Struggles for democratic change around the world have become highly visible – and highly mediated – events that have moved the site of contestation from the negotiation table to public spaces. As a consequence, these struggles are no longer primarily controlled by political elites but rather by a broad range of participants who have employed new types of communication beyond the spoken word for conveying their demands, including images, sounds, performances and art. This special issue aims to ask ‘questions around beauty, taste, and the formal (most often visual) qualities of texts, media and material objects’ (Aiello and Parry, 2015: 1) in the context of democratization conflicts. We understand democratization conflicts as phases of societal upheaval revolving around demands for – and resistance to – the democratic transformation of a country. Democratization conflicts make visible the friction between the ‘fundamental cultural shift that promotes new values, norms and aspirations’ (Voltmer, 2019: 7) brought about by democratic transitions and the persistence of the world views, or established social and political practices, associated with the previous regime. These conflicts often lead to episodes of violent confrontation between opposing factions or between grassroots movements and security forces, which in turn may escalate into riots, sectarian clashes or even civil war, or may de-escalate and be re-articulated in a non-violent political setting. The role played by imagery and artifacts (in the broadest connotation of these terms) in political processes has been the object of substantial scholarly attention for at least the

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特刊：民主化冲突的政治美学

世界各地争取民主变革的斗争已成为高度可见且高度中介化的事件，这些事件已将争论的场所从谈判桌转移到公共场所。因此，这些斗争不再主要由政治精英控制，而是由广泛的参与者控制，他们采用超越口头语言的新型交流方式来传达他们的需求，包括图像、声音、表演和艺术。本期特刊旨在在民主化冲突的背景下提出“关于美感、品味以及文本、媒体和实物的形式（通常是视觉）品质的问题”（Aiello 和 Parry，2015 年：1）。我们将民主化冲突理解为围绕要求和抵制国家民主转型的社会动荡阶段。民主化冲突使民主转型带来的“促进新价值观、规范和愿望的基本文化转变”（Voltmer，2019：7）与世界观的持续存在或既定的社会和政治实践之间的摩擦变得明显以前的政权。这些冲突往往导致对立派系之间或草根运动与安全部队之间的暴力对抗，进而可能升级为骚乱、教派冲突甚至内战，或者可能会降级并以非暴力方式重新表达。政治环境。图像和人工制品（在这些术语的最广泛含义中）在政治进程中所扮演的角色，至少在