scholarly journals Elena Pulcini. The Time to Think of the Good

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 287-305
Author(s):  
Debora Spini

The essay explores the work of Elena Pulcini, who was snatched away by the pandemic when her ideas and her work were becoming more and more visible in the public sphere. Books like Care of the World, or her last work Tra cura e giustizia, were read and discussed beyond the usual academic circles. Although she was profoundly alien from spectacularisation of any kind, in the last years her profile had become that of a public intellectual whose philosophical work was a point of reference for a wide variety of groups and networks, from feminists to environmentalists.

Author(s):  
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya

The archives are generally sites where historians conduct research into our past. Seldom are they objects of research. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya traces the path that led to the creation of a central archive in India, from the setting up of the Imperial Record Department, the precursor of the National Archives of India, and the Indian Historical Records Commission, to the framing of archival policies and the change in those policies over the years. In the last two decades of colonial rule in India, there were anticipations of freedom in many areas of the public sphere. These were felt in the domain of archiving as well, chiefly in the form of reversal of earlier policies. From this perspective, Bhattacharya explores the relation between knowledge and power and discusses how the World Wars and the decline of Britain, among other factors, effected a transition from a Eurocentric and disparaging approach to India towards a more liberal and less ethnocentric one.


Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 907-930
Author(s):  
Igor Fedyukin

This article uses the materials of the Drezdensha affair, a large-scale investigation of “indecency” in St. Petersburg in 1750, to explore unofficial sociability among the Imperial elite, and to map out the institutional, social, and economic dimensions of the post-Petrine “sexual underworld.” Sociability and, ultimately, the public sphere in eighteenth century Russia are usually associated with loftier practices, with joining the ranks of the reading public, reflecting on the public good, and generally, becoming more civil and polite. Yet, it is the privately-run, commercially-oriented, and sexually-charged “parties” at the focus of this article that arguably served as a “training ground” for developing the habits of sociability. The world of these “parties” provides a missing link between the debauchery and carousing of Peter I's era and the more polite formats of associational life in the late eighteenth century, as well as the historical context for reflections on morality, sexual licentiousness, foppery, and the excesses of “westernization.”


Author(s):  
Susannah Heschel

The friendship between Abraham Joshua Heschel and Reinhold Niebuhr was both personal and intellectual. Neighbours on the Upper West Side of New York City, they walked together in Riverside park and shared personal concerns in private letters; Niebuhr asked Heschel to deliver the eulogy at his funeral. They were bound by shared religious sensibilities as well, including their love of the Hebrew Bible, the irony they saw in American history and in the writings of the Hebrew prophets, and in their commitment to social justice as a duty to God. Heschel arrived in the public sphere later, as a public intellectual with a prophetic voice, much as Niebuhr had been for many decades prior. Niebuhr’s affirmation of the affinities between his and Heschel’s theological scholarship pays tribute to an extraordinary friendship of Protestant and Jew.


2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Beyeler ◽  
Hanspeter Kriesi

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.


2007 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara A. Misztal

This paper's purpose is to exam Turner's (2006a) thesis that Britain neither produced its own public intellectuals nor a distinctive sociology. It aims to outline difficulties with the logic of Turner's argument rather than to discuss any particular public intellectual in Britain. The paper argues that Turner's claim about the comparative insignificance of public intellectuals in Britain reinforces the myth of British exceptionalism and overlooks the significance of the contribution to the public sphere by intellectuals from other disciplines than sociology. It discusses Turner's assumption that intellectual innovation requires massive disruptive and violent change and suggests that such an assertion is not necessarily supported by studies of the conditions of the production of knowledge. Finally, the paper argues that Turner's anguish at the absence of public intellectuals among sociologists in Britain is symptomatic of New Left thinking that models the idea of the intellectual on Gramsci. In conclusion, the paper asserts that Turner's idea of the intellectual fails to note the tension at the heart of the role of public intellectual–the tension between specialist and non-specialist functions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 383-390
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Morgan

The broad goal of researchers of emerging adulthood can be construed as wanting to advance the understanding of development in emerging adulthood with the outcome of bettering the lives of emerging adults throughout the world. However, the information we amass during the research process is rarely extracted into the public sphere to influence policy or practice. My goal in this article is to revitalize motivations to conduct research that matters and provide an overview of practices that enhance the societal relevance and translational nature of our research via public engagement. First, I will discuss what public engagement by researchers is and why it matters. Second, I will identify barriers to engaging in public engagement. Third, I will review practices that can move us toward greater public engagement as researchers of emerging adulthood. Overall, though it presents many challenges, public engagement is critical for using our research to invoke social change.


Author(s):  
Muhammad Ayish

Communication has proven to be an integral component of the terrorism phenomenon. To unravel the opportunities and challenges embedded in employing the media during terrorism, this chapter draws on research findings and practical experiences around the world to identify prime actors associated with this issue and to describe their objectives, tactics, and channels of communication. It is argued here that media constitute a vital resource in the war on terror with both terrorist organizations and states harnessing communication to advance their causes in the public sphere. In this context, four categories of media users have been identified: media institutions, terrorist organizations, governments, and citizen groups. The chapter discusses enduring issues associated with each actor's use of media and calls for evolving new conceptual frameworks for understanding media use during terrorism. It concludes by arguing that while we seem to have a huge pool of research findings and practical experiences related to using the media during terrorism, we seem to have a critical shortage in how we conceptually account for the different variables that define the use of media in terrorism situations.


2021 ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Kathleen Wellman

Although the ancient Greeks and Romans have long been appreciated as foundations for Western civilization, for these textbooks, the Greeks’ philosophy, gods, and immorality tar them as godless humanists. Nonetheless, the Greeks and the Romans allow these curricula to introduce several key social, political, and moral arguments. They assess whether ancient civilizations implemented the “family values” of the political right as it emerged in the 1970s. Thus the Greeks were commendable in excluding women from the public sphere and the Romans for their strong patriarchal families. But Rome fell when it failed to maintain family values. These textbooks disparage the Romans to downplay their influence on the American founding. Furthermore, the rise of Islam reveals the presence of Satan in the world. These curricula’s repudiation of the classical tradition reflects not only contemporary concerns of the religious right but also American anti-intellectualism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-259
Author(s):  
Ruth Rubio-Marín

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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Schnell

Professional journalism fulfills an important role in modern democracies, while always standing with one leg in the public sphere and the other in the private media economy. Within the era of digitalization, the limits of a market-driven professionalism become apparent. Since information appears to be easily accessible due to new media, journalism lost its role as a gatekeeper for “what the world needs to know”. But dropping an anachronistic idea of professional authority—as reform projects within the journalistic profession demanded for decades—does not necessarily lead to a more open and participatory public sphere. On the contrary, the chance for reliable news seems to shrink in the everyday flood of information. Facing a severe shortage of professionalism against the background of an oversupply in the field of journalism might indicate a general paradox of contemporary societies.  


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