This book is about the mundane, local, every day practices that constitutes democracy. It defines politicization as the key process in understanding democracy in different cultural contexts through studies of France and Finland. By means of comparative ethnographic, media, and visual analysis that focuseson how democracy is actually practiced in different contexts, this work sets out a more nuanced and controversial picture of two opposite models of European politics. The familiar juxtaposition of Southern and Northern political cultures is set in a new perspective through comparative analyses of politicizations: the processes of opening political arenas and recognizing controversy. The book explores the ways in which people in different contexts deliberate, resist, and politicize, and hence practice, challenge, and transform democracy in ways that are of relevance to all political systems.
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