Voting TaKtiX

Talking about Demos is never going to be an easy topic. The idea of the European Demos is one which has been floating around for a good number of years, although by and large nobody seems to really understand it, myself included.

The idea of Demos is usually tied up with the German terms Gemeinschaft and Gessellschaft, which relate to differing ideas of community and community association. Gemeinschaft is the very tight, communitarian style of social understanding based around family and personal relationships, Gessellschaft the wider, shared understandings idea, somewhat like a company model where individuals are very different but pull together for the common good. Obviously the parallels here can be drawn between communitarianism and cosmopolitanism, although the terms are not perfect corrolaries. Neither Gemeinschaft or Gessellschaft really speak about political involvement, more simply a state of mind amongst certain people.
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