Politics as a practical activity
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2.1.5 Politics as a social and public activity
Some of the examples cited above, involving the politics of playgrounds or the politics of familial coexistence, prompt us to consider some even broader definitions of politics. The play of children or the interaction of spouses has little to do with states, politicians or political institutions. If you have watched children play, you probably know that the politics of playgrounds does not always involve the peaceful resolution of conflict. It is often about power, but power defined in rather broad terms. Thus, if we agree that there is such a thing as the politics of playgrounds, we might have to stretch our definition of politics quite significantly.
Proponents of narrower definitions of politics often object to such stretching by arguing that if stretched too far politics can lose its meaning, becoming everything and anything one can imagine. That is indeed a legitimate concern, and one that broad definitions of politics must contend with. Keep this in mind as we examine some of these broader definitions of politics; in the end, it will be up to you to decide whether any of these definitions succeed at broadening the scope of politics without diluting it to the extent that it loses its meaning.
Among the broadest ways of defining politics is to understand it as a ‘social activity’ – an activity we engage in together with others, or one through which we engage others. Politics, in this sense, is ‘always a dialogue, and never a monologue’ (Heywood, 2013, p. 1). A similarly broad (or perhaps even broader) definition is offered by Arendt (2005), who argues that politics does not have an ‘essence’ – it does not have an intrinsic nature, or an indispensable element according to which we can definitively, and in all circumstances, identify something as political. Thus, there are no quintessentially political acts, subjects or places. Politics, rather, is the world that emerges between us – the world that emerges through our interactions with each other, or through the ways that our individual actions and perspectives are aggregated into collectivities.
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