August 18, 2006
<< A Pixel the Size of Everything | Gimme a Treadmill, Gimme a Beat >>
New Chautauquas
Over at Worldchanging they’re getting ready to hype their book and they’re describing the tour events like this:
These events are going to be remarkable: think “Chautauqua meets cocktail party meets XXX.” They’re going to be fun, exciting, heady and meaningful.
Sounds cool, but what is “Chautauqua”?
The Chautauqua […] was a popular educational movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid 1920s. When the Chautauqua came to town, it brought entertainment for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers and specialists of the day.
I love that! There’s lots more fun detail on the ‘pedia, and here. It’s related to the Lyceum scene which I had heard a little about. Basically the whole thing sounds awesome and impossibly, irretrievably civic.
It all reminds me of a book I’m reading right now: “Diminished Democracy” by Theda Skocpol, a sociologist with an undergrad degree from MSU (whaaat!) who is now a dean at Harvard.
It describes a phase of American history that has been weirdly forgotten, when voluntary associations (think: Knights of Columbus, VFW, etc., as well as many that sound utterly foreign today: the Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, etc.) laid thick across the land, with huge memberships and lots of political clout. (And the Chautauqua and Lyceums were wrapped up in all this.)
These associations, Skocpol says, were like cross-training for democracy. Each one was its own little government, with a complicated system of branches and chapters, and lots of voting.
When we talk about an informed electorate these days, we almost always think of the media. After all, journalism is the means by which people learn things! … right?
Well, maybe there are other ways, too, that are a little more in-your-face and immediate. I’m glad Worldchanging is bringing their particular flavor of knowledge and community into the real, physical world; I would love to see more examples of that.
Subscribe
Comments
Dan is all about the Chautauqua.
And so am I. I know we must have discussed it at MSU before. Certainly, your narrative naivety was a literary device, eh mon frere? Have you read "Bowling Alone"? I see it commonly cited as a book on the decline of civic life.
I'm skeptical about this "worldchanger" book though. Basically that's because I'm a skeptical curmudgeon. But doesn't one come out every five years?
But maybe someone will soon invent ingenious solar-powered robots that will produce all manner of wonderous goods for us and free Mankind from the shackles of toil and relieve the environment from the demands we place upon it. Scarcity will be a myth of the past! We will live in a Golden Age of Art and Truth. Until the inevitable Robot Rebellion occurs, and they enslave us to serve their nefarious Robotic Master Plan.
C'est plus change, c'est plus meme chose, mon frere. C'est plus meme chose.
Ha! My naivete is definitely not feigned. I had forgotten about it entirely, much as I have forgotten all about calculus II. (Well, technically speaking I have repressed that. Same difference.)
One thing I like about the Worldchanging crew is that they are NOT utopians -- or at least they try very, very hard not to be. Sometimes being an optimist alone seems pretty airy-fairy... but if anybody pulls it off, I think they do.
Seems to me their claim is not that a Golden Age is upon us, but rather that things don't have to be as bad as they could be if we make some changes to the way we live.
I've been reading a book about the history of cities (by Joel Kotkin, cited in recent snarkpost) and man, the dark ages? They were real, and they sucked.
Post a comment