Private Women and the Public Realm

1994 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy C. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Century Model ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
State Domination

Following the translation of Jürgen Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere into English in 1989, we have come to see “the public” and “the private” as historically contingent categories bearing upon nests of social practices. The public and private are not just distinctions of geography—so that beyond our front doors we are necessarily and unavoidably in the public—for they bear on authority, authorized voice, citizenship, and credibility in democratic societies. Whereas the Hellenic Greek social order recognized freedom only in the public realm, and only embodied by household masters, the nineteenth-century model of separate spheres cast the public realm as the place where individuals defended the family (equated to the private) from state domination while debating the proper roles for the sexes. Unacknowledged in both models is that agents of the state and the private individuals who have access to the public realm are normalized as exclusively male and of the hegemonic class. The Greek and Victorian models—explicitly relegating women to the home (private) and men to the marketplace (public)—are equally open to critique for being as class-blind as they are hyperbolically universalizing of all cultures and sub-cultures, as if they obeyed a natural law instead of ideological preferences. If we write theatre history with either model in mind and assume that “the public” does not carry with it connotations of power, then we are distorting the evidence and misfiring on our interpretations.

scholarly journals Feminism and the Public Sphere in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

1998 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel K. Carnell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Century Model ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Different Levels

The bipartite narrative structure of Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) has been interpreted recently as an attempt to subvert the traditional Victorian rubric of separate spheres. Reconsidering this novel in terms of Jürgen Habermas's concept of the eighteenth-century public sphere broadens the historical context for the way we understand the separate spheres. Within Brontë's critique of Victorian gender roles, we may identify a reluctance to address the Chartist-influenced class challenges to an older version of the public good. In hearkening back to an eighteenth-century model of the public sphere, Brontë espouses not so much a twentieth-century-style challenge to the Victorian model of separate spheres as a nineteenth-century-style nostalgia for the classical liberal model of bourgeois public debate. At the same time, the awkward rupture in Brontë's narrative represents the inherent contradictions between the different levels of discourse-literary, political, and scientific-within the public sphere itself and the complex ways in which these contradictions are both accorded and denied cultural power.

I'm Not Watching I'm Waiting: the Construction of Visual Codes about Womens' Role as Spectators in the Trial in Nineteenth Century England

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Mulcahy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
Productive Labour ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Many

AbstractAccounts of the interface between law, gender and modernity have tended to stress the many ways in which women experienced the metropolis differently from men in the nineteenth century. Considerable attention has been paid to the notion of separate spheres and to the ways in which the public realm came to be closely associated with the masculine worlds of productive labour, politics, law and public service. Much art of the period draws our attention to the symbiotic relationship between representations of gender and prevailing notions of their place. Drawing on well known depictions of women onlookers in the trial in fine art, this essay by Linda Mulcahy explores the ways in which this genre contributed to the disciplining of women in the public sphere and encouraged them to go no further than the margins of the law court.

scholarly journals Women Judges, Private Lives: (In)visibilities in Fact and Fiction

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Thornton ◽  
Heather Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Women Judges ◽  
The Public ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The Public Sphere

Throughout the Western intellectual tradition, the separation of public and private life has been ubiquitous.[footnote* See, eg, Jeff Weintraub and Krishan Kumar (eds), Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy (University of Chicago Press, 1997); Margaret Thornton (ed), Public and Private: Feminist Legal Debates (Oxford University Press, 1995); Ruth Gavison, ‘Feminism and the Public/Private Distinction’ (1992) 45 Stanford Law Review 1; S I Benn and G F Gaus (eds), Public and Private in Social Life (Croom Helm, 1983); Frances E Olsen, ‘The Family and the Market: A Study of Ideology and Legal Reform’ (1983) 96 Harvard Law Review 1497.] Although the line of demarcation changes according to time and circumstance, the conjunction of the public sphere with the masculine and the private sphere with the feminine has remained a constant in political thought.

Book Reviews: Racism after ‘Race Relations’, Racialised Barriers: The Black Experience in the United States and England in the 1980s, Locating Gender: Occupational Segregation, Wages and Domestic Responsibilities, Mothers and Their Children — A Feminist Sociology of Childrearing, Timewatch. The Social Analysis of Time, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, the Russian Revolutions, Associative Democracy: New Forms of Economic and Social Governance, Debating the Future of the Public Sphere: Transforming the Public and Private Domains in Free Market Societies, the Flâneur, … And There was Television, Reporting Crime: The Media Politics of Criminal Justice, ‘Game without Frontiers: Football, Identity and Modernity’, Consumer Involvement: Concepts and Research, Postmodern Cities and Spaces, Technopoles of the World: The Making of 21st Century Industrial Complexes, Researching the People's Health, Qualitative Studies in Health and Medicine, Resistance and Power in Organisations

