Technologies of the Afterlife

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonah S. Rubin
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Franco Dictatorship ◽  
Democratic Constitution

In August 2011, I attended the exhumation of Severiano Clemente González, conducted by the Forum for Memory in the Castilian town of La Toba, Guadalajara. Mr González was one of the over 130,000 civilian victims of the 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War and ensuing Franco dictatorship (1939–1975). Even after Spain’s democratic constitution in 1978, most families could not recover their loved ones, owing to an unofficial ‘Pact of Silence’ whereby major political actors agreed not to legislate, litigate or discuss the still controversial past in the public sphere (Encarnación 2014). Since 2000, however, civil society organisations such as the Forum for Memory and the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) have been leading a series of forensic exhumations – modelled after similar state-led interventions in Latin America, Southern and Eastern Europe (Ferrándiz 2010; Rubin 2014).

Governmental Promotion of Social Cohesion and Its Effect on Local Civil Society Organisations: How These Institutions Respond to the Inclusion of Vulnerable Groups as Active Citizens

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stella Maris Semino
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Grey Literature ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article examines how social policy influences social cohesion within a London borough. The focus is on the degree to which civil society organisations facilitate the representation of migrants within the public sphere. The policies considered are those introduced by New Labour and the current Coalition government. The theories adopted in this article are based on social cohesion and the public sphere, and the research is based on grey literature and interviews with civil society practitioners. The study concludes that, although the previous government gave visibility to migrants, the conditions imposed for their access to social provision have contributed to the demotion of cohesion. The Coalition's reforms have reinforced social divisions and given rise to two identities within civil society: the insiders, who are in dialogue with the authorities, and the outsiders, who have no contact with the decision makers.

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.

Mass Communication and the 'Nationalisation' of the Public Sphere in Former Yugoslavia

Res Publica ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-270
Author(s):  
Spyros A. Walgrave
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Peace Movements ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Although the quasi-confederal character of Yugoslavia, especially after the introduction of its 1974 constitution did not encourage the development of a genuine Yugoslavian public sphere wherepublic debate could transcend ethnic and republic divisions, it nevertheless allowed the formation of what could be called Yugoslav cultural space, a space within which social and political actors (feminist, peace movements) forged their identities regardless of the ethnic or national diversity that characterised their membership. However, the existence of this 'space' had a limited impact in Yugoslav politics partly due to the breakdown of inter-republic communication and the fragmentation of the Yugoslavian mass media. This paper traces the process of disintegration of the Yugoslav cultural space and the emergence of national 'public spheres' in the republics and provinces of former Yugoslavia and attempts to assess the role of the mass media and cultural institutions in these developments by identifying the key strategies of representation employed in the process of the fragmentation and 'nationalisation' of the public sphere of former Yugoslavia.

Women and participatory constitutionalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-259
Author(s):  
Ruth Rubio-Marín
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Structural Dimension ◽  
The Public ◽  
Participation Of Women ◽  
The World ◽  
Turn Taking ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Constitution Making

Abstract This article underscores the foundational exclusion of women from constitution-making as an expression of the ideology of separate and gendered spheres dominant at the birth of written constitutionalism. It traces the incorporation of women into constitution-making within a broader gender equality participatory turn taking place, since the late 1980s and especially 1990s, coinciding in time with the rise of popular constitutionalism more broadly speaking. By looking at a variety of examples drawn from multiple jurisdictions across the world, it explores the forms of participation of women in constitution-making both through their gradual (though yet insufficient) incorporation into official constitution-making bodies and institutions and, more importantly, through civil society mobilization. It claims that without taking into account the structural dimension of women’s traditional exclusion from the public sphere and constitution-making it is not possible to have an adequate comprehension of the strategies, challenges, meaning, and impact of women joining constitution-making, all of which I briefly describe.

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