Returning to the Long Revolution

Facing fundamental changes to the climate, the environment and the nature of work will require cooperative action for an effective response. This presents a crisis of recognition, of different communities needing to learn how to value the practices of collaboration for a common purpose. The central argument of this book is that the key to motivating such change now lies in a radical re-imagining of our democratic citizenship, empowering citizens to participate in and take responsibility for remaking the communities in which they live and work. We need to reconfigure ourselves from being clients, dependent on professional knowledge, or consumers competing in a market place, to becoming active citizens, makers of our worlds. Only a transformation of democracy can enable public participation in this way, and through practice in deliberating common goods, achieve mutual recognition of cultural differences and social cohesion.