scholarly journals Religion and the Public Sphere in Premodern India

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-176
Author(s):  
Christian Lee Novetzke
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Western World ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Full Shift ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Key Aspects

Abstract When in 1962 Habermas formulated his theory of the public sphere as “a society engaged in critical debate” he sought to describe something he felt was unique to the modern liberal democratic Western world. Yet the creation of discursive spheres where people across lines of social difference debate questions of the common good, mutual interest, and forms of equality long predates the modern era and flourished well outside the “Western” world. This essay adapts Habermas’ influential concept to highlight the emergence of a nascent public sphere at the earliest layers of Marathi literary creation in 13th century India. At this inaugural stage of a regional language’s full shift to writing, we see traces of a debate in the language of everyday life that struggled over the ethics of social difference, a public deliberation that might presage key aspects of Indian modernity and democracy today.

Corporate Politics in the Public Sphere: Corporate Citizenspeak in a Mass Media Policy Contest

2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Nyberg ◽  
John Murray
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Corporate Political Activity ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article connects the previously isolated literatures on corporate citizenship and corporate political activity to explain how firms construct political influence in the public sphere. The public engagement of firms as political actors is explored empirically through a discursive analysis of a public debate between the mining industry and the Australian government over a proposed tax. The findings show how the mining industry acted as a corporate citizen concerned about the common good. This, in turn, legitimized corporate political activity, which undermined deliberation about the common good. The findings explain how the public sphere is refeudalized through corporate manipulation of deliberative processes via what we term corporate citizenspeak—simultaneously speaking as corporate citizens and for individual citizens. Corporate citizenspeak illustrates the duplicitous engagement of firms as political actors, claiming political legitimacy while subverting deliberative norms. This contributes to the theoretical development of corporations as political actors by explaining how corporate interests are aggregated to represent the common good and how corporate political activity is employed to dominate the public sphere. This has important implications for understanding how corporations undermine democratic principles.

scholarly journals HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AFFORDS POPULIST POLITICS: REMARKS ON LIMINALITY BASED ON THE BRAZILIAN CASE

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 404-427
Author(s):  
Leticia Cesarino
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Online Ethnography ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
And Linguistics

ABSTRACT In the past decade or so, populism and social media have been outstanding issues both in academia and the public sphere. At this point, evidence from multiple countries suggest that perceived parallels between the dynamics of social media and the mechanics of populist discourse may be more than just incidental, relating to a shared structural field. This article suggests one possible path towards making sense of how the dynamics of social media and the mechanics of populist mobilization have co-produced each other in the last decade or so. Navigating the interface between anthropology and linguistics, it takes key aspects of Victor Turner’s notion of liminality to suggest some of the ways in which social media’s anti-structural affordances may help lay a foundation for the contemporary flourishing of populist discourse: markers of social structure are suspended; communitas is formed; the culture core is addressed; mimesis and anti-structural inversions are performed; subjects become influenceable. I elaborate on this claim based on Brazilian materials, drawn from online ethnography on pro-Bolsonaro WhatsApp groups and other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook since 2018.

Discussion and Analysis

2014 ◽  
pp. 219-243
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Electronic Publishing ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Business ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
New Business Models

A discussion and analysis of the key aspects emerging during the course of the research comprise the basis of this chapter. It addresses, inter alia, the effect of the parallel importing debate on authors’ rights, the issue of publishing contracts, the idea of a “heavenly library” and copyright protection on the Internet, including a discussion on how existing territorial copyright structures may be affected by electronic publishing. This chapter also considers the Google initiatives and possible new business models for authors. The emerging theme of resale royalties for authors is examined and compared with the Resale Royalty Right for Visual Artists Act 2009. In conclusion, observations are made on the role of the author in the changing publishing landscape, situating the author as member of the “author sphere” in the context of the public sphere.

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.

Political Participation in Early Stuart Ireland

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eamon Darcy
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The Common ◽  
Competing Ideas ◽  
The Public Sphere

AbstractA consideration of political participation in early Stuart Ireland suggests modifications to the prospectus outlined by Peter Lake and Steven Pincus in “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England.” By investigating the structures that facilitated public debates about politics in Ireland, as well as the factors that complicated it, this article challenges the periodization of the public sphere offered by Lake and Pincus and suggests that there is a clear need to integrate a transnational perspective. Unlike England, Scotland, and Wales, the majority of Ireland's population was Catholic. The flow of post-Tridentine Catholic ideas from the Continent and Anglo-Britannic political culture meant that competing ideas of what constituted the common good circulated widely in Ireland and led to debates about the nature of authority in the early modern Irish state. These divisions in Irish society created a distinctive kind of politics that created particularly unstable publics. Thus, Ireland's experience of the early modern public sphere differed considerably from concurrent developments in the wider archipelago.

