Kettering Foundation

   In Civic Agency and the Cult of the Expert, Harry Boyte provides a buffet of ideas to make a coherent case for a democracy in which citizens can be truly sovereign by becoming the agents of their own destiny.    Boyte writes, "In the face of multiplying global crises, from economic collapse to global warming, many signs of a politics that develops civic agency—self-organizing, collective citizen efforts to solve problems and create public things in open settings without tight prior scripts—are also appearing. A civic agency approach is built through what we call pub ... [ MORE ]

Byron White's career experiences—as an impartial observer of community building, as an advocate working from within urban communities, and as a catalyst working from the outside—have given him a unique perspective into the dynamics of institutional/ community engagement. "Basically, they have left me with three overriding convictions. First, the collective work of citizens is essential to any hope of significant, sustained transformation of urban America. Second, institutions can be powerful enablers of such citizen leadership or they can seriously impede it. Third, the determining facto ... [ MORE ]

Download We Have to Choose We Have to Choose is a working draft Kettering report designed primarily for civic organizations, centers, and institutes that sponsor deliberative forums and/or prepare people to conduct such forums. This report attempts to help these organizations find a pedagogy or way to explain deliberation, which has to be learned but can’t be taught through instruction alone. Public deliberation can’t be confined to formally organized forums. And democracy can’t be confined to collective decision making, even if it is done by deliberative means. Kettering has realized th ... [ MORE ]

Deliberation and the Work of Higher Education: Innovations for the Classroom, the Campus, and the Community demonstrates how deliberation can help higher education renew its mission of preparing citizens to sustain democracy and stimulate civic involvement on college campuses around the country. It also describes how deliberative dialogue—in both the classroom and on campus—can promote learning and problem solving amidst a culture of argument, debate, and polarization that is prevalent on campus and in society. Edited by John R. Dedrick, Laura Grattan, and Harris Dienstfrey, Deliberation a ... [ MORE ]

The professional mind-set prevailing in higher education today often ignores the “common goods” that only democratic self-rule can provide. Why? Some say the professional mind-set is profoundly anti-democratic, especially when it presumes that specialized knowledge and experience is a sufficient substitute for a democratic process of participating equals. Although there are currently many higher education experiments in which the public does set the agenda for research and actually conducts much of the work, there are still too many projects ostensibly done for the public with nothing to be ... [ MORE ]

In Speaking of Politics: Preparing College Students for Democratic Citizenship through Deliberative Dialogue, Katy J. Harriger and Jill J. McMillan follow the “Democracy Fellows,” a group of 30 college students, during their four years at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to discover whether their experiences in learning and practicing deliberation—a useful and civil way of “speaking politics”—might counteract the alienation from public life that has overtaken so many young Americans today. Their research design included classroom learning and practical experiences in ... [ MORE ]

For Communities to Work, by David Mathews, presents a broad framework intended as background for civic organizations that want to look at the state of the public in their communities. It explains how private individuals become public citizens and how publics form. The process of reinvigorating citizens in communities requires generating the political will for “public work,” or the work of citizens with each other. Download For Communities to Work Download the Spanish Edition Para que las Comunidades Funcionen Kettering Foundation Press | 2002 53 pages $3 Item #9852 To order publicatio ... [ MORE ]