Description
Book SynopsisDrawing on the genealogical tradition developed by Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, Democracy and Domination: Technologies of Integration and the Rise of Collective Power argues that from the time of Ancient Greece to the present, the collective and centralizing aspects of power have been expanding in the Western world. This expansion can be located within institutional structures that coordinate human activity, requiring populations to have some technology by which the act of communication takes place. This work examines the rise of phonetic writing and the formalization of teaching as preconditions for the expansion of collective power. Speech and writing provide populations a common language and history, thus providing the cultural integration necessary for the synchronization of action. However, for this coordination of activities on a mass scale there must also be institutional structures for the formal training of system managers and officials. Large polities require infr
Trade ReviewKoch and Zeddy’s Democracy and Domination uses a Foucauldian analysis of power to revive the Nietzschean critique of democracy. Understanding the historical rise of democracy in the West as ever more efficient techniques of domination, the authors argue that democracy is a specific form of social control constituted through knowledge production and the collectivization of power. The incisive historical and material analysis is sure to spark controversy and discussion among political theorists and students of democracy. -- William L. Niemi, Western State College of Colorado
Democracy and Domination is an ambitious historical study of the integration and disintegration of Western institutions of sovereign power from the ancient Greek /polis/ to twenty-first century globalization. Placing particular emphasis on the integrating and legitimizing capacities of 'soft' forms of domination—literacy, technologies of knowledge dissemination, agencies of socialization, education, and democracy—Koch and Zeddy conclude that Western democracy is a Janus-faced form of legitimizing power. -- Wayne Gabardi, Idaho State University
Table of Contents1 Introduction Chapter 2 Chapter 1. The Study of Domination Chapter 3 Chapter 2. Athens and Rome: Dissemination, Identity, and the Rise of Central Power Chapter 4 Chapter 3. The Middle Ages: Domination and Administration in an Age of Illiteracy Chapter 5 Chapter 4. The Birth of the Nation-State and the Rise of Humanism Chapter 6 Chapter 5. Democracy, Industrial Production, and the Rise of National Power Chapter 7 Chapter 6. Collective Power in the Twenty-first Century Chapter 8 Concluding Remarks
