| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics. Ed. by Russ Castronovo and Dana D. Nelson. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. xii, 427 pp. Cloth, $69.95, ISBN 0-8223-2910-7. Paper, $22.95, ISBN 0-8223-2938-7.)

The fifteen essays in this collection begin from the premise that democracy is an idea deeply rooted in history and context, and thus they critique the supposition that democracy is a stable unchanging fact. Democracy, in fact, defines a spectrum of practices, all embedded in material conditions. For the contributors to this book, however, studying democracy goes beyond an examination of the world of electoral politics and governance. The contributors use the tools of literary criticism, sociology, anthropology, history, legal studies, and political theory to explore such topics as Native American performance, gay conservatism, solitary confinement prison units, celebrity worship, rituals of public mourning, and the free market ideal. The book's introduction does an excellent job of tying together these wide-ranging articles, and the organization of the chapters also enhances the coherence of this work.

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