Public sphere

Throughout The Structural Change of the Public Sphere, Habermas talks about how the bourgeois public sphere transformed. He defines the public sphere as a virtual or imaginary community which does not necessarily exist in any recognizable space. In its ideal form, the public sphere is "made up of private people gathered together as a public and expressing the needs of society with the state. Throughout the book Habermas asserts that the bourgeois public sphere is premised on the incorrect identification between human being and bourgeois. The problem is that being a bourgeois is an economic standing, which, Habermas argues, could not be shared collectively by everyone because of tendencies innate in the expansion of capitalism. The economy…

Entry 1: Today we discussed the public sphere. In summary, we discussed the emergence of the “mass audience”, the low/high culture binary, and determining where the idea of “the public” comes from. We have a conception of the public sphere from the bourgeois class. The set ideal is that of a private (civil society) and the public (state-mediates crises). This public sphere is formed and operated through the norms of publicity. There are five norms that make up publicity: status as person is…

The formation of a public sphere in societies allowed these to tear down existing feudalism, and build up democracies in its place. German sociologist and philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, explains how the construction of a bourgeois public sphere enables democratic power to be shaped in a civilisation in his book “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere” written in German in 1962, and translated to English in 1989. The former thesis became pivotal in the subject area as the media plays…

Habermas, Jürgen, et al. “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964).” New German Critique, no. 3, 1974, pp. 49–55. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/487737. The “Encyclopedia Article” by Habermas provides the foundations/ transformation for the public sphere, as a concept, its history, the liberal model, and in the social welfare state mass democracy. The overall thesis for the article by Habermas is to provide a basic, foundational understanding of the public sphere. Habermas…

as the defenders of morality created a system in which men and women operated in disparate spheres. This notion of the genders existing in separate spheres is the topic of our final and most current article, “Separated By Their Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World”, written by Mary Beth Norton and published in 2011. Unlike the other articles discussed herein which have focused on New England society, Norton takes a transatlantic perspective by examining how English culture…

Heroes, inhabitants of an ontological Limbo Student ID: 2143830 One of the most intriguing questions about heroism regards the delicate coexistence between heroes’ private and public spheres. A hero’s ‘valet de chambre’ (i.e. ‘valet of the chamber’), representing those who have access to his most human sides, may be contemplated as a metaphor of his private image, counterposed to his public one. The purpose of this essay is to emphasize the organic relationship between the presence…

Habermas on the Public Sphere The Public Sphere is an area in social life where people come together to discuss and identify societal problems and through that discussion the influence of political action. The Public Sphere is “generally conceived as the social space in which different opinions are expressed, problems of general concern are discussed and collective solutions are developed communicatively”. The Public sphere is central for societal communications, social networks sustain…

“The Habermasian Public Sphere: Taking Difference Seriously?” Theory and Society, vol. 34, no. 2, 2005, pp. 111–136. Dahlberg examines and refutes three key arguments of critics of the Habermasian Public sphere, called Difference Democrats. In the Public Sphere, disagreement and difference are at the core of informal, citizen deliberation that allows for the expression of voices and conflicts. The broad circumstances of the Public Sphere act to protect and nurture difference in its formation…

Gender plays an important role throughout the news discourse of our current and past media. Whether it is in the private or public sphere, the paradoxical role of gender is always questioned by the normative values of society. The representation of women within mass media has been constructed on the ideology of a patriarchal society. Women are undermined and scrutinized due to commodification of their physical appearance and traditional role they are proposed to lead. However where do these…

Transformation of the Public Sphere, his epic idea of a “single dominant public sphere” where citizens gather in order to debate “common concern.” Due to the inevitability of marginalization, the realities of human nature, and the illusory ideal that citizens are equipped with the necessary knowledge to rationally debate what should be common concern, it is not desirable in a democracy to have a single dominant public sphere. The single public sphere is outrageous because within one single mass…