scholarly journals Informacijos hierarchija vėlyvuoju sovietmečiu: bibliotekų atvejis

2012 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 116-134
Author(s):  
Tomas Vaiseta
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
Normative Political Theory

Straipsnyje siūlomas būdas, kaip viešosios erdvės sampratą pritaikyti sovietinės Lietuvos laikotarpiui ir kaip jos funkcionavimą rekonstruoti per vieną iš dėmenų – bibliotekas. Teigiama, kad nors viešoji komunikacija neatitiko laisvo žodžio, atvirumo ir polilogiškumo kriterijų, tačiau analizei galima pasitelkti viešąją erdvę ne normatyvine prasme, o tik kaip komunikacinę struktūrą, taip pat įvertinti ją per „pasaulio atvėrimo“ koncepciją. Šiai komunikacinei struktūrai priklaususių bibliotekų veikla analizuojama trimis lygmenimis – politiniu, ideologiniu ir administraciniu, kurie leidžia į bibliotekas pažiūrėti kaip į tam tikras informacines piramides, kuriose informacija (spaudiniai) pateikiama pagal hierarchijos principus. Kiekvienu iš šių lygmenų atsiveria skirtingi informacinės hierarchijos aspektai: politiniu lygmeniu reikia kalbėti apie atkirtimą nuo konteksto ir tradicijos; administraciniu lygmeniu išryškėja infrastruktūrinės reformos reikšmė; ideologiniu lygmeniu iškyla dirbtinis prioritetų sudarymas pagal ideologinius principus.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: viešoji erdvė, komunikacinė struktūra, biblioteka, sovietų Lietuva, vėlyvasis sovietmetis, ideologija. The Hierarchy of Information in the Late Soviet Period: the Case of LibraryTomas Vaiseta SummaryThe article deals with the situation of libraries in the late soviet period (1964–1988) as an element of soviet public sphere. The soviet public sphere is interpreted not in a normative sense (as a contribution to a normative political theory of democracy), but only as a structure of communication, and it is compared with the concept of the public sphere as a place of “world-disclosing”, proposed by Craig Calhoun. It is suggested that a typical metaphor of pyramid is valid to understand the hierarchy of information in libraries, but it is necessary to analyse this pyramid on three levels – political, administrative, and ideological. Each of these levels shows that we should approach the soviet libraries not as a place of “world-disclosing”, but as a place of “world-closing”., sans-serif;"> 

Social inclusion, a challenge for deliberative democracy? Some reflections on Habermas’s political theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 136843102098378
Author(s):  
Isabelle Aubert
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Iris Marion Young ◽  
Alexander Kluge ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Nancy Fraser ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

This article explains how the issue of inclusion is central to Habermas’s theory of democracy and how it is deeply rooted in his conception of a political public sphere. After recalling Habermas’s views on the public sphere, I present and discuss various objections raised by other critical theorists: Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth and Iris Marion Young. These criticisms insist on the paradoxically excluding effects of a conception of democracy that promotes civic participation in the public debate. Negt, Kluge and Fraser develop a Marxist line of analysis that question who can participate in the public sphere. Honneth and Young criticize in various ways the excluding effect of argumentation: are unargumentative speeches excluded from the public debate? I show how Habermas’s model can provide some responses to these various objections by drawing inspiration from his treatment of the gap between religious and post-metaphysical world views.

Public Space and the Public Sphere: Political Theory and the Historical Geography of Modernity

1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
P Howell
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Historical Geography ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Normative Political Theory

This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion of the historical geography of modernity. It is argued that the exclusive focus on social theory has detrimental effects on the appreciation of normative political concerns and that it ignores the resurgence of normative political theory. Habermas's concept of the public sphere, and its place within his theoretical and empirical studies, is, by contrast, commendably concerned with linking the social and historical work with normative political theorising, and its usefulness for geographical investigation is applauded. However, the criticisms directed from, in particular, communitarian political theorists and contextualist social researchers would seem to make his attempt to bring a ‘strong’ theory of public political life back within the remit of a reconstructed social theory less plausible. One set of responses to this criticism comes in the form of the attempt to build geography into this normative political theory, turning public spheres into public spaces; Arcndt's political theory, in conclusion, is thus held to be a significant contribution to the historical geography of modernity.

Secularism, Feminism, and the Public Sphere

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niamh Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Principle ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter outlines major developments shaping contemporary debates about religion and secularism in public and political life and the role of women and feminism therein. It considers, from a gender perspective, debates in normative political theory about religion, secularism, and the Habermasian public sphere. These themes are explored as they are dealt with in feminist scholarship on the critical edges of Enlightenment thinking. The phenomena of the separation of church and state, the progressive “secularization” of modern societies and relegation of religious practice to private domains, and the growing acceptance of gender equality, are no longer presumed to be inevitable and interrelated. This chapter considers what is involved in rethinking secularism as a feminist political principle, in a context of globalization and in contemporary multicultural societies.

