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The Participant: A Century of Participation in Four Stories
Participation is everywhere today. It has been formalized, measured, standardized, scaled up, network-enabled, and sent around the world. Platforms, algorithms, and software offer to make participation easier, but new technologies have had the opposite effect. We find ourselves suspicious of how participation extracts our data or monetizes our emotions, and the more procedural participation becomes, the more it seems to recede from our grasp.
In this book, Christopher M. Kelty traces four stories of participation across the twentieth century, showing how they are part of a much longer-term problem in relation to the individual and collective experience of representative democracy. Kelty argues that in the last century or so, the power of participation has dwindled; over time, it has been formatted in ways that cramp and dwarf it, even as the drive to participate has spread to nearly every kind of human endeavor, all around the world. The Participant is a historical ethnography of the concept of participation, investigating how the concept has evolved into the form it takes today. It is a book that asks, “Why do we participate?” And sometimes, “Why do we refuse?”
In this book, Christopher M. Kelty traces four stories of participation across the twentieth century, showing how they are part of a much longer-term problem in relation to the individual and collective experience of representative democracy. Kelty argues that in the last century or so, the power of participation has dwindled; over time, it has been formatted in ways that cramp and dwarf it, even as the drive to participate has spread to nearly every kind of human endeavor, all around the world. The Participant is a historical ethnography of the concept of participation, investigating how the concept has evolved into the form it takes today. It is a book that asks, “Why do we participate?” And sometimes, “Why do we refuse?”
- GenresAnthropologyNonfiction
344 pages, Hardcover
Published January 21, 2020
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About the author
Christopher M. Kelty
8 books4 followersChristopher M. Kelty is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Rice University.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 11, 2020
I read this as part of a book group I asked some friends to participate in as a kind of last-ditch attempt on my part to hang on, by my fingernails, to serious intellectualizing. I am very glad they are willing to indulge me in this effort, especially in the current circumstances -- when otherwise my free hours would be spent madly scribbling postcards to suburban voters trying to get them to vote for Warnock and Ossoff, or drunkenly blogging my pathetic attempt at the Next Great Postmodern Novel, or drunkenly re-watching Queen's Gambit, or just drunkenly drinking while we all wait, patiently, for our pharmaceutical overlords to deliver unto us our vaccinic salvation.
Where was I?
Oh, right. Soberly discussing this book.
It's good. The author discounts the power of chapter 2 -- i.e., the theorizing -- but then, to paraphrase something I said in another review, when have I ever met a theory I didn't love?* The ethnographic chapters, or what the author admits is a kind of interrogative ethnographic reading of historical evidence, are quite good. I learned things about the sources (and implications) of organizational analysis that I wouldn't have gotten perhaps even had I ever gone back and tried (oh dear lord) to re-read all those cited works that constituted that portion of my orals exams in graduate school.
But. And but. Yet. And yet. The argument just doesn't quite all hang together. To go from examining how worker input on factory processes led to Community Action Programs is... interesting. To go from the CAPs and urban planning processes to international development is...also interesting. To go from international development to Facebook is... too much of a stretch.
And as pointed out by my colleagues in the book group, if you're going to write a book that ostensibly seeks to draw out an explanation of what it means to "participate" anywhere, anytime, but then back away from making grand theoretical statements... man, that just seems, well, cowardly. For goodness' sake, have the courage of your own convictions. It's okay to be wrong -- that's why we have scholarly debate (and, let's be honest, that's why we have the SSCI). It's bizarre to be timid.
*Utilitarianism. But there has to be an exception to every rule, hasn't there? Also, one might note in my skepticism toward utilitarianism a rejection of, or even perhaps, hostility toward, theoretical individualism. Thus my interest in this book. And thus why when I read the theory chapter and found that he went right up to, but didn't quite, lay it all out there as an extended discursis on Durkheim, I felt an emotion the only accurate term for which is inappropriate for public, polite, discourse.
Where was I?
Oh, right. Soberly discussing this book.
It's good. The author discounts the power of chapter 2 -- i.e., the theorizing -- but then, to paraphrase something I said in another review, when have I ever met a theory I didn't love?* The ethnographic chapters, or what the author admits is a kind of interrogative ethnographic reading of historical evidence, are quite good. I learned things about the sources (and implications) of organizational analysis that I wouldn't have gotten perhaps even had I ever gone back and tried (oh dear lord) to re-read all those cited works that constituted that portion of my orals exams in graduate school.
But. And but. Yet. And yet. The argument just doesn't quite all hang together. To go from examining how worker input on factory processes led to Community Action Programs is... interesting. To go from the CAPs and urban planning processes to international development is...also interesting. To go from international development to Facebook is... too much of a stretch.
And as pointed out by my colleagues in the book group, if you're going to write a book that ostensibly seeks to draw out an explanation of what it means to "participate" anywhere, anytime, but then back away from making grand theoretical statements... man, that just seems, well, cowardly. For goodness' sake, have the courage of your own convictions. It's okay to be wrong -- that's why we have scholarly debate (and, let's be honest, that's why we have the SSCI). It's bizarre to be timid.
*Utilitarianism. But there has to be an exception to every rule, hasn't there? Also, one might note in my skepticism toward utilitarianism a rejection of, or even perhaps, hostility toward, theoretical individualism. Thus my interest in this book. And thus why when I read the theory chapter and found that he went right up to, but didn't quite, lay it all out there as an extended discursis on Durkheim, I felt an emotion the only accurate term for which is inappropriate for public, polite, discourse.
October 29, 2024
Anyone familiar with Christopher M. Kelty’s style will get exactly what they expect in *The Participant*. In four stories that are as entertaining as they are thought-provoking, the reader gains a multi-layered, theory-rich insight into the concept of participation. For me, the theoretical forerunners and their debates, along with the three central concepts around which the book revolves, are particularly engaging, as is Kelty’s entertaining style and the structure of his chapters. In my master's thesis in Science and Technology Studies, I expect to find plenty of inspiration, knowledge, and quotations. However, Kelty’s work is limited to his own research goals and academic disciplines, of which anthropology is "only" one, and, as in *Two Bits*, it provides a historically interesting overview that is not sufficiently STS-focused or specifically relevant to my situation, being more philosophically inclined. High-level nitpicking! For those interested in the topic who want to break away from the usual academic staples, this book is an excellent choice.
July 26, 2020
One of the top 3 books you need to read in the rise of ‘participation’ in research and politics.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews