Living citizenship: John Dewey, political theory and civic engagement

This dissertation addresses the contemporary problem of youth disengagement from politics and public life. Its goal is to present both a broader theoretical treatment of youth civic engagement and a normative framework to strengthen contemporary theory and practice. By combining an interpretation of John Dewey's concepts of experience, education, and democracy with an inquiry into the specific experiential elements of Public Achievement, the dissertation brings the rich resources of Dewey's thought to bear on contemporary youth civic engagement.;My principal thesis in this dissertation is that this expansive and comprehensive treatment of democracy and education represents Dewey's most important contribution to the theory and practice of youth civic engagement. Dewey's idea that democracy is a way of life has profound implications for civic engagement. Indeed, for my purposes it can be spelled out this way: citizenship becomes a way of life and civic engagement involves young people taking action to change actual conditions of their everyday lives. In more detail, Dewey provides a much-needed perspective on the current literature of civic engagement because he theorizes the connections between and among civic experiences, individual development, social context and learning. Through these connections, he provides a way to understand how young people learn knowledge, attitudes, and skills of civic engagement, and how young people can develop identities as active citizens.;This dissertation represents a political intervention, one that hopes to critically inform contemporary civic engagement theory and practice. Much of the current theory and practice of civic engagement is confined to---and limited within---scattered classes, curricula and programs. Against the widespread pattern of civic disengagement, scholars and practitioners have essentially called for more of the same. In contrast, this dissertation argues that we need a more detailed framework and a more comprehensive vision. To this end, I am developing the idea of "living citizenship": a normative ideal that will hopefully allow us to analyze the educative outcomes of individual programs and practices, as well as to connect these isolated programs and practices to a larger framework of civic engagement and democratic reform.