Social Spaces and the Public Sphere

Social Spaces and the Public Sphere PDF Author: S. Harikrishnan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000786587
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
What can social spaces tell us about social relations in society? How do everyday social spaces like teashops, reading rooms, and libraries reify—or subvert—dominant social structures like caste and gender? These are the questions that this book explores through a study of modern Kerala. Using archival material, discourse analysis, participant observation, and personal interviews, this book traces the transformation of public spaces through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The volume focuses on how "modernity" has also been a struggle for access to public spaces, and non-institutional spaces like teashops, markets, public roads, temple grounds, reading rooms, and libraries have all been crucial to how political culture was shaped, and how dominant hegemonies—caste, class, or capital—have been challenged. It suggests that the secular public sphere that emerged in the last century in Kerala was a result of the constant negotiations between conflicting ideas which were put to test in these social spaces. At a time when digital spaces are fast replacing physical ones, this book is a timely reminder of the struggles that led to the emergence of secular public spaces in Kerala. It contributes to similar studies on public space that have emerged from other parts of the world over the last decades. A major contribution to understanding modern India, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of social history, political science, political sociology, gender studies, linguistics, and South Asian studies.

Social Spaces and the Public Sphere

Social Spaces and the Public Sphere PDF Author: S. Harikrishnan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000786587
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book Here

Book Description
What can social spaces tell us about social relations in society? How do everyday social spaces like teashops, reading rooms, and libraries reify—or subvert—dominant social structures like caste and gender? These are the questions that this book explores through a study of modern Kerala. Using archival material, discourse analysis, participant observation, and personal interviews, this book traces the transformation of public spaces through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The volume focuses on how "modernity" has also been a struggle for access to public spaces, and non-institutional spaces like teashops, markets, public roads, temple grounds, reading rooms, and libraries have all been crucial to how political culture was shaped, and how dominant hegemonies—caste, class, or capital—have been challenged. It suggests that the secular public sphere that emerged in the last century in Kerala was a result of the constant negotiations between conflicting ideas which were put to test