Call for proposals from Civic Studies (formerly Committee on the Political Economy of the Good Society) Related Group Chair(s): Peter Levine, Tufts University, peter.levine@tufts.edu and Trygve Throntveit, Minnesota Humanities Center, throntv@gmail.com The Civic Studies Related Group invites proposals for panels, round tables, and individual papers that make a significant contribution to the civic studies field; […]
A guy sits at a desk, resolving people’s requests and issuing orders. Most people who encounter him think he’s making their lives worse. What do you assume is going on? Maybe it’s capitalism and the profit-motive. The guy is probably corporate, and if he works for the government, that shows that it’s a “neoliberal state” […]
My book entitled What Should We Do? A Theory of Civic Life will be released in April 2022. It summarizes the concepts and ideas that I believe are most useful for people who want to improve their communities and the world. It is based on many years of teaching undergraduates and advanced graduate students and […]
In our Introduction to Civic Studies course, we have been discussing how to analyze institutions–“analyze” in its root sense of dividing things into smaller components. Our major theorist is for these sessions is Elinor Ostrom, and we are learning from her how to think about the specific types of goods, actors, incentives, rules, and other […]
It is good that Americans disagree about civic education. We are a free and diverse people who care about youth and the future of our republic. Agreement is not to be expected and could even be problematic. The question is whether we can disagree well while also giving our students an appropriate array of choices […]