The necessity to revisit and rethink democracy through the public place in our contemporary societies is the subject of a podcast produced by Science/AAAS in May 2022. The podcast addresses the work of five contributors to the book Public Space Democracy: Performative, Visual and Normative Dimensions of Politics in a Global Age, including NOMIS board member Nilüfer Göle. The embodiment of the Public Space Democracy (PublicDemoS) project, the book explores a historical turn in modern multicultural societies: the return of agoras, maidans and of individuals reclaiming public space and experimenting together with new forms of plurality and collectivity.
In the one-hour podcast, researchers Nilüfer Göle, Boyan Znepolski, Nadia Fadil, Sarah Dornhof and Gökçe Tuncel discuss the complexity and necessity of undertaking research into public spaces.
Reclaiming Public Spaces in the Contemporary Democracy Movement
In an increasingly digital age, citizens around the world are reclaiming their public spaces, known by many names, including public squares, agoras, maidans and Euromaidans. Places of protest that are now part of the modern lexicon—Tahrir Square, Gezi Park, Tiananmen Square—have come to represent the emancipatory potential of public space in multicultural contexts.
Occupation of public spaces, the assembly of people and the enactment of new forms of citizenship are the focus of the PublicDemoS project being led by Göle. The research is based on the premise that the potential for transformation resides in the ways we organize, give form to and inhabit public space, which is the place for assembly, the hub of democracy as well as the manifestation of power and (dis)empowerment of persons. PublicDemoS explores the ways in which new forms of public agency extend politics to everyday life experiences by avenues of artistic expressions and aesthetic forms. This international, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary project aims to understand new politics of performative citizenship and public (un)making in multicultural settings—an important endeavor, particularly in light of the rise of authoritarian populist regimes that limit the freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.
Science/AAAS has been a NOMIS partner since 2021.
