Abstract

According to editor Omar Swartz, the aim of Communication and Creative Democracy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives is to provide “a conceptual framework for understanding what it means to be an engaged citizen.”1 To accomplish this aim, Swartz brings together ten essays from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds that are intended to tease out and further develop the notion of “creative democracy,” an admittedly vague term coming out of the work of John Dewey. Swartz argues that now is an important time to consider the potential of creative democracy because the emphasis on political institutions and processes as the hallmark of democracy—rather than on “the responsibility and participation of informed citizens”2—has ..