1995 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 856-907
Author(s):  
Pnina Werbner ◽  
Harshad C. Keval ◽  
Lydia Martens ◽  
Janet Thomas ◽  
John Urry ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Consumer Involvement ◽  
Reflexive Modernization ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
Industrial Complexes ◽  
The Public Sphere

Republicanism, Freedom from Domination, and the Cambridge Contextual Historians

2001 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 851-876 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Springborg
Keyword(s):  
Roman Law ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Philip Pettit ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Set Up

Philip Pettit, in Republicanism: a Theory of Freedom and Government (1997), draws on the historiography of classical republicanism developed by the Cambridge Contextual Historians, John Pocock and Quentin Skinner, to set up a programme for the recovery of the Roman Republican notion of freedom, as freedom from domination. But it is my purpose to show that classical republicanism, as a theory of institutional complexity and balanced government, could not, and did not, lay exclusive claim to freedom from domination as a defining value. Positive freedom was a concept ubiquitous in Roman Law and promulgated in Natural Law as a universal human right. And it was just the ubiquitousness of this right to freedom, honoured more often in the breach than the observance, which prompted the scorn of early modern proto-feminists like Mary Astell and her contemporary, Judith Drake. The division of society into public and private spheres, which liberalism entrenched, precisely allowed democrats in the public sphere full rein as tyrants in the domestic sphere of the family, as these women were perspicacious enough to observe. When republicanism is defined in exclusively normative terms the rich institutional contextualism drops away, leaving no room for the issues it was designed to address: the problematic relation between values and institutions that lies at the heart of individual freedoms.

The Noise Abatement Campaign in Industrializing Japan, 1923–37

Resonance ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-327
Author(s):  
Shuhei Hosokawa
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Noise Abatement ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Causal Responsibility ◽  
Kanto Earthquake ◽  
Definition Of

Drawing on Karin Bijsterveld’s triple definition of noise as ownership, political responsibility, and causal responsibility, this article traces how modern Japan problematized noise, and how noise represented both the aspirational discourse of Western civilization and the experiential nuisance accompanying rapid changes in living conditions in 1920s Japan. Primarily based on newspaper archives, the analysis will approach the problematic of noise as it was manifested in different ways in the public and private realms. In the public realm, the mid-1920s marked a turning point due to the reconstruction work after the Great Kantô Earthquake (1923) and the spread of the use of radios, phonographs, and loudspeakers. Within a few years, public opinion against noise had been formed by a coalition of journalists, police, the judiciary, engineers, academics, and municipal officials. This section will also address the legal regulation of noise and its failure; because public opinion was “owned” by middle-class (sub)urbanites, factory noises in downtown areas were hardly included in noise abatement discourse. Around 1930, the sounds of radios became a social problem, but the police and the courts hesitated to intervene in a “private” conflict, partly because they valued radio as a tool for encouraging nationalist mobilization and transmitting announcements from above. In sum, this article investigates the diverse contexts in which noise was perceived and interpreted as such, as noise became an integral part of modern life in early 20th-century Japan.

The public and the private: reconfiguring the interrelationship during a civil act

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Natalia Kostenko
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Physical Interaction ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

The subject matter of research interest here is the movement of sociological reflection concerning the interplay of public and private realms in social, political and individual life. The focus is on the boundary constructs embodying publicity, which are, first of all, classical models of the space of appearance for free citizens of the polis (H. Arendt) and the public sphere organised by communicative rationality (Ju. Habermas). Alternative patterns are present in modern ideas pertaining to the significance of biological component in public space in the context of biopolitics (M. Foucault), “inclusive exclusion of bare life” (G. Agamben), as well as performativity of corporeal and linguistic experience related to the right to participate in civil acts such as popular assembly (J. Butler), where the established distinctions between the public and the private are levelled, and the interrelationship of these two realms becomes reconfigured. Once the new media have come into play, both the structure and nature of the public sphere becomes modified. What assumes a decisive role is people’s physical interaction with online communication gadgets, which instantly connect information networks along various trajectories. However, the rapid development of information technology produces particular risks related to the control of communications industry, leaving both public and private realms unprotected and deforming them. This also urges us to rethink the issue of congruence of the two ideas such as transparency of societies and security.

