Discussion of five readings

Discussion Social structure of Public sphere

Most contemporary conceptualizations of the public sphere are based on the ideas expressed in Jürgen Habermas' book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere - An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society? which is a translation of his Habilitationsschrift "Strukturwandel der Öffentlicheit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft". The German term Öffentlichkeit (Public Sphere) encompasses a variety of meanings and it implies a spatial concept? the social sites or arenas where meanings are articulated? distributed? and negotiated? as well as the collective body constituted by? and in this process? "the public". The work is still considered the foundation of contemporary public sphere theories? and most theorists cite it when discussing their own theories. (Habermas? 28-43)

Through this work? he gave a historical-sociological account of the creation? brief flourishing? and demise of a "bourgeois" public sphere based on rational-critical debate and discussion: Habermas stipulates that? due to specific historical circumstances? a new civic society emerged in the eighteenth century. Driven by a need for open commercial arenas where news and matters of common concern could be freely exchanged and discussed - accompanied by growing rates of literacy? accessibility to literature? and a new kind of critical journalism - a separate domain from ruling authorities started to evolve across Europe.

"In its clash with the arcane and bureaucratic practices of the absolutist state? the emergent bourgeoisie gradually replaced a public sphere in which the ruler's power was merely represented before the people with a sphere in which state authority was publicly monitored through informed and critical discourse by the people".(Habermas? 28-43)

In his historical analysis? Habermas points out three so-called "institutional criteria" as preconditions for the emergence of the new public sphere. The discursive arenas? such as Britain's coffee houses? France's salons and Germany's Tischgesellschaften "may have differed in the size and compositions of their publics? the style of their proceedings? the climate of their debates? and their topical orientations"? but "they all organized discussion among people that tended to be ongoing; hence they had a number of institutional criteria in common":

1. Disregard of status: Preservation of "a kind of social intercourse that? far from presupposing the equality of status? disregarded status altogether. [...] Not that this idea of the public was actually realized in earnest in the coffee houses? salons? and the societies; but as an idea it had become institutionalized and thereby stated as an objective claim. If not realized? it was at least consequential." (Habermas? 28-43)

2. Domain of common concern: "... discussion within such a public presupposed the problematization of areas that until then had not been questioned. The domain of 'common concern' which was the object of public critical attention remained a preserve in which church and state authorities had the monopoly of interpretation. [...] The private people for whom the cultural product became available as a commodity profaned it inasmuch as they had to determine its meaning on their own (by way of rational communication with one ...