingovernability of democracy and how that reinforced a notion of a selective democracy, a democracy that is only representative to those people who are considered the right people to represent, and the masses and the poor, and so on, are really undermined in the sense of how democracy could be implemented. Now we have the new century, if you could give me some sense of how you see the discussion of representative democracy today vis-à-vis the criticisms of this new neo-conservative, neo-liberal ingovernability model. CP: As you say, at the time when I wrote the book in the late sixties and until about the mid-seventies things were quite hopeful and optimistic. There were lots of changes being made and they seem to be, by and large, in a democratic direction, but from the end of the seventies onward that all started to change. What is interesting now is that after a long period of time when people didn’t seem to be concerned about participatory democracy there seems to be more interest again. The state of the world is now such that people are more skeptical than they were about the neoconservative arguments. Inequalities have become so great, so many cuts have been made to social services, and insecurity has grown everywhere - and there have been many dramatic developments that political scientists didn’t foresee - that some of these old arguments and ideas are due for another reassessment, people will start looking at them again. Although I’m not sure that conditions in the era of the “war on terrorism” are altogether auspicious for a flowering of what I would regard as genuine democracy. You asked about the notion of the ungovernability of democracy, but we don’t hear about that so much now. I think that was largely about the fact that people had started to take the promise of democracy and its ideals seriously, which appears threatening to those in power. But during the eighties and nineties the ideology of privatization, the whole neoliberal agenda, became so powerful that talk of ungovernability in that old sense became obsolete. Although democracy became more popular than ever before in history, it was democracy in a fairly minimal sense, combined with privatization and the enormous power now wielded by giant corporations. We can see both these last factors at work in Iraq right now dressed up with much talk about democracy. On the other, more hopeful, side, there is now a very wide gulf between citizens and governments in most parts of the world, and this could, under the right circumstances, lead to democratization. There is now also a worldwide movement, usually misleadingly called the anti-globalization movement, which is more appropriately seen as a movement for democracy, but not just in the sense of free and fair elections, but as a movement for self-government for individuals and communities, for fair trade not trade that just benefits the rich countries and the corporations, against the appropriation of humankind’s genetic inheritance by corporations and other private entities, and for women’s rights. We also have the exciting example of the participatory budget process in Porto Alegre and other Brazilian cities, and a growing interest in the idea of a basic income—all these are very encouraging developments. CT: In my own work, I have argued that C.B.Macpherson and your own notion of participative democracy, are linked to a socialist-democratic tradition, as is, although more peripherally and critically, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe notion of radical democracy. Paulo Freire argued in 1996 “if the dream of the emerging bourgeoisie was capitalism as the mark of the bourgeois democracy, so the dream of the popular majority today is socialism as the mark of popular democracy. The fundamental point is not to end democracy, but to perfect it and have not capitalism but socialism as its filing” (1996, page 137). This point brings me to the connections between participatory democracy, radical democracy and socialism, particularly the contributions of Karl Marx, and to what extent it is current today. Is participatory democracy a form of democratic socialism? Would you agree with Freire’s bold statement? Where the notion of feminist theory in the construction of citizenship fits into this discussion of radical and participatory democracy? We know that these are many complex and large questions, but we think you will agree that all these subjects are all deeply interconnected. CP: Yes, these subjects are all very much interconnected. I would also agree with Freire’s statement - but with a very important qualification, and that of course is about the meaning of “socialism”. After the fall of the old régimes at the end of the eighties people seem to become frightened by the term socialism because it had been associated with command economies, authoritarian régimes, and vast bureaucracies. Historically that is by no means its only meaning, and a democratic form of socialism is a very different matter – which is why I spent time in The Social Contract criticizing some socialist arguments. In a democratic form some important components would be regulation of the market so that people’s basic needs and enhancement of their citizenship came first, that some areas of life and human capacities are taken out of the realm of commodities - and I think that far too little attention is given to this question today—and that standard of living is uncoupled from employment through a basic income. These would be policies that stand at the opposite pole from those prevailing today, and would require that economic life is conducted on a much more human scale. Feminism is central to ideas of these kinds because for far too long too many of the proponents of both democracy and socialism have been content to discuss these as if they were little more than a male prerogative. Interestingly, some of the early socialists, those whom Marx dismissed with the term “utopian”, were feminists but their ideas tended to get lost. Women have to be full members and full participants in any participatory democracy, or it is not genuine democracy, and this requires enormous changes in how we think about “work” and the economy, about marriage and sexual relations, and ourselves as masculine and feminine. But the labels are less important than the sentiments behind them. In short, if one took Freire’s statement seriously then it opens up an extremely large agenda of social transformation. CT/ECF: You are now focusing also on the notion on the basic income linked to the premises of citizenship in the broader sense of the word. How would you link this concern about social income with the notion of participatory democracy? CP: First, since many people, especially in United States, are not familiar with the idea of a basic income let me say what it is. A basic income is a regular payment from a government to individual citizens, that is unconditional - it does not depend on employment, marital, or household status. One of the reasons I am interested in it is because it has the potential to cut the link between standard of living and employment. This potential depends on the level of the income, which as you might suppose is a very contentious aspect of basic income. Another reason I am interested is that it could, for the very first time in history, provide women with an independent income, something that Mary Wollstonecraft advocated in 1792. In the work I’ve been doing on this I have been trying to link a basic income to the question of democratization, which very few people have done so far. More usually a basic income is discussed in terms of social justice, and for a whole range of other reasons including relief of poverty and increasing