Social Reform in America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke E. Harlow
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Salvation Army ◽  
Single Woman ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Revivals ◽  
Anglophone World ◽  
High Degree

Any discussion of nineteenth-century religious Dissent must look carefully at gender. Although distinct from one another in important respects, Nonconformist congregations were patterned on the household as the first unit of God-given society, a model which fostered questions about the relationship between male and female. Ideas of gender coalesced with theology and praxis to shape expectations central to the cultural ethos of Nonconformity. Existing historiographical interpretations of gender and religion that use the separate spheres model have argued that evangelical piety was identified with women who were carefully separated from the world, while men needed to be reclaimed for religion. Despite their virtues, these interpretations suppose that evangelicalism was a hegemonic movement about which it is possible to generalize. Yet the unique history and structures of Nonconformity ensured a high degree of particularity. Gender styles were subtly interpreted and negotiated in Dissenting culture over and against the perceived practices and norms of the mainstream, creating what one Methodist called a ‘whole sub-society’ differentiated from worldly patterns in the culture at large. Dissenting men, for instance, deliberately sought to effect coherence between public and private arenas and took inspiration from the published lives of ‘businessmen “saints”’. Feminine piety in Dissent likewise rested on integration, not separation, with women credited with forming godly communities. The insistence on inherent spiritual equality was important to Dissenters and was imaged most clearly in marriage, which transcended the public/private divide and supplied a model for domestic and foreign mission. Missionary work also allowed for the valorization and mobilization of distinctive feminine and masculine types, such as the single woman missionary who bore ‘spiritual offspring’ and the manly adventurer. Over the century, religious revivals in Dissent might shift these patterns somewhat: female roles were notably renegotiated in the Salvation Army, while Holiness revivals stimulated demands for female preaching and women’s religious writing, making bestsellers of writers such as Hannah Whitall Smith. Thus Dissent was characterized throughout the Anglophone world by an emphasis on spiritual equality combined with a sharpened perception of sexual difference, albeit one which was subject to dynamic reformulation throughout the century.

23. Heroism and Heartache: Representations of Horatio Nelson in 19th Century Popular British Music

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Zimmerman
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
British Society ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
British Music ◽  
The Public Sphere

This research project seeks to establish a print culture context for popular British music during the time of the Napoleonic Wars. More specifically, this project investigates representations of Horatio Nelson, the Battle of the Nile (1798), and the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) to understand representations of heroism and the nature of public and private spheres during the time of the Napoleonic Wars. By studying these representations in popular song, this research better understands the jingoistic tropes of British early 19th century Britain as well as attitudes towards heroism and the Napoleonic Wars. Songs used in this project are: “Nelson’s Tomb,” “The Battle of the Nile,” “The Death of Nelson,” “The Disbanded Soldier” “The Mouth of the Nile,” and “The Orphan Boy’s Tale.” The conflicting perspectives found in these songs provide a greater understanding of British culture during the Napoleonic Wars. Songs which exclusively represent Nelson as the quintessential heroic sailor in the public sphere and Britain’s military acts as divinely sanctioned, choose to ignore Nelson’s relationship in the private sphere, and contrast songs which reject unqualified celebration in the wake of war, and focus on mourning as a result of the war. This disparity reflects the complexity and internal tension of 19th century British society, specifically oppositional attitudes of jingoism and mourning, as well as the celebration of renowned heroes versus the disregard of unknown soldiers and the dead. By considering such historical perspectives on war, we might better understand the voices that speak of war in our own time.

RELIGIÃO, POLÍTICA E EDUCAÇÃO: OU DAS INTERROGAÇÕES SUSCITADAS EM UMA SOCIEDADE "Religion, politics and education: or the questions raised in a society"

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Verioni Ribeiro Bastos
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Educational Needs ◽  
Acute Angle ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Education Politics ◽  
Politics And Education ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

Diante da estrutura do sistema de ensino brasileiro no qual encontramos a disciplina, Ensino Religioso, constitucionalmente obrigatória no ensino fundamental das escolas públicas até as Ciências das Religiões nas Universidades Federais brasileiras, busco realizar um diálogo com outras trabalhos usando estes como interrogações para questionar o comum tido como natural, ou seja, a presença do religioso na esfera pública. Somado a isto o debate com autores que discutem a realidade francesa e a narração de dois casos extraídos da  observação participante completam a intenção de apresentar um ângulo mais agudo de refletir sobre a realidade brasileira no que concerne a religião, política e educação, como também, como o público e o privado caminham juntos na mentalidade da população do país. A secularização à brasileira anda a passos lentos e o quadro político-social e educacional do Brasil precisa de menos análises do que está posto e questionar por que o que está posto parece normal e se perpetua por gerações e gerações.Palavras-chave: Laicidade: ensino religioso. Política. Brasil. França.AbstractTaking the ideias of some authors we will try to understand the interconnections between religions and public sphere in Brazil and France. In Brazil we get two exemples of the relationship between public sphere and the religion: the presence of Religious Education and the Science Religions in the brazilian federal universities. In other hand we try to understand how in France we can see the relation between the religions and the public sphere thourgh the eyes of some authors who speak about it using two exemples we will show in this text. Completing the intention to present a more acute angle to reflect on the Brazilian reality with regard to religion, politics and education, as well as public and private walk together in the mindset of the country's population. Secularization Brazilian's slow steps and the socio-political framework and Brazil's educational needs less analysis than is post and question why what's post looks normal and perpetuates for generations and generations.Keywords: Secularism: religious education. Politics. Brazil. France.

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