Purpose
To see what you and your friends know or assume about economic democracy, and its constituent concepts: “economy” and “democracy”.
To then be able to gauge what and perhaps even how much you have learned about economic democracy by the end of the course.
To begin to critically assess economic democracy and its possibilities and challenges.
Document and Submit the Following
Step 1a: When you think of the words “economy” and “democracy” what other words do you think of? Write them down in two separate lists for words that describe for you “economy” (one list) and “democracy” (the other list). See if you can come up with 5, maybe even up to 10 words for each of these two major concepts.
Step 1b: Then ask 2 other people you know to do the same thing.
Step 1c: Ask yourself and your two other friends to reflect further on the words they produced. Record some of their main reflections.
Step 1d: Towards the end of your conversations with your key informants, ask them what they think that “economic democracy” might be? Record some of these reflections
Step 2: Type all of the words you all came up with into two big lists (one for the word “economy” and the other for the work “democracy”). Make note of your and your friends’ feelings or perceptions about the words that emerge. Do the words conjure “positive” feelings or perceptions, or “negative” feelings or perceptions (or at least not-so-good feelings or perceptions)? How many of the words are positively or negatively construed in each list? How many words were “neutral,” neither good or bad, or both good and bad at the same time? Put the sum of each at the bottom of your two lists You can also create a word-cloud of all of these words together, as well, and include this after your lists, using one of the many free apps available.
Step 3: Answer some or all of the following questions after you’ve collected your “data”:
What does this tell you about you and your friends’ views on the economy and democracy? How do you and they understand these two concepts? What are the lived experiences of these concepts? Do you and your friends relate the two concepts? Were there noticeable differences between people? Between you and them? Why or why not? What kind of differences? What do you think are the reasons for these similarities and differences?
What do you think all of this might mean for thinking about “economic democracy”? For instance, is economic democracy difficult to conceive of because there is such a wide divergence of meanings that people place on each separate concept?
How do your and your friends’ experiences of work and working affect how you and your friends might conceive of “economic democracy”?
