Voicing the Subaltern in the Public Sphere

2015 ◽  
pp. 307-322
Author(s):  
Dalya Yafa Markovich
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Disadvantaged School

The voice of the subaltern is barely ever heard in the traditional historical-ethnological museum. Aiming to break the constraints and limitations of the traditional museum sphere, Alemu Eshetie, an Israeli based artist of Ethiopian origin, has created a museum dedicated to the Ethiopian Jewish community that functions as a traveling “public sphere”. Through these strategies the Museum wishes to establish a “dialogical methodology” that will voice the ‘Ethiopian' subaltern and thus foster his empowerment. By using ethnographic fieldwork that followed the activities held by the Museum in the 4th grade at a multiethnic and disadvantaged school in Israel, this chapter examined the ways in which students of Ethiopian origin chose to voice themselves in the public sphere created by the Museum, and the social and educational meanings attached to their voice. Hence findings suggest that the social construction of the subalterns' personal voice within the public sphere can expose racial and social inferior position and thus work against the aims it means to achieve.

Constructing Freedom: Institutional Pathways to Changing the Gender Division of Labor

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth K. Markovits ◽  
Susan Bickford
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gender Division Of Labor ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Paid Labor ◽  
Democratic Freedom ◽  
The Public Sphere

In recent years, there has been renewed public discussion regarding the relationship between women’s equality and their traditional responsibility for carework. In this essay, we analyze the structures of choice and constraint that continue to produce the gender division of family labor and thus women's unequal participation in the public sphere. We conceptualize this as a problem of democratic freedom, one that requires building institutional pathways to sustain women's participation. Drawing on Nancy Hirschmann's arguments about processes of social construction and their relation to freedom, we argue that gender inequality in the public sphere means that women are unfree, in the sense that they are not participating as peers in the material and discursive processes of social construction that then help to shape their own desires and decisions. We use that framework to analyze the current landscape in which different subgroups of women make decisions about paid labor and care work. Our goal is to bring into view the way the social construction of desire interacts with the material context to underwrite inequality between women and men and across different groups of women. Gender equality and the project of democracy require participatory parity between women and men in the public sphere. We therefore turn in our last section to an effort to imagine how public policies could construct pathways that can help interrupt and undo the gender division of labor, and thus better support democratic freedom.

LEGAL ESSENCE OF ANCIENT PROVERBS AND SAYS AND THEIR SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Dranishnikova ◽  
Ivan Semenov
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Status Position

The national legal system is determined by traditional elements characterizing the culture and customs that exist in the social environment in the form of moral standards and the law. However, the attitude of the population to the letter of the law, as a rule, initially contains negative properties in order to preserve personal freedom, status, position. Therefore, to solve pressing problems of rooting in the minds of society of the elementary foundations of the initial order, and then the rule of law in the public sphere, proverbs and sayings were developed that in essence contained legal educational criteria.

scholarly journals The Public Sphere in the Field of Power

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Calhoun
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Public Sphere

In this article I ask (1) whether the ways in which the early bourgeois public sphere was structured—precisely by exclusion—are instructive for considering its later development, (2) how a consideration of the social foundations of public life calls into question abstract formulations of it as an escape from social determination into a realm of discursive reason, (3) to what extent “counterpublics” may offer useful accommodations to failures of larger public spheres without necessarily becoming completely attractive alternatives, and (4) to what extent considering the organization of the public sphere as a field might prove helpful in analyzing differentiated publics, rather than thinking of them simply as parallel but each based on discrete conditions. These considerations are informed by an account of the way that the public sphere developed as a concrete ideal and an object of struggle in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Britain.

Conclusions: Reclaiming the Public in Policing

2019 ◽  
pp. 146-172
Author(s):  
Paul Mutsaers
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Public Anthropology ◽  
Public Character ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Conceptual Work

This concluding chapter synergizes the previous chapters and adds something new. Both functions are captured by the title, Reclaiming the Public in Policing. First, it argues that the empirical and conceptual work in this book points at the corrosion of the public character of policing, which results in law enforcement agencies that find it increasingly difficult to exclude politics, particularism, and populism from their operations. This part of the chapter concludes that it is imperative that we ‘unthink’ bureaucracy as the social evil of our time and revalue the public contours of policing. A second way to reclaim the ‘public’ in policing, now defined not as a quality of the police but an engaged citizenry that is involved in public debates on the police, concerns the role of police scholars in the public sphere. The chapter advocates a public anthropology of police and reflects on the author's efforts to ‘go public’.

