scholarly journals The public sphere transformation as a reflection of the individualization process

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-144
Author(s):  
Antonina A. Batsenkova
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Western Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

Individualization is the process of distancing and relief an individual from any form of collectivities: collective consciousness, traditions, traditional group membership — and obtaining own, specific, only inherent characteristics by individual. Individualization as a historical and sociological category has various forms of its manifestation. One of the aspects of the individualization process is the detraditionalization of life spheres and the emergence of new “spaces of freedom”, which give rise to new challenges for society and for the individual. The such a challenge for society is the drop of the social institutions importance as traditional guidelines for “life strategies and life situations”. There are so — called “phantom institutions” that keep their external form but stop performing their tasks and change their meaning.The individualization process has affected all spheres of society, including the public sphere. In the sociological tradition, the theme of change and decline of the public sphere is devoted to the work of J. Dewey, J. Habermas, H. Arendt, R. Sennett, W. Lippmann, etc. Researchers say about the public sphere crisis in modern Western society. It is associated with the fusion of public and private life, the consideration of the public sphere through personal interests and its description in the categories of intimacy. People treat to public affairs too personally, which can be properly managed only with the impersonal, in terms of personal feelings. Society becomes important for the individual as a psychological system.The purpose of this paper is to show the fall of the public sphere as a reflection of the individualization process. If initially the public space was formed under the impact of mass media, political and legal systems and state systems, in the XXI century the public sphere becomes a space of expression of individual freedom and independence through the blogosphere, video portals and social networks. It is necessary to revise the concept of the public sphere because of the global communication networks development and the development of digital technologies.

scholarly journals Private/Public Space of New Media

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alla Drozdova ◽  
◽  
Natalia Stepanova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Third Party ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Multiple Network ◽  
The Individual

Today, we have a situation that the new media environment has reshaped our conception of reality while changing social spaces, modes of existence, and the functional mechanisms of the private sphere. In the space of new media, the boundary between privacy and publicity is redefined with the emergence of multiple network communities having become a subject of observation and evaluation, collective discussions, and even third party interventions. In the current situation, the privacy/publicity boundary can be defined both through the societal/the individual, and through such concepts as visible/invisible. The new media era sees the personification of online publicness, therefore the very sphere of private life gets consumed by the public sphere open both for being discussed and for being controlled by the government, market, and advertisement. The public sphere has fallen under the power of certain private/vested interests, which only transiently become common, coinciding with the interests of other groups, but not the public sphere. The ambivalent nature of new media, while based on personalisation and filtration, obviously determines the ambiguous and controversial relationship of the public and the private. Thus, the private not only reflects, but also represents the public, whereas the public implements privacy up to its inherent special intimate atmosphere and intonation. This fast-changing virtual reality requires the development of conceptual tools for analysing new content and forms of social and personal life, one of which is the relationship between publicity and privacy.

Space in common: Socially engaged art in the Athens of crisis

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charis Kanellopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Impact

During the last years ‐ within a constantly deepening social, political and economic crisis ‐ Athens’s public space appears challenging, presenting a character of ongoing re-evaluation and change. It is due to the impact of the crisis, for example, that the city’s public space is being approached once more by many citizens who, during the years before the recession, had chosen to transfer main activities and functions of public life to the more protected sphere of privateness. One notices the return to open spaces by locals not only for leisure but also for social interaction. Most emphatically, however, appears the fact of a rising number of population in need, such as homeless people, immigrants or refugees, who host aspects of their private life in the public sphere: most of the times, they are not only users, but rather habitants of public space, in a transitional situation of social suspension, lacking a sense of belonging. Under the light of the city’s different realities, and of an expected social co-existence, the article aims to present the practice of artists who become active in Athens’s public spaces of social ambivalence in Athens, by realizing socially engaged art projects. By focusing on case studies such as Nomadic Architecture Network’s projects, the Victoria Square Project by Rick Lowe and Maria Papadimitriou, Common Platforms, a Blind Date by Adonis Volanakis, along with Rafika Chawishe, or the UrbanDig_Omonia by the UrbanDig Project in Omonia square, among others, the article highlights the artists’ interest in understanding the historical and cultural dynamics of each area and in working with different participants of the community in an effort to find common ground and to create bonds among individuals of unalike backgrounds. The article shows how such artistic practices become a channel of creative expression and fruitful dialogue in environments of precariousness and intolerance. Showing the importance of cooperation and understanding, socially engaged art projects function positively as collaborative ‘heterotopias’ in turbulent times for Athens.

