Breastfeeding in Public: Disgust and Discomfort in the Bodiless Public Sphere

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (04) ◽  
pp. 677-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Barnes Cook
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Places ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Breastfeeding In Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Right Of Access ◽  
The Ideal

While breastfeeding mothers generally possess an official legal right of access to public places, the lived experience of breastfeeding mothers in public is marked by inequality and lack of autonomy. The motivating question of this article is, from the perspective of a breastfeeding mother, what characterizes an ideal—that is, equal and autonomous—public sphere in a liberal society? I explore in particular the issue of people, including breastfeeding mothers, who evoke discomfort or disgust. I argue that public and private spheres must be accessible in certain ways: first, every person must be able to occupy public space while embracing all significant aspects of their personhood; second, the comfort of others cannot weigh more than an individual's own needs in public; finally, all people must be able to opt for privacy in a way that does not entail invisibility or coerced exclusion. In making this argument, I describe three main ways in which breastfeeding mothers respond to the antipathy of the public sphere: exclusion, accommodation, and affirmation. I end with an exploration of the ideal of public and private spheres defined by equality and autonomy and offer concrete steps that can improve the position of breastfeeding mothers in public.

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.

scholarly journals Questioning the Ideal of the Public Sphere: The Emotional Turn

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630511985217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Wahl-Jorgensen
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Letters To The Editor ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media System ◽  
Essential Resource ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Ideal

This article discusses the usefulness and limitations of Habermas concept of the public sphere, on the basis of the trajectory of the author’s work. It starts from the observation that the concept has generated a rich scholarly debate on tensions between the normative ideals and the nitty-gritty lived experience of mediated publics. While fundamental norms of interaction associated with the ideal of the public sphere remain essential to the creation of meaningful debate, it also relies on a series of unhelpful binary distinctions that may be neither normatively desirable nor attainable. Key assumptions of the public sphere model include the idea that public debate should be rational, impartial, dispassionate, and objective. This, in turn, implies the undesirability of emotionality, partiality, passion, and subjectivity. In recent years, particularly in response to the rise of digital and social media, scholars have begun to question the rigid delineation of such norms. The article draws on the author’s work to illuminate how an “emotional turn” in media studies has opened up for a more nuanced appraisal of the role of subjectivity and personal stories in the articulation of the common good, challenging Habermasian understandings of rational-critical debate. This “emotional turn” constitutes an essential resource for theorizing public debate as it unfolds within a hybrid media system, for better and for worse. The article shows how the “emotional turn” has shaped the author’s work on mediated public debate, ranging from letters to the editor and user-generated content to Twitter hashtags and the “emotional architecture” of Facebook.

Aneinander-Vorbeigehen – Eine Interaktionsanalyse flüchtiger urbaner Begegnungen

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-336
Author(s):  
Antonia Steger
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Interaction Analysis ◽  
Multimodal Interaction ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
Public Places ◽  
The Public ◽  
Jane Jacobs ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Interactional Processes

Abstract Public space can be understood as a place where strangers encounter each other in certain ways. This has been the common conceptual understanding of the public sphere in sociology and urban studies since Georg Simmel (cf. works by Jane Jacobs, William H. Whyte, Hans Paul Bahrdt, Jan Gehl, Richard Sennett, and many more). However, this understanding of public space often centers around unclear notions of how these encounters are interactively structured. So far, research on this topic has mainly addressed what Goffman termed focused interactions, such as talks between strangers in public. His notion of unfocused interactions, for fleeting encounters, has yet to receive adequate academic attention. Thus, the aim of this article is to engage in an in-depth empirical study of fleeting encounters in public places by drawing on three examples of people passing each other along city streets. Based on video recordings, the multimodal interaction analysis shows that when people pass each other they engage in interactional processes expressed through bodily dimensions, which carry specific social implications. Gaze, along with other visually accessible bodily behaviors, is the most important interactive resource people use to make themselves accountable for passing strangers without making contact. The analysis suggests that through passing each other, strangers generate specific kinds of interactive relations that are typical within the public sphere. Fleeting encounters thus prove to be highly structured, interactively achieved processes through which strangers establish their situated relations in a way that allows them to remain as separate interactional units.

13 Communicative Power and the Public Sphere

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Regina Kreide
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
Public Places ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Communicative Power ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractA deliberative model of politics has recently been criticized for not being very well equipped to conceptualize public spheres in world society.A first critique is that this model assumes a conception of public spheres that is too idealistic, because it presupposes counterfactual conditions of communication in public discourse that do not meet empirical real word conditions. Secondly, it assumes an antiquated notion of a shared “we” of political actors. Because of this it does not take into consideration the “digital turn” and the ego-centering and depersonalizing effects of social media like Facebook, twitter, and blogs, which have led to a rapid decline of the public sphere. And a third critique states that the deliberative model ignores the fact that politics, and especially protests and revolutions, are not seminar-like debates but spontaneous, chaotic and sometimes violent expressions. So it is not just unreceptive for the “digital space” but also for gathering and protesting in real public places surrounded by military troops.I will argue that all of these critiques fall short. A deliberative model of politics allows us to address the tension between the ideal and the real, the “old media” and the so-called digitalization of public spheres as well as peaceful discourse and violent uprisings. Especially the concept of communicative power, a notion also used by Hannah Arendt, reveals the potential for future participation in digital spaces and public places.

