Performing Artivism: Feminists, Lawyers, and Online Legal Mobilization in China

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 678-705
Author(s):  
Di Wang ◽  
Sida Liu
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Mobilization ◽  
The Public ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Performance Arts ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

In authoritarian contexts where the state is the primary performer in the public sphere and legal mobilization is constrained and repressed, activists often seek to carve out a public space to confront the frontstage and backstage of the state’s performance in order to pursue collective action. Comparing the online legal mobilization of feminist and lawyer activists in China, this article investigates how performance arts are used by activists to challenge the authoritarian state in the age of social media. Performing “artivism” is to create conspicuous spectacles in the public eye for the purposes of exposing the state’s illegal or repressive backstage actions or promoting alternative values and norms different from the official ideology. By subversively disrupting the evidential boundaries set by the state, Chinese activists have been able to gain momentum and public support for their legal mobilization. However, it was precisely the success of their artivism that contributed to the government crackdowns on both feminists and lawyers in 2015.

‘Party in the street’: The partisan politics of space

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
State Power ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Public space is often understood as an important ‘node’ of the public sphere. Typically, theorists of public space argue that it is through the trust, civility and openness to others which citizens cultivate within a democracy’s public spaces, that they learn how to relate to one another as fellow members of a shared polity. However, such theorizing fails to articulate how these democratic comportments learned within public spaces relate to the public sphere’s purported role in holding state power to account. In this paper, we examine the ways in which what we call ‘partisan interventions’ into public space can correct for this gap. Using the example of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), we argue that the ways in which CPIM partisans actively cultivate sites of historical regional importance – such as in the village of Kayyur – should be understood as an aspect of the party’s more general concern to present itself to citizens as an agent both capable and worthy of wielding state power. Drawing on histories of supreme partisan contribution and sacrifice, the party influences the ideational background – in competition with other parties – against which it stakes its claims to democratic legitimacy. In contrast to those theorizations of public space that celebrate its separateness from the institutions of formal democratic politics and the state more broadly, the CPIM’s partisan interventions demonstrate how parties’ locations at the intersections of the state and civil society can connect the public sphere to its task of holding state power to account, thereby bringing the explicitly political questions of democratic legitimacy into the everyday spaces of a political community.

The Necropolitics of Documents and the Slow Death of Prisoners in Turkey

2019 ◽  
pp. 97-117
Author(s):  
Başak Can
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Health Condition ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Penal Institutions ◽  
Multiple State ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

The government used medico-legal documentation of prisoners’ health condition to solve the biopolitical crisis in penal institutions immediately after the end of death fast (2000-2007) and released hundreds of hunger strikers, who suffered from incurable conditions. That the state turned a political crisis into a medical one using the illness clause had unprecedented consequences for how claims are made in the political sphere. Human rights activists, Kurdish and leftist politicians are now using the plight of ill prisoners to make political arguments in the public sphere. The health conditions of political prisoners, specifically the use of the illness clause has thus emerged as one of the most contentious fields in the encounters between the state and its opponents. This chapter examines how temporality works as an instrument of necropolitics through the slow production and circulation of the medico-legal bureaucratic documents that are produced through encounters with multiple state officials. I argue, first, that medico-legal processes surrounding the detainees are mediated through the discretionary sovereign acts of multiple state officials, including but not limited to physicians, and second, that legal medicine as a technology of state violence is central to understanding the intertwined histories of sovereignty and biopolitics in Turkey.

The Contentious Public Sphere

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ya-Wen Lei
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
The State ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Critique ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Legal Subjects

Since the mid-2000s, public opinion and debate in China have become increasingly common and consequential, despite the ongoing censorship of speech and regulation of civil society. How did this happen? This book shows how the Chinese state drew on law, the media, and the Internet to further an authoritarian project of modernization, but in so doing, inadvertently created a nationwide public sphere in China—one the state must now endeavor to control. The book examines the influence this unruly sphere has had on Chinese politics and the ways that the state has responded. It shows that the development of the public sphere in China has provided an unprecedented forum for citizens to influence the public agenda, demand accountability from the government, and organize around the concepts of law and rights. It demonstrates how citizens came to understand themselves as legal subjects, how legal and media professionals began to collaborate in unexpected ways, and how existing conditions of political and economic fragmentation created unintended opportunities for political critique, particularly with the rise of the Internet. The emergence of this public sphere—and its uncertain future—is a pressing issue with important implications for the political prospects of the Chinese people. The book offers new possibilities for thinking about the transformation of state–society relations.

