Democracy and public communication: A Durkheimian lens on Habermas

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-33
Author(s):  
Atle Møen
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Communicative Rationality ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Rational Discourse ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Way

The article proposes a comparison of Durkheim’s and Habermas’s views about public communication and democratic deliberation. They seem to share an understanding that democratic deliberation requires support from the public sphere. Nonetheless, Durkheim believed that rational public communication must gain strength from ceremonies, whereas Habermas essentially focused on communicative rationality and rational discourse within the public sphere. The article thus asks whether Habermas’s theory of rational discourse implies a rationalist fallacy, largely because he offers no plausible explanation of the way in which social actors are emotionally motivated to participate in rational discourses, rather than resorting to violence and manipulation. Could Durkheim’s view about public communication, and its need to gather strength from collective ceremonies and collective sentiments, resolve this theoretical conundrum in that Durkheim’s view is complementary to Habermas’s?

Playing (Safely) with Fire

2021 ◽  
pp. 218-234
Author(s):  
Mary Angela Bock
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Human Capability ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

This chapter reviews the project’s argument, that social actors struggle over the construction of visual messages in embodied and discursive ways. Digitization has vastly expanded the encoding capabilities of everyday citizens, allowing them to render their expression of democratic voice visible, even as the ethical rules for visual expression are inchoate. The project’s case studies demonstrate the way grounded practices produce representations that support the authority of the criminal justice system, and together they invite three theoretical discussions: (1) on the way visual journalism’s physicality increases its reliance on those in power, (2) on the importance of image indexicality as a discursive affordance in the public sphere, and (3) on the digital public sphere as visual, and participation in this visual public sphere must be considered as an essential human capability. As a whole, the project offers insight into the construction of the criminal justice system’s literal and metaphorical image.

scholarly journals Początki kształtowania się reprezentacji społecznej zapożyczeń w sferze publicznej

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 29-41
Author(s):  
Piotr Zbróg
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Initial Phase ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Methodological Basis ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Way

The beginnings of the shaping of social representations of borrowings in the public sphereThe article presents an initial phase of the process of shaping of social representations of borrowings. The aim was to obtain a view of the way in which participants of the public sphere talked about these elements of language, how they perceived them as well as what common sense image was created on this basis in the communication sphere and how it was modified. The first judgements and opinions on the matter of foreign words appeared around the 16th century and evolved from that moment. The theory of social representations developed by Serge Moscovici was applied as a theoretical and methodological basis of the description. Its research tools allow us to see the way in which societies construct meanings of matters important to them. On the basis of the analysis of the material it was established that from the beginning there were rather antagonistic elements of social representations of borrowings. The functionality of borrowings was noticed. Yet it was postulated that they should be eliminated from texts on account of the necessity to develop the native language, the incomprehensibility of statements as well as the excessive trend of foreignness.

scholarly journals Naturvidenskabernes kanonisering. Forskere, erkendelser eller kulturarv

1970 ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Skills ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Science Museums ◽  
The Public ◽  
Science Centres ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Way

This paper concerns recent official attempts to place science in Denmark within the context of a cultural canon. Based on differentiation between Mode 1 and 2 knowledge production, the paper points out that such attempts are highly contextualised and contingent on their different modes of application. Consequently, they entangle scientific expertise with other social skills and qualifications. Like science museums and science centres, they are a means of dealing with science in the public agora, i.e. the public sphere in which negotiations, mediations, consultations and contestations regarding science increasingly take place. Analysing the ambiguities and uncertainties associated with the recent official placing of science within an overall cultural canon for Denmark, this paper concludes that even though the agora embodies antagonistic forms of interaction, it might also lead the way to producing socially robust knowledge about science.

The Jews in Rome during the Flavian Period

Antichthon ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 156-172
Author(s):  
James S. McLaren
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Abrupt Change ◽  
The Public ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Ways Of Life ◽  
The Way

AbstractDuring the late republic and early principate the Jews who called Rome their home occasionally found themselves in the public gaze. Some of their customs and aspects of their ways of life also attracted occasional comment, often for their apparently strange and foreign manner. At no stage, however, during this period did they feature prominently in the public sphere of life in Rome. The aftermath of the war of 66-70 CE brought about an abrupt change in circumstances for the Jews living in Rome. Apart from the immediate visual celebration of the triumph, there followed a number of substantial monumental and numismatic commemorations of the Roman victory. In this article the purpose and function of those commemorations and the possible consequences for the Jews who lived in Rome are examined. In particular, the impact of the public profiling of the war on Jewish identity and of how the writings of Josephus are to be read in this setting is explored. Rather than regard Josephus as a supporter of the Flavian rulers, writing an account of the war that encouraged fellow Jews to collaborate with Rome, it is argued that he was offering Jews in Rome a counter-narrative to the way the war was being publicly commemorated.

scholarly journals Let Them Eat Cake:  Gender, Nationalism and Tyranny  in Revolutionary France and Russia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Hugh Eldred-Grigg
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Public ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