Digital Humour, Gag Laws, and the Liberal Security State

2017 ◽  
pp. 204-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Bessant
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
The Public ◽  
On Line ◽  
Artistic Work ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter presents a case study of Facu Diaz, a Spanish satirist whose on-line ridicule of the Spanish government created a political furor that brought him before the courts. The chapter engages the problem of the criminalization of political dissent by liberal states in the digital age. The case highlights how digital media is now being used to create content for satire, as well as to replicate and infiltrate more traditional political and media forums, changing many traditional forms of political practice. The case [points to some of the central problems inherent in liberalism which may give reason to curb the enthusiasm of those who think that new digital media creates fresh opportunities for augmenting the ‘public sphere'. It is argued that liberalism as a political theory and ethos, tends to be blind to non-traditional political expressions like satire and other artistic work. In addition, the expansion of security laws in many countries suggests, liberalism's ostensible commitment to freedom needs to be reframed by recalling its historical preoccupation with security.

Political Theory and the Bourgeois Public Sphere

Beyond Reason ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 175-206
Author(s):  
Sanjay Seth
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Rational Argument ◽  
Comparative Political Theory ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political View ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Common World

Arguing that political theory is an irremediably Western and liberal enterprise, this chapter shows that it is a discipline that does not seek to accurately represent and explain an object, but is rather knowledge “for,” performance rather than representation. The discipline is directed toward the public sphere, imagined as a realm of individuals possessed of their own “values” who, however, inhabit a common world and engage in rational, critical debate about that which they hold in common. It thus “performs” the liberal conviction that differing moral and political viewpoints being ineliminable, they must contend with each other in rational argument in a public sphere not itself marked by a commitment to any moral or political view. Recognizing the parochialism and Eurocentrism of these presumptions, some scholars have recently attempted to “deprovincialize” political theory by extending its geographical and cultural remit through “comparative political theory.” The chapter evaluates the success and shortcomings of these endeavors.

The Dewey-Lippmann Debate Today: Communication Distortions, Reflective Agency, and Participatory Democracy

2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Whipple
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Public ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Advanced Capitalism ◽  
Current Context ◽  
The Public Sphere

In this article, I introduce the Dewey-Lippmann democracy debate of the 1920s as a vehicle for considering how social theory can enhance the empirical viability of participatory democratic theory within the current context of advanced capitalism. I situate within this broad theoretical framework the theories of Habermas and Dewey. In the process, I argue (a) that while Dewey largely failed to reconcile his democratic ideal with the empirical constraint of large-scale organizations, Habermas, in particular his work on the public sphere, provides an important starting point for considering the state of public participation within the communication distortions of advanced capitalism; (b) that to fully understand the relation between communication distortions and public participation, social theorists must look beyond Habermas and return to Dewey to mobilize his bi-level view of habitual and reflective human agency; and, finally, (c) that the perspective of a Deweyan political theory of reflective agency best furthers our understanding of potential communication distortions and public participation, particularly in the empirical spaces of media centralization and intellectual property rights.

Rethinking Arendt’s Theory of Necessity: Humanness as ‘Way of Life’, or: the Ordinary as Extraordinary

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Lechte
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Asylum Seekers And Refugees ◽  
People Today

If genuine political activity can only be undertaken by citizens in the public sphere in a nation-state, what of stateless people today – asylum seekers and refugees cut adrift on the high seas? This is what is at stake in Hannah Arendt’s political theory of necessity. This article reconsiders Arendt’s notion of the Greek oikos (household) as the sphere of necessity with the aim of challenging the idea that there is a condition of necessity or mere subsistence, where life is reduced to satisfying basic biological needs. For Arendt, the Greek oikos is the model that provides the inspiration for her theory because necessity activities were kept quite separate from action in the polis. The ordinary and the undistinguished happen in the oikos and its equivalent, with the polis being reserved for extraordinary acts done for glory without any regard for life. The exclusionary nature of this theory of the polis as action has, at best, been treated with kid gloves by Arendt’s commentators. With reference to Heidegger on the polis and Agamben’s notion of oikonomia, I endeavour to show that the so-called ordinary is embedded in a way of life that is extraordinary and the key to grasping humanness.

Habermas and the public sphere: Rethinking a key theoretical concept

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102098322
Author(s):  
Patrick O’Mahony
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Communication Theory ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
Recent Account ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

The challenge of realizing the democratic power of publics through public sphere remains acute but not hopeless. While claiming that Habermas communicative social theory offers a way forward in spite of a productive but constraining turn towards a modified social liberal frame, nonetheless three limitations of the theory are identified. The first bears on the insufficiency of the sociological evolutionist description of society relevant to the public sphere drawn from classical sociological accounts of differentiation and integration. The second identifies learning theoretical limitations of the normative interactionist, proceduralist account of democracy and democratization potentials. And the third observes on the disconnection between the theory of communicative reasoning from, on the one hand, the critique of pathologies of reasoning, and, on the other, from its implications for lifeworld rationalization. These identified limitations are intended to provide new impetus to radically rethink the public sphere as intrinsic to solving contemporary problems of democracy that Habermas’s more recent account of deliberative theory, with the public sphere merely supplementary, cannot fully do. Yet, with Habermas, this should be on the basis of advancing the communication theory of democracy.

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