Telecentres

2009 ◽  
pp. 281-298
Author(s):  
Vineeta Dixit
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Information Provision ◽  
The State ◽  
Information Communication ◽  
The Public ◽  
Grassroots Initiatives ◽  
The Public Sphere

Information communications technologies (ICTs) are one of the major areas of research and investment in developing countries because they seem to serve the cause of democratisation and empowering citizens by extending the public sphere. ICTs and especially Internet are regarded as the new public sphere for they seem to lie outside the market and the State, nurtured by civil society serving the cause of good governance and democratisation and empowering grassroots initiatives, giving them access to critical information, organising political actions, influencing public opinion and policy-making. This chapter examines the ‘publicness’ of the telecentres in the framework of public sphere as defined by Habermas. The chapter uses telecentres as representative of ‘technology mediated public space’ created by ICTs and Internet and examines two approaches to the Telecentre movement, analysing whether Telecentres can meet the requirements of the rational-critical discussions and if and what factors influence the extension of the public sphere. The chapter concludes that while the telecentres create opportunities to improve communication and reconnect citizens to the State, offering greater access to information and support for group based discussion, they are likely to support only incremental modifications to the democratic system because the current use of information communication technologies (ICTs) concentrates primarily on information provision, and not linkages that improve the quality of democratic discourse.

scholarly journals Private/Public Space of New Media

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alla Drozdova ◽  
◽  
Natalia Stepanova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Third Party ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Multiple Network ◽  
The Individual

Today, we have a situation that the new media environment has reshaped our conception of reality while changing social spaces, modes of existence, and the functional mechanisms of the private sphere. In the space of new media, the boundary between privacy and publicity is redefined with the emergence of multiple network communities having become a subject of observation and evaluation, collective discussions, and even third party interventions. In the current situation, the privacy/publicity boundary can be defined both through the societal/the individual, and through such concepts as visible/invisible. The new media era sees the personification of online publicness, therefore the very sphere of private life gets consumed by the public sphere open both for being discussed and for being controlled by the government, market, and advertisement. The public sphere has fallen under the power of certain private/vested interests, which only transiently become common, coinciding with the interests of other groups, but not the public sphere. The ambivalent nature of new media, while based on personalisation and filtration, obviously determines the ambiguous and controversial relationship of the public and the private. Thus, the private not only reflects, but also represents the public, whereas the public implements privacy up to its inherent special intimate atmosphere and intonation. This fast-changing virtual reality requires the development of conceptual tools for analysing new content and forms of social and personal life, one of which is the relationship between publicity and privacy.

scholarly journals Disobedience of Judges as a Problem of Legal Philosophy and Comparative Constitutionalism: A Polish Case

Res Publica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mateusz Pilich
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Difficult Problem ◽  
The State ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

AbstractThe article takes up the difficult problem of the so-called disobedience of judges against the background of the experiences of the Polish departure from constitutional democracy in 2015–2020. The special role and responsibility of a judge in the state imposes restrictions on her freedom of opinion in the public sphere. Openly manifesting opposition to government policy, which in the case of an ordinary citizen is only the implementation of human rights and freedoms, may be described as controversial and contrary to applicable ethical regulations. The main thesis of this paper is the assertion that although judges who act as impartial arbitrators in disputes should generally refrain from ostentatiously opposing the actions of political authorities, they are not deprived of the possibility of protest. Also in the exercise of office, and not outside the sphere of their duties, judges should take into account overriding moral values that should be implemented by the legal order, and not the values or declarations guiding the government policies. The integrity of the judge, which prescribes restraint in statements and actions in the public sphere, as well as the care for the dignity of the office held, should not be confused with absolute subordination to the legislature or the executive, even if the judge is obliged to apply the law. The traditional attitude of the members of the judiciary, consisting in focusing only on the application of the law in individual cases and the lack of any political involvement, is being reviewed in the face of the spread of majoritarianism and the law abuse as normal techniques of exercising public authority. The disobedience of judges—although difficult to defend at first sight—may seem to be the only possible way to draw public attention to the corruption of the state system. The ‘disobediant’ judges can even be assigned the role of ‘whistleblowers’, which should help to ease their legal liability or their future rehabilitation.