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.

‘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.

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.

scholarly journals UNDERSTANDING LAW AND RELIGION AS CULTURE: MAKING ROOM FOR MEANING IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2006
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between law and religion in contemporary civil society has been a topic of increasing social interest and importance in Canada in the past many years. We have seen the practices and commitments of religious groups and individuals become highly salient on many issues of public policy, including the nature of the institution of marriage, the content of public education, and the uses of public space, to name just a few. As the vehicle for this discussion, I want to ask a straightforward question: When we listen to our public discourse, what is the story that we hear about the relationship between law and religion? How does this topic tend to be spoken about in law and politics – what is our idiom around this issue – and does this story serve us well? Though straightforward, this question has gone all but unanswered in our political and academic discussions. We take for granted our approach to speaking about – and, therefore, our way of thinking about – the relationship between law and religion. In my view, this is most unfortunate because this taken-for-grantedness is the source of our failure to properly understand the critically important relationship between law and religion.

scholarly journals TINDAKAN KOMUNIKATIF PADA SISTEM BAHTSUL MATSAIL DI PONDOK PESANTREN AL AMIN; Musyawarah Kitab Kuning di Pondok Pesantren Putri Al Amin Ngasinan, Rejomulyo, Kota Kediri

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 277
Author(s):  
Azkiyatul Afia
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Boarding School ◽  
The Public ◽  
Shari'a Law ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Communicative Actions

The culture of interactive dialogue in seeking an agreement in determining shari’a law that still requires detailed mediation in the public space referred to in Bahstul matsail. Scientific forums that are more familiar with this matter, are accommodated by the Al Amien Kediri Islamic Boarding School, where there are ulama’, religious teachers, and forum participants as a complement in determining a law that is still multi-interpretation. The agreement will be the basis of one law that is still biased, so that it indicates an agreement called Ijma’. The existence of mutualism symbiosis between the elements of Bahstul matsail is interesting in Habermas’s study of public space in delivering ideas and opinions. Habermas in the public sphere sees that there is a dominance of communicative actions, one of them is social statification from Bahstul matsail participants in Habermas “bourgeois public space” where the domination of scholarship in more to the ulama because it is considered more understandable about Shari’a law.Budaya dialog interaktif dalam mencari sebuah kesepakatan dalam menetukan hukum syariat yang masih membutuhkan penjelasan secara rinci termediasi dalam ruang public yang di sebut dengan Bahtsul matsail. Forum ilmiah yang lebih akrab untuk hal ini, diwadahi oleh pondok pesantren Al-amin Kediri, dimana terdapat ulama’, ustadz dan peserta forum sebagai pelengkap dalam menentukan sebuah hukum yang masih multi tafsir. Kesepakatan akan menjadi dasar dari satu hukum yang masih bias, sehingga berindikasi kepada satu kesepakatan yang di sebut ijma’. Adanya symbiosis mutualisme antara elemen Bahtsul matsail menjadi menarik dalam kajian ruang public Habermas dalam penyampaian gagasan, ide dan pendapat. Habermas dalam ruang public melihat ada dominasi tindakan komunikatif salah satunya, statifikasi social dari peserta Bahsul matsail dalam Bahasa Habermas “Ruang public borjuis” dimana dominasi keilmuan lebih pada ulama lantaran dianggap lebih faham tentang hukum syariat. 

Urbanitŕ e resisitenza

2009 ◽  
pp. 126-139
Author(s):  
Marco Cremaschi
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Urban Change ◽  
The Public ◽  
Living Together ◽  
Housing Planning ◽  
The Public Sphere

- The research on public space is characterized by four different concepts: first, the equivalence between public space and public sphere, directly impinging upon politics; second, the history and construction of social identities, where memory plays a central role; third, the encounter with strangers that should educate to tolerance; fourth, the practice of living together, at the foundation both of urbanity and civil respect. The first three concepts state that public space is eroded, due to the privatization of the public sphere. The last one criticizes this belief, and suggests instead investigating the field of practices that combine resistance to urban change, and the experimentation of new forms of urbanity.Key words: public space, urbanity, planning, social practices, cities, inclusion.Parole chiave: housing, planning, abitare, pratiche sociali, istituzionalizzazione, cornici cognitive.

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