The public and the private: reconfiguring the interrelationship during a civil act

Author(s):  
Natalia Kostenko

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.

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (04) ◽  
pp. 677-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Barnes Cook

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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar

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.


2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram

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.


Author(s):  
Verioni Ribeiro Bastos

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.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2006
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger

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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 277
Author(s):  
Azkiyatul Afia

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. 


2009 ◽  
pp. 126-139
Author(s):  
Marco Cremaschi

- 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.


Author(s):  
Jarice Hanson ◽  
Alina Hogea

The Internet has often been heralded as a tool for e-governance and public action because of its ubiquity, accessibility, and the ability for users to participate in online expressions of opinion. In this chapter we discuss the potential for the Internet to function as a public space for facilitating civic engagement. While we draw from the seminal work of Jurgen Habermas to identify the preconditions for the functioning of a “public sphere,” we address four distinctly different approaches to the discussion of the Internet’s role as an effective tool for deliberative democracy by highlighting the contributions of scholars and practitioners who engaged in a dialog on the topic at a symposium held at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on March 25, 2010.


Author(s):  
Joel Gillin

Summary This article considers the utility of a liturgical lens for locating and analyzing religion in the public sphere. Dominant paradigms in the study of religion tend to either dissolve the religious/secular distinction or base it on overly cognitive content. Drawing on the work of James K. A. Smith, the article outlines an approach which instead locates religion in embodied practices that shape human desire. I suggest the religious/secular binary is better conceptualized as a continuum in which liturgical intensity is the primary criterion of religiosity. A liturgical continuum better articulates the contested nature of public space and the religious aspects of political life.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document