scholarly journals Visibility in the digital age: Introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelia Brantner ◽  
Helena Stehle
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Internet Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Privacy And Confidentiality ◽  
Scientific Debates

In the digital age, calls for transparency and openness as well as for privacy and confidentiality prevail: Struggles for visibility occur simultaneously with conflicts regarding invisibility and hidden battles for power and privileges of interpretation. Concerns about a loss of digital self-determination exist, just like those regarding the “right to be forgotten” or the right to become invisible and unseen. While the idea of a “transparent user” – as the ultimate notion of (in)voluntary visibility – has caused a broad outcry in society and in scientific debates a few years ago (Palfrey & Gasser, 2008), the discussion has shifted toward considerations of Internet governance and regulation (Camenisch, Fischer-Hübner, & Hansen, 2015). Brighenti (2010, p. 109) has pointed out that visibility has long been one of the key aspects “associated with the public sphere” and that in today’s digitized publics, the “project of democracy can no longer be imagined without taking into account visibility and its outcomes” (Brighenti, 2010, p. 189). Visibility and invisibility, along with their societal outcomes, are increasingly being discussed and analyzed, as they are becoming important dimensions in the accurate description and explanation of digital communication.

scholarly journals The European Crisis of Politics: Ethnoreligious Pluralism and the Rise of Radical Populism and Far-Right in Europe

2018 ◽  
pp. 19-25
Author(s):  
Cristina Astier ◽  
Ander Errasti
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Western World ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The Public ◽  
European Crisis ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Welfare State

It is not highly contentious to claim that the 2008 global economic crisis may be also understood as a failure of the welfare state in European countries. The rise of economic inequalities in Europe, as a major sequel of the 2008 economic crisis and the increase of migrant flows, has fostered and become a breeding ground for racial, religious, or ideological hatred in the western world. However, compared to previous periods in recent history when tensions arose, citizens can now channel their feelings, thoughts, and political ideals through the institutions of the state’s basic structure. Thus, citizens are having a say by channelling their claims through democratic means and different forms of political participation. One relevant articulation has been new expressions of radical populism, nativism, and far-right ideologies which have burst into the public sphere, at the local, regional, and European levels. This combination has turned the economic and refugee crisis into what is mainly a crisis of European politics.Published online: 31 October 2018

scholarly journals Public theology and the translation imperative: A Ricoeurian perspective

2011 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaco S. Dreyer
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
The Public ◽  
Academic Discussion ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Christian Message

The aim of this article is to contribute to the academic discussion on the inter-linguistic translation of the Christian message in the public sphere. There seems to be consensus amongst academic public theologians and social philosophers such as Habermas about the importance of translating religious language in the public sphere. Views differ, however, on the manner of translation. Five key aspects of Ricoeur’s paradigm of translation are discussed and offered as a framework for the academic discussion in public theology on the translation of the Christian message in the public sphere. It is argued that notions such as the tension between faithfulness and betrayal, the illusion of the perfect translation, striving for equivalence of meaning, the importance of the desire to translate, the work of translation and linguistic hospitality offer insight in the complexity of the translation task as well as its ethical nature.

The Quotidian Revolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Lee Novetzke
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Political Anthropology ◽  
Indian Literature ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
Vernacular Literature ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Key Aspects

In thirteenth-century Maharashtra, a new vernacular literature emerged to challenge the hegemony of Sanskrit, a language largely restricted to men of high caste. In a vivid and accessible idiom, this new Marathi literature inaugurated a public debate over the ethics of social difference grounded in the idiom of everyday life. The arguments of vernacular intellectuals pushed the question of social inclusion into ever-wider social realms, spearheading the development of a nascent premodern public sphere that valorized the quotidian world in sociopolitical terms. The Quotidian Revolution examines this pivotal moment of vernacularization in Indian literature, religion, and public life by investigating courtly donative Marathi inscriptions alongside the first extant texts of Marathi literature: the Līlācaritra (1278) and the Jñāneśvarī (1290). Novetzke revisits the influence of Chakradhar (c. 1194), the founder of the Mahanubhav religion, and Jnandev (c. 1271), who became a major figure of the Varkari religion, to observe how these avant-garde and worldly elites pursued a radical intervention into the social questions and ethics of the age. Drawing on political anthropology and contemporary theories of social justice, religion, and the public sphere, The Quotidian Revolution explores the specific circumstances of this new discourse oriented around everyday life and its lasting legacy: widening the space of public debate in a way that presages key aspects of Indian modernity and dem

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