Habermas, Virtue Epistemology, and Religious Justifications in the Public Sphere

Hypatia ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 422-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Epistemic Communities ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Miranda Fricker ◽  
Epistemological Basis

Jürgen Habermas's recent challenge to secular citizens calling for greater inclusivity of religious justifications in the public sphere opens new epistemological debates that could benefit from the rich insights of feminist epistemologists. Despite certain theoretical tensions, there is some common ground between Habermas and recent work in feminist epistemology. Specifically, this article explores the shared interests between Habermas and one feminist theorist in particular, Miranda Fricker. I choose Fricker because her formulation of the epistemological and ethical hybrid virtues of testimonial justice and hermeneutical justice provide efficacious theoretical and practical tools capable of deepening the epistemological basis of Habermas's challenge to secular citizens. After a detailed analysis of Habermas's and Fricker's respective epistemological positions, I argue that Fricker's analysis provides a rich framework for thinking through questions of power, identity, and credibility with respect to religious justifications in the public sphere. In conclusion, this article emphasizes the importance of fostering more robust and just epistemic communities capable of countering the social, political, and ethical injustices of epistemic disauthorization and marginalization.

Homophobia and queer belonging in Hungary

Focaal ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2009 (53) ◽  
pp. 20-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hadley Z. Renkin
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Verbal Aggression ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Projects ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Lgbt Activism ◽  
Lgbt People ◽  
The Public Sphere

Violent attacks on gay and lesbian activities in the public sphere, coupled with verbal aggression against sexual minorities by right-wing politicians in Hungary and other postsocialist countries, illustrate the centrality of sexuality in questions of postsocialist transition. This article discusses the limits of current scholarly interpretations of homophobia in postsocialist countries. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on LGBT activism in Hungary, it argues that by undertaking public projects that assert multiple forms of identity and community, LGBT people, although often portrayed as passive objects of the changing configurations of power of Hungary's transition, have raised a radical challenge to traditional imaginings of the boundaries between national and transnational meanings. It is this challenge—the proposal of a “queering” of belonging—to which right-wing, nationalist actors have responded with public violence.

Everyday Editorial Practices and the Public Sphere: Analysing the Letters to the Editor Page of a Regional Newspaper

2004 ◽  
Vol 112 (1) ◽  
pp. 186-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke Gregory ◽  
Brett Hutchins
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Editorial Staff ◽  
Daily Newspaper ◽  
Letters To The Editor ◽  
Daily News ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Editorial Practices

This paper investigates the social construction of a site of public discourse: the letters to the editor page of an Australian regional daily newspaper, The Daily News.1 Of key concern are the processes through which public discourse is constructed and mediated by those who select and edit letters for publication. Drawing on a content analysis of the letters page and in-depth interviews with the editorial staff, it is demonstrated how routine practices and the social knowledge of media workers play a specific and discernible role in shaping public dialogue. In light of the findings presented, the concluding section discusses the relationship between editorial practices and the public sphere.

Friedman at 50: Is It Still the Social Responsibility of Business to Increase Profits?

2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 28-41
Author(s):  
Karthik Ramanna
Keyword(s):  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Track Record ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Civic Institutions ◽  
Public Politics ◽  
Rules Of The Game

Fifty years ago Milton Friedman famously argued that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits, which today are at record highs. And, as public institutions falter, business is now offering to step into the void. We must resist this (further) intrusion of business into the public sphere, as it will further depreciate civic institutions. The business of business is business, and so it should be. Business’ track record in public politics has been to engineer the rules of the game to its own advantage.

Learning together to be ourselves: a collaborative portrait of affect in relation

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Râna Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Social Care ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
Care Practice ◽  
Collaborative Culture ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Public Sphere

Þjóðmyndir was a collaborative photography project carried out by individuals frequenting two social service organisations that work in close partnership in Ísafjörður, Iceland, under the guidance of the author. It offered participants an opportunity to express themselves creatively in the public sphere and aimed to engage them in participative processes of learning, creating and reflecting to this end. The project struggled with the participatory and collaborative research traditions that informed it, yet it defined its own, unique collaborative culture around the social learning that emerged from the participants’ entering into relation with and emotionally affecting one another. Consequently, it succeeded at creating a space for the processes of subject formation inherent to discussions of both collaborative research and social-relational affect. This paper examines instances of affect and collaboration particular to the project through the lens of disability studies in order to advance an understanding of the intersectional relevance of affect theory and collaborative methodologies to social care practice.

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