scholarly journals Social Media as Valuable Anti-Corruption Assets in the Public Sphere in Nigeria

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
B. Babasanya ◽  
L. Ganiyu ◽  
U. F. Yahaya ◽  
O. E. Olagunju ◽  
S. O. Olafemi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Class ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Individual

The issue of corruption in Nigeria has assumed a monumental dimension in such a way that it has become a household song and practice. Thus, adopting a rhetoric definition may not be appropriate instead a succinct description will suffice. The dimension of corruption is monumental because it started from pre-independence in the First republic with the first major political figure found culpable and investigated in 1944 and reach its peak recently with the evolvement of ‘godfatherism’ in the political landscape of the country. Therefore, corruption in Nigeria is more or less a household name. Using Social Responsibility Media Theory as a guide, this paper undertakes an examination of the right of the media to inform the public, serve the political system by making information, discussion and consideration of public affairs generally accessible, and to protect the rights of the individual by acting as watchdog over the governments. This discourse analysis is backed up with the presentation of documented materials on tracking corruption through the use of social media. Since the use of mainstream media only is disadvantageous owing to its demand-driven nature, social media stands as a veritable and result-orientated asset in tracking corruption across the public sphere. This paper found that complimented with mainstream media, social media and civic journalism have exposed corrupt tendencies of contractors and public office holders including the political class in the provision and handling of infrastructural development projects thereby make public officials accountable and create an open access to good governance.

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.

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

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Natalia Kostenko
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Physical Interaction ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

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.

‘Party in the street’: The partisan politics of space

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
State Power ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

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.

scholarly journals UNDERSTANDING LAW AND RELIGION AS CULTURE: MAKING ROOM FOR MEANING IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2006
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

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.

Transnational Protest and The Public Sphere

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Beyeler ◽  
Hanspeter Kriesi
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
World Economic ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Selection Of

This article explores the impact of protests against economic globalization in the public sphere. The focus is on two periodical events targeted by transnational protests: the ministerial conferences of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Based on a selection of seven quality newspapers published in different parts of the world, we trace media attention, support of the activists, as well as the broader public debate on economic globalization. We find that starting with Seattle, protest events received extensive media coverage. Media support of the street activists, especially in the case of the anti-WEF protests, is however rather low. Nevertheless, despite the low levels of support that street protesters received, many of their issues obtain wide public support.

Evidence of an Open Government Data Portal Impact on the Public Sphere

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 21-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Pedro Lourenço
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Open Government ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Open Government Data ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Google Search ◽  
The Impact

Data portals are being created as part of open government strategies to increase transparency. But although the potential of the internet to increase transparency (as data disclosure) has been widely considered in the literature, there is no reported evidence of any of the released data actually being used by their ultimate recipients (citizens) for public accountability purposes. This descriptive research effort aims to find evidence of the impact of open government portals, asserting whether data is indeed being used and for what purposes. One contract portal was selected and Google Search was used to find portal references on the internet. A qualitative content analysis approach was adopted, whereby references were examined with respect to its main purpose and data usage. Evidence was found of contract data being used, among others, to identify possible situations of corruption, nepotism and misusage of public resources, support argumentation on public policy debates and, in general, to hold public officials accountable in the public sphere through ‘blame and shame' sanctions.

scholarly journals The Normativity of Habermas’s Public Sphere from the Vantage Point of Its Evolution

2019 ◽  
pp. 47-65
Author(s):  
Maciej Hułas
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Private Property ◽  
The Public ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Classical Setting ◽  
Bourgeois Culture ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Individual

The paper argues that the original normativity that provides the basis for Habermas’s model of the public sphere remains untouched at its core, despite having undergone some corrective alterations since the time of its first unveiling in the 1960s. This normative core is derived from two individual claims, historically articulated in the eighteenth-century’s “golden age” of reason and liberty as both sacred and self-evident: (1) the individual right to an unrestrained disposal of one’s private property; and (2) the individual right to formulate one’s opinion in the course of public debate. Habermas perceives the public sphere anchored to these two fundamental freedoms/rights as an arena of interactive opinion exchange with the capacity to solidly and reliably generate sound reason and public rationality. Despite its historical and cultural attachments to the bourgeois culture as its classical setting, Habermas’s model of the public sphere, due to its universal normativity, maintains its unique character, even if it has been thoroughly reformulated by social theories that run contrary to his original vision of the lifeworld, organized and ruled by autonomous rational individuals.     

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