The Politics of Politeness : Citizenship, Civility, and the Democracy of Everyday Life

Politeness is political. It is easy to disregard our everyday, street-level interactions and the politeness, or impoliteness, by which they are marked, but those interactions determine the quality of the social atmosphere we inhabit, and democracies cannot flourish without an atmosphere congenial to their ends.We must therefore enlarge our understanding of citizenship to encompass the democracy of everyday living, and we must learn to think politically about the dilemmas of politeness it presents. The Politics of Politeness develops the first sustained account of 'ordinary citizenship'.Arguing for the political significance of everyday urban interactions, Edyvane proposes an interpretation of politeness as civility and as a key political practice for democracies.Against recent conceptualisations of polite civility as a 'communicative' virtue, the book elaborates an innovative 'ceremonial' account that takes seriously the ritual-like character of polite interaction, and its embeddedness