Communication and Creative Democracy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives ed. by Omar Swartz (review)

According to editor Omar Swartz, the aim of Communication and Creative Democracy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives is to provide “a conceptual framework for understanding what it means to be an engaged citizen.”¹ To accomplish this aim, Swartz brings together ten essays from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds that are intended to tease out and further develop the notion of “creative democracy,” an admittedly vague term coming out of the work of John Dewey. Swartz argues that now is an important time to consider the potential of creative democracy because the emphasis on political institutions and processes as the hallmark of democracy—rather than on “the responsibility and participation of informed citizens”²—has led to many of the problems and challenges we currently face in liberal democracies.

This volume builds upon an earlier work authored by Swartz, along with Katia Campbell and Christina Pestana, entitled Neo-Pragmatism, Communication, and the Culture of Creative Democracy (2009). Although I have not carefully explored this earlier text, it seems likely that, although Communication and Creative Democracy is a stand-alone work, it would be best to read both together to truly appreciate the insights of this text, and the overall project. The essays in Communication and Creative Democracy are divided, in traditional fashion, into two sections: theory and practice. This separation is, of course, artificial, and this fact is only more starkly apparent in a volume that aims to build upon pragmatist themes.

Despite this artificial separation, Swartz identifies five common themes that run through each chapter. The first is that democracy must go all the way down and all the way across, to be enacted in all areas of social interaction.³ The second theme is pragmatist anti-foundationalism and fallibilism, such that democracy is an ongoing process consisting of inquiry and deliberation, and requiring effective universal education. The third theme is that democracy must be substantive—it requires full participation, which in turn requires substantive equality and economic democracy.⁴ The fourth theme running through the chapters is a commitment to Dewey’s faith in human creative potential to realize social progress.⁵ The fifth and final theme—and also the theme that is most prevalent throughout the entire volume—is the privileging of communication, in all its forms and through all its mediums, as integral to processes of creating and recreating ourselves and our world.⁶ My goal in this review is to determine whether these chapters are compelling in terms of the insights they offer and/or the further inquiry they make possible, to ascertain how well the chapters together incorporate the themes Swartz outlines, and to identify what contribution the volume makes to scholarship on or relating to Dewey.

The volume opens with Scott R. Stroud’s contribution, “What is Created by Creative Democracy? A Deweyan Take on Communication, Community and Self-Creation,” where the author argues that what is created in creative democracy is selves of a specific sort. He goes on to claim that communication is an important part of this process because it shapes psychological habits or “orientations,” which in turn help create “democratic selves.” Stroud’s meandering paper conveys valuable information about a number of Deweyan concepts such as actions, habits, individuality, growth, communication, orientations, experience, and community, but how these concepts come together to make the point the author wants to make—that “creative democracy is a way of interacting with others such that selves of a certain sort are created”⁷—remains underdeveloped.

“Communication and the Emergence of the Public: John Dewey and Creative Democracy,” by Cynthia Gayman, is chapter two of the volume. In this chapter, Gayman argues that the intrusion of market and other forces into the public sphere has diminished our capacity for communication because it replaces the shared experience of reality with mere desires and illusions. Using various examples from the post-9/11 period and the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Gayman aims to show that the conditions and types...