Democracy in practice
Subtitle: ceremony and ritual in parliaments
By: edited by Shirin M. Rai, Rachel Johnson
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 275
ISBN-13: 9781137361905
Subjects: Legislative bodies; Political culture; Democracy; Power (Social sciences); POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Democracy; POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / General
Description: "This collection highlights the ways in which parliaments create and maintain powerful symbols of democracy and power. It explores how political and social hierarchies operate within parliaments through ceremonial spectacles, formal and informal rules and rituals, art and architecture.  Members are socialized through everyday practices but such institutional disciplining is also challenged performatively - by refusal to participate, by subversion of norms or by rejection of rules. The contributions to this volume highlight that the everyday ritual practices as well as institutional ceremonies have significant political meaning, whether their focus is upon the spectacular or the quotidian. Chapters on opening ceremony, Prime Minister's Questions, on performance of debate and disruption, on the architecture and space of suggest that what has often been seen as the banal backdrop to politics proper, accumulated tradition or necessary rules of procedure, should in fact be the starting-point for our analyses of modern democratic parliaments"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Introducing Democracy in Practice: Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament; Rachel E. Johnson and Shirin M. Rai; title: PART I: PERFORMING REPRESENTATION; title: 1. Representing Democracy: Ceremony and Ritual in the Indian Parliament; Shirin M. Rai; title: 2. Westminster Parliamentarians: Performing Politics; Emma Crewe; title: 3. Negotiating Gendered Institutions: Women's Parliamentary Friendships; Sarah Childs; title: 4. The Emergence and Impact of First Female Speakers; Faith Armitage, Rachel E. Johnson and Carole Spary; title: PART II: DELIBERATION AND DISRUPTION; title: 5. Proceduralising the Plenary as a Public Sphere; Victoria Hasson; title: 6. Prime Minister's Questions as Political Ritual; Joni Lovenduski; title: 7. The Indian Parliament: Performing Decline Since the 1960s; Bairavee Balasubramaniam; title: 8. Disrupting Deliberation? Comparing Repertoires of Parliamentary Representation; Carole Spary, Faith Armitage and Rachel E. Johnson; title: PART III: SYMBOLIC SPACES; title: 9. Space and Symbols: Transforming Parliamentary Buildings; Georgina Waylen; title: 10. The Archi-texture of Parliament Nirmal Puwar; title: 11. Pageantry as Politics: The Opening of Parliaments; Rachel E. Johnson, Faith Armitage and Carole Spary.