the flexibility of labor markets. My argument is that if we are really interested in democracy and in citizenship that is of equal worth to people, including women, so that they could take part as much as they wish in all aspects of the life of their society, then we need to think about the security and resources that are required. Of course, poor people can make heroic efforts to participate, but why should they have to make heroic efforts? A basic income upholds the standing of individuals as citizens. I am developing an argument for a basic income as a democratic right, a right directly analogous to the universal right of the suffrage. This has both a material - the provision of resources in the form of an income—and a symbolic aspect. The suffrage has symbolic importance as an affirmation of individuals’ equal citizenship, and similarly a basic income is the emblem of full citizenship for everyone, and it provides the material security required to maintain that standing. Also like the suffrage, a basic income would be for life. CT/ECF: That’s a fascinating argument. Let us ask you a question concerning education, participation and democracy. You just mentioned social justice. We are working here with a new model in the school of education, which of course maybe more symbolic than meaningful in terms of what we are doing but we are trying to give some meaning of the symbolism of a social justice education. We are trying this as a new paradigm in our teachers training model. It has the symbolism of a social justice education model, which has two interesting even contradictory situations. One, not all of us, but a quite a large number of people involved in those projects are not so radical, and then by breaching a social justice education we attract nothing but very radical students, which creates a very interesting mix. Now, if I pose the question of social justice education and participatory democracy, what would be the conditions of the education that you see to develop a participatory democracy. CP: Well, one thing I would stress very strongly would be teaching students how to think critically, and, in particular, teaching them to see where questions need to be asked. That is something that they do not get nearly enough of. They also need to learn to read and write properly, I think I’m old-fashioned because I believe that grammar is important. Of course, in the days that I was writing on participatory democratic theory, there were demands for participatory classrooms. It would be very interesting to revisit that idea, but I have to confess I have not really thought much about it for long time. One difficulty is that the structure of education and the exam timetables that we have at present are not very conducive to more participation by students. Also participation does require some initial knowledge on the part of students about the resources available, and the kinds of things they can do. So it is hard to get that going within the constraints of a conventional education system. But if you’re building something from the beginning then, yes, it would be fascinating to go back to some of the earlier ideas about a more participatory education. My argument in my book, after all, was that you learned to participate by doing it, so where better place to start learning than by participating in the classroom. I think basically what came from all of those movements in the 1960s was student representatives on various bodies, which is a good thing, but I don’t know that it got much further than that. Maybe there are some people in the field of education working on this? CT/ECF: Yes. There are quite a sizable number of people working on this but there are no clear models to which one could refer too. Perhaps one way to approach the question is to bring in the discussion on multiculturalism, and the implications of knowledge production, teaching and learning in the context of racialized, gendered, and unequal class societies. How do you envision the discussion of multiculturalism from a feminist, social-democratic perspective, and from social contract theory? CP: That is another huge question. I’m currently working on a book with Charles Mills, whose The Racial Contract is modeled on The Sexual Contract. We are discussing both contracts and I shall have something to say about the racial contract in that. But my focus at present is not exactly the same as the debate about multiculturalism, which is largely about the immigrant communities who have become established in Western countries since the Second World War. I’m working on a chapter that deals with theories of original contracts and European expansion into the new worlds of North America and Australia from the 17th and 18th centuries, so it is about Native Peoples and their dispossession. In 2004 there are overlapping issues with multiculturalism but also some very different problems about territory. But the questions raised in the multicultural debate are central to democratic theory because they are about who is included as citizens and on what basis, and how we should think about rights. These are not easy questions to answer, as can be seen from the recent French ban on the wearing of the hijab in classrooms in contrast to Britain where Muslim girls are at liberty to wear it. This example also illustrates why feminism is central to much of what goes under the heading of “multiculturalism”. Much of it is about women’s place and activities, and the scope of their rights, because women are often seen as the guardians of religion and morality, and because men in all cultures are loathe to give up their patriarchal power. But in my view far more disruption of tradition and “culture” is caused by globalization and armed conflict than by some basic rights for women. In political theory a vigorous discussion of multiculturalism has been underway since the mid-nineties but until relatively recently the question of women’s rights was glossed over. I’m sympathetic to a great deal of the multicultural argument, but on the issue of women’s rights my view is that there are some lines that have to be drawn if we are to do more than pay lip service to democracy and human rights. This is not to say that there is not plenty of scope for variation in how rights are interpreted in different cultures - for instance, there is considerable difference in how the right to free speech is interpreted in United States and in many European countries - but there is a crucial difference between variation in interpretation and denial of basic human rights. Bibliography Fraser, Nancy. Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on he ‘Postsocialist Condition. New York: Routledge, 1997. Freire, Paulo. Letters to Cristina. New York: Routledge, 1996. Mills, Charles. The Racial Contract. Cornell University Press, 1997. Pateman, Carole. Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Pateman, Carole. The Problem of Political Obligation. University of California Press, 2nd ed. 1985 Pateman, Carole. The Sexual Contract. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1988. Torres, Carlos Alberto. Democracy, Education and Multiculturalism. Dilemmas of Citizenship in a Global World. Lahman, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. To cite this interview: Torres, Carlos A. and Eden C. Flynn (2004). Participatory Democracy and Citizenship. An Interview with Carole Pateman. In D. Schugurensky (ed.), Citizenship Learning and Participatory Democracy. Available online at: Back to the Lifelong Citizenship Learning Home Page —-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—- ©2001-05 Daniel Schugurensky. All Rights Reserved. Design and maintenance by LMS. / Last updated on August 18, 2005