<p>The origin of the phrase ‘let them eat cake’ is obscure. Conversely, it is widely understood that the woman whose name is most associated with the phrase, Marie Antoinette, the last pre-revolutionary Queen of France, never said it. But despite its lack of veracity the phrase demonstrates neatly the degree of disdain and anger directed at the Queen to the point where hatred becomes a useful term. This hatred was not unique to Marie Antoinette. While there is no phrase to highlight her role in the public eye, Alexandra Fedorovna, the last Czarina of Russia, was the focus of parallel disdain. Despite the timescale their situations are strikingly similar. The French and Russian revolutions form the backdrop for the close of these two women’s lives. Political historians de-emphasise the role of individual actors in shaping events, but the events of individual lives – or more precisely, the way in which those events are interpreted in the public sphere – can provide an insight into the impersonal events that constitute noteworthy targets of analysis. This study identifies a common dynamic that explains the reason why Marie Antoinette and Alexandra Fedorovna were both the target of such intense hatred during the revolutions that overthrew the systems they were part of and contributed collectively and individually to the shaping of the modern world.</p>

scholarly journals Let Them Eat Cake:  Gender, Nationalism and Tyranny  in Revolutionary France and Russia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Hugh Eldred-Grigg
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Public ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

<p>The origin of the phrase ‘let them eat cake’ is obscure. Conversely, it is widely understood that the woman whose name is most associated with the phrase, Marie Antoinette, the last pre-revolutionary Queen of France, never said it. But despite its lack of veracity the phrase demonstrates neatly the degree of disdain and anger directed at the Queen to the point where hatred becomes a useful term. This hatred was not unique to Marie Antoinette. While there is no phrase to highlight her role in the public eye, Alexandra Fedorovna, the last Czarina of Russia, was the focus of parallel disdain. Despite the timescale their situations are strikingly similar. The French and Russian revolutions form the backdrop for the close of these two women’s lives. Political historians de-emphasise the role of individual actors in shaping events, but the events of individual lives – or more precisely, the way in which those events are interpreted in the public sphere – can provide an insight into the impersonal events that constitute noteworthy targets of analysis. This study identifies a common dynamic that explains the reason why Marie Antoinette and Alexandra Fedorovna were both the target of such intense hatred during the revolutions that overthrew the systems they were part of and contributed collectively and individually to the shaping of the modern world.</p>

‘I Didn't Want to Write This’: The Social Embeddedness of Translating Moonsighting Verses of the Qur'an into Swahili

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-74
Author(s):  
Gerard C. van de Bruinhorst
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Embeddedness ◽  
East African ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Lunar Calendar ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Qur'an Commentaries

As a result of increasing globalisation the public sphere has expanded over the recent decades. Consequently Qur'an translations increasingly exhibit a highly pluralised concept of religious authority, demonstrating an eclectic use of sources as authors respond simultaneously to local and global discourses. This paper shows how the commentary in a popularising Swahili tafsīr by the preacher Said Moosa al-Kindy on two particular Qur'an verses, Q. 2:185 and Q. 2:189, cannot be understood as the outcome of theological and linguistic considerations only, but rather as a multi-epistemic, socially embedded product. Q. 2:185 and Q. 2:189 are often used to endorse particular viewpoints in East African moon sighting debates. This discourse revolves about the question of whether to accept a crescent sighting report from anywhere in the world to determine the beginning of the lunar month or to wait for a visible moon from a more restricted locality. This paper situates al-Kindy's translation within the wider field of Swahili Qur'an commentaries and compares his treatment of these verses to that in two scholarly products from outside the established genre of tafsīr. One is the polemical discourse on this subject by an Ibadi intellectual writing in Swahili and the second is the lunar calendar and website produced by a Tanzanian book trader. In all three of these works Qur'anic authority is paramount, but if we want to understand the diverse mediations of the Qur'anic message in a specific milieu we should not only look at the influence of exegetical traditions but also focus on social actors and their very personal, localised experiences.

Public Violence as Private Pathology: Noir Affect in The End of a Primitive

Noir Affect ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 59-77
Author(s):  
Christopher Breu
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
The Public ◽  
Interracial Sex ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Way

This chapter argues that Chester Himes’s midcentury noir, The End of a Primitive, explores the forms of private violence produced by the repressive public sphere of what he terms the short 1950s. Like many of Himes’s narratives, the novel foregrounds interpersonal antagonisms around race and sex, emphasizing the way in which what is repressed in the public sphere (interracial political struggle but also interracial sex) returns with a vengeance in the private sphere. In attending to the novel’s dramatizing of noir affects, the essay also articulates the value of the negative political and historiographical vision advanced by Himes’s noir narrative.

Nietzsche’s Rhetoric: Dissonance and Reception

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-80
Author(s):  
Simon Lambek ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Contemporary Theory ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Philosophical Project ◽  
The Way

This article presents a reading of Nietzsche’s use of rhetoric as inseparable from his philosophical project. I provide an exegesis of Nietzsche’s own reflections on rhetoric and consider its actual deployment, arguing that Nietzsche’s rhetoric is often deliberately dissonant and oriented toward facilitating receptive effects. The aim, I suggest, is to shift politics of possibility—to alter what can and cannot be done and said politically. Dissonant rhetoric, rhetoric that marries aesthetic attunement with affective turbulence, helps to accomplish this end by shaping the way that rhetoric is received by audiences. I conclude by suggesting that Nietzsche’s rhetoric has implications for contemporary theory, shifting how we might view critical political engagement in the public sphere. Understood in this way, Nietzsche’s rhetoric provides a perhaps surprising model for a critically robust form of rhetoric.

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