Algerian Youth on the Move. Capoeira, Street Dance and Parkour: Between Integration and Contestation

Algeria ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Britta Hecking
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Public ◽  
Contested Space ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Video Clips ◽  
Youth Cultures ◽  
Cultural Isolation ◽  
The Public Sphere

After a long decade of political and cultural isolation due to the bloody civil war in the 1990s, processes of economic reform and ‘opening to the world’ intensified since 2000 in urban Algeria. While public space is still controlled by what is an authoritarian state, it is also a highly contested space. This chapter analyzes how young Algerians reclaim their access to the public sphere and forge new identities through the practice of global youth cultures like parkour, capoeira and street-dance. Common to each of these practices is ‘the body in motion’, the appropriation of urban spaces that has a counter hegemonic character. Young people use these activities to negotiate material constraints and in-between identities in everyday life. This is especially clear in the aesthetics and philosophy of parkour: one plays with obstacles or passes them using only the force of the body. Social media play an important role in these urban cultures for initiation, inspiration and representation: video-clips circulate via Facebook or Youtube and create new communities connecting local ‘crews’ with national federations and transnational networks. By appropriating local streets through the appropriation of global cultures, the young not only empower themselves but also contribute to stage a new image of the young Algerian nation.

scholarly journals The Public Sphere's Metamorphosis – The Triangular Relation Between the NGO, the State, and Globalization

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 124-128
Author(s):  
Azelarabe Bennani
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

The issue we will discuss is related to the use of the Internet by the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to improve the social development in the African and international context. We will also discuss the philo-sophical background of the notion of ?public sphere‘ by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Departing from the situation in Morocco, we observe that the lasting democratization process aims to improve the participation of the public sphere in the agency of social life. Taking for granted that society is not homo-geneous as expected, we observe that it is divided into the political establishment, including the state, par-liament, and the political institutions; in the social, religious and cultural institutions and the civil society. The state aims to enhance the participation of the other social spheres in the programme set by the government. The task is to engage the public sphere in the so called ?partnership‘ in the realization of its social pro-grammes.

scholarly journals FORMASI PUBLIC SPHERE DALAM MASYARAKAT TRANSISIONAL (Studi Kasus Penyusunan Peraturan Daerah Nomor 3 Tahun 2007 Tentang Limbah Padat di Kabupaten Luwu Timur, Provinsi Sulawesi Selatan)

CosmoGov ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 232
Author(s):  
Jannus Timbo Halomoan Siahaan
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Solid Waste ◽  
Public Space ◽  
European Society ◽  
Solid Waste Management ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Transitional Society ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

The public sphere popularized by Jurgen Habermas is the result of a review of the reality of 18th century European society. In his work, Habermas mentions that capitalism at that time succeeded in liberating European society from its dependence on the influence of feudalism imposed by the church and monarchy, whose form was a community discussion room aimed at critiquing traditional power (Church and Kingdom). In other words, the power of capitalism has succeeded in creating a space of social debate that was once influenced by feudal power until it switched to a social area free from the domination of feudal power where in that public sphere society has a right in giving criticisms of social problems. If in Europe the development of the public sphere is influenced by the development of capitalism, then what about the implementation of the public sphere in transitional society in Indonesia or especially in the East Luwu community? This paper seeks to explore how the implementation of public space as a concept in transitional society, especially in the East Luwu region in particular related to the process of making a Regional Regulation no. 03 of 2007 on Hazardous Solid Waste. The results of field research indicate that people are still having difficulty in accessing information related to policies related to public life in real terms. At the same time, the government itself also difficulties in distributing information that is actually needed by the community. The government, the DPRD or the people of East Luwu have indeed agreed to provide a discussion space to the public regarding the making of the solid waste management regulation. However, the implementation did not find the appropriate way from the formulation process until the socialization of a local regulation.

Habermas, Cultural Hegemony, and the Educational Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Arabic Speaking

This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.

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