Class and Caste Consciousness

2018 ◽  
pp. 254-277
Author(s):  
Amit Sarwal
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
South Asian ◽  
The Public ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
Migrant Community ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
Temporal Boundary ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Short Narrative ◽  
Opening Up

This chapter moves across the temporal boundary to the more recent migrants—the so-called ‘new’ diaspora—who have entered Australia and New Zealand after the opening up of the skilled labour market and relaxation of immigration rules. It considers the first wave of these migrants—highly educated middle-class professionals—as they reinvent their diasporic identity in a cultural milieu that not only accepts, but even celebrates difference. This chapter uses examples from selected short narrative pieces by South-Asian-Australian writers and academics to illustrate the diversity and clash of caste and class experiences within the South Asian migrant community in Australia. It contends that in the diasporic situation the complex, often conflicted, dynamic of ethnicity, caste, and class consciousness is manifested psychologically and symbolically in actual practices in the public sphere.

Democratic Representation and Legislative Theatre

Theoria ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (164) ◽  
pp. 26-47
Author(s):  
Gustavo H. Dalaqua
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Augusto Boal ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
The Public ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Opening Up

This article seeks to contribute to the debate on how political representation can promote democracy by analysing the Chamber in the Square, which is a component of legislative theatre. A set of techniques devised to democratise representative governments, legislative theatre was created by Augusto Boal when he was elected a political representative in 1993. After briefly reviewing Nadia Urbinati’s understanding of democratic representation as a diarchy of will and judgement, I partially endorse Hélène Landemore’s criticism and contend that if representation is to be democratic, citizens’ exchange of opinions in the public sphere should be invested with the power not only to judge but also to decide political affairs. By opening up a space where the represented can judge, decide, and contest the general terms of the bills representatives present in the assembly, the Chamber in the Square harnesses political representation to democracy.

An Indonesian Islam?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carool Kersten
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Military Coup ◽  
New Order ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Military ◽  
Opening Up

The history of postcolonial Indonesia can therefore be divided into three periods, dominated by different regimes with its own characteristics, during which Islamisation process has continued to evolve. The Sukarno presidency (1945-1965) marks the first period, during which Mayumi established itself as the main Islamic political party. It began with decade of continuing nation building when the young republic was first engaged in armed conflict with the Dutch; experimented with liberal democracy; but then shifted toward ‘Guided Democracy’ and the disbanding of Masyumi. During the same twenty-year period, the unity of Indonesia was also challenged by the Islamist Darul Islam movement. A military coup in 1965 heralded the beginning of the military New Order Regime of General Suharto (1965-1998). Political Islam was kept control and occasionally manipulating it for its own purposes. From the 1970s onward, New Order did make some allowances for Muslim participation in governance, initiating further use of Islam for political purposes between 1983—1993. After the dramatic regime change in 1998, the democratisation process that started in 1999 saw an unprecedented opening-up of the public sphere. This change in Indonesia’s political climate offered new opportunities for socio-political activism across the Islamic spectrum, but also presented a new set of challenges for the world’s largest Muslim nation state. Islamic mass organisations, newly formed political parties, NGOs, think tanks and other platforms began presenting a range of competing Islamic discourses.

The Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Herborth ◽  
Oliver Kessler
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
Empirical Inquiry ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Opening Up

The term “public” is predominantly used in International Relations (IR), often appearing as an attribute in collocations such as “public goods” or “public opinion.” The study of public spheres can be meaningfully situated within the scope of the emerging field of International Political Sociology (IPS). At the heart of the study of public spheres as an integral part of IPS is the challenge of theorizing the relations between public spheres and an emerging postnational political order. One perennial concern of IPS that can be addressed through the study of public spheres is the relation between empirical and normative inquiry. In addition, the study of public spheres constitutes an interdisciplinary arena that contributes to the process of opening up IR to the theoretical and methodological toolkit of adjacent intellectual fields. In this context, the study of social movements comes to mind, especially when it directly tackles processes of “contentious politics.” An analysis of the way in which the term “public” is used in IR can offer important insights into the social-theoretical presuppositions and implicit concepts of social and international order that go along with it. The study of public spheres is not confined to the study of a set of firmly delineated empirical phenomena, which may or may not be observed. It can also be used to elucidate the oft-neglected problem of how political authority is constituted in terms of both theoretical and empirical inquiry.

The Paradox of Professional Marginality among Arab-Bedouin Women

Sociology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 1084-1100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Professional Women ◽  
Educational Capital ◽  
Professional Capital ◽  
The Public ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural Roles ◽  
High Educational

This study examines the mechanisms that create a paradox of marginality among middle-class Arab-Bedouin professional women in Israel by applying an intersectional analysis of their everyday professional life. It shows that the paradox of their marginality – despite their possessing high educational capital in their society, comparable to that of highly educated professional Jewish (men and women) and Arab-Bedouin male colleagues – is reproduced through the differential validation of embodied cultural capital based on women’s cultural roles solely as a symbol of their professional inferiority. The study indicates that when their professional capital intersects with other power axes within the public sphere – for example, ethnicity/racism, gender, religious norms and tribalism – it is not accorded recognition or legitimacy by male Arab-Bedouin professionals or by Jewish professionals, colleagues and clients, thus giving rise to representational intersectionality.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

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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