• Los Fugitivos
  by mattman

  Many of you on my watchlist already know of the great Chris Wahl. / He is an amazing character designer and the least we could is breathe …

  Many of you on my watchlist already know of the great Chris Wahl. / He is an amazing character designer and the least we could is breathe some life into his work. So please take a look at the link below and vote for him: Don’t panic….it’s character building. / Watch the madness… / http://www.losfugitivos.com

• I've arrived.
  by Lauren O'Keefe

  I’m in California and my brain feels a little scrambled. It’s probably about 10.30 at night but my laptop is telling me it’s 4pm in the a…

  I’m in California and my brain feels a little scrambled. It’s probably about 10.30 at night but my laptop is telling me it’s 4pm in the afternoon. Anyhoo… Today’s photo: / / Mono-rail station at downtown Disneyland. I’ll be updating my blog with my adventures if anyone is interested.

• Today's photo
  by Lauren O'Keefe

  And this one is going to be a favourite. Jackie who is hosting me is a craft…

  And this one is going to be a favourite. Jackie who is hosting me is a crafty woman and organised a lunch with Tim Sale. And I had no idea. I should’ve taken my sunglasses off but look at the grin. Heh.

• Los Spontaneous Fakers Released!
  by Eduardo Gómez Escamilla

  Hey, just to let every…

  Hey, just to let everyone know i’ve been working in a photo book for the last sixt months called Los Spontaneous Fakers, it features three wonderful young characters: Tommy Bolton.- He’s the most relaxed guy in the group. He attracts the attention by doing all kind of feats. Do you think he can play the piano? Shelley Bacon.- She returned home. A party was held. What to do with all the disaster and not having fun? A fake party! Unnamed Girl.- You won’t believe who’s her best friend. It’s insanity as its best! Includes almost 60 new images of my work as also a self-portrait introduction of Los Spontaneous Fakers, it’s really economic so you might wanna check out the link they fake to find happiness in loneliness / my most personal artwork to date! Buy it now at: Blurb