You’ve reached the moveable feast for The Participant: A Century of Participation in Four Stories

For those of us in the pandemic book club, in-person presentations are out, and so this is a substitute.

The eight short videos here (less than 10 min each) make up a talk of varying length—you can watch just the intro, or watch all of them, in any order. They trace the travels of the Participant, the main character in the book.

The Participant

Today...

START HERE.
In which we learn about The Participant and begin the tour. This is the introductory lecture, after which the other parts can be watched in any order.
June 1889

June 1889

In which we learn the ancient meaning of participation, its connection to Rousseau’s general will, and how the anthropologist and philosopher Lévy-Bruhl connected personhood, ethics, and participation.
October 1947

October 1947

In which we learn of worker participation and have a fleeting experience of collaborative innovation.
June 10th, 1969

June 10th, 1969

In which we learn about the Model Cities Program in Philadelphia in the 1960s, and the origins of contemporary civic participation.
Around 1994

Around 1994

In which we learn about international participatory development and the way participation was transformed into a tool kit.
March 2020

March 2020

In which we ask why isolation is a form of participation, and whether it is working.
May 25th, 2020

May 25th, 2020

In which we look at direct action and social protest as a form of participation, and show how effective participation can be when it is done right.
Tomorrow

Tomorrow

End here.
In which we ask how we can dig our way out of the form of participation we have created with social media and the internet of advertising and misinformation.