Page 55 - Mike Ratner CC - WISR Complete Dissertation - v6

included auditing aspects of the Metasphere affected dynamics such as location, ease of access,

lighting, room temperature, acoustics, availability of food, drink and the seating arrangements, etc.

The purpose of informally observing the physical setting in which the public engagement

occurred is to understand how the setting may or may not affect participant interactions. Civic

engagement and deliberative democracy can create an environment where people engage together,

in ways that transcends self-interest, to acceptance of new perspectives and transformation. My

interest is not how these groups function in general, but how participants and facilitators create

Metasphere for sharing diverse and divergent perspectives and opinions and their personal

experiences during these encounters. Deliberative democracy (DD) is an appraised ideal that has

been the subject to extensive research (Gutmann & Thompson, 2004; Habermas, 1989; James,

2004; Rostboll, 2008). Broadly defined, deliberative democracy aspires the decision-making

legitimacy by deliberation of equal citizens. Instead of exercising the deliberation for the people,

the DD theory encourages deliberation by the people (Fishkin 2009).

From the DD theory perspective – and without ignoring the other attributes or methods of

democracy (such as the rule of law or voting) – a political system’s democratic status can be

appraised by the status of its deliberative practices (Dryzek 2009). There is scant research,

however, about how individuals engage in ‘being aware’ of these perceptions and not much about

the dialogue experience of working through dominance and disagreements arising specifically in

the course of civic and deliberative processes. Topics that bridge differences such as talking about

race, implicit bias and the political divide do this. My research if capsulized focused on extending

the literature about the insights gained by participants and facilitators during difficult points of the

dialogue exchange and by examining quantum features or aspects of the Metasphere setting itself.

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