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"The Politics of Small Things is a lucid, challenging work by a distinguished theorist of modern American democracy."
Talal Asad, CUNY Graduate Center

"Jeffrey Goldfarb is absolutely right that politics cannot be understood simply as a matter of grand issues—and moreover that approaches to democracy that don't bring it to life in the details of everyday life are unlikely to build the better society proponents seek. They can also be dangerous."
Craig Calhoun, author of Neither Gods Nor Emperors

the politics of small things
the power of the powerless in dark times

by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Entering the 2004 Democratic Party presidential primary, Howard Dean's candidacy figured to be a brief one. For one, Dean had zero experience in national politics and emerged, at least politically-speaking, from a relatively inconsequential state. Worse, he was viewed as an outsider by major donors to the party, all but ensuring that his would be a minimally funded venture. Yet, powered by grassroots Internet initiatives like MoveOn.org and Meetup.com, Dean, in a remarkably short period of time, would not only generate an unprecedented amount of campaign donations, but emerge as the party's frontrunner. Given what we thought we knew about presidential politics, Dean's ascent as a viable candidate was not only improbable, but also revelatory and inspiring. How did this rapid accumulation of political momentum occur?

For Jeffrey Goldfarb, the secret to the Dean campaign was its recognition of power latent in the "politics of small things"—the human interactions that take place within our homes, workplaces, schools, churches, and elsewhere in our everyday lives. For the Dean campaign, MoveOn.org and Meetup.com became a postmodern way to mobilize and draw power from these basic human interactions or, in this case, virtual interactions. In The Politics of Small Things, Goldfarb details the success of not only the Dean campaign, but a handful of other pivotal political moments—the fall of the Soviet Union, dissent on the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and Bucharest in 1989, the network of terror that spawned 9/11—that led from small to large changes in the past century. Indeed, anyone who feels they are "powerless in the dark times" would be wise to read The Politics of Small Things.

Jeffrey C. Goldfarb is the Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of seven books, including On Cultural Freedom, The Cynical Society, and Beyond Glasnost, all published by the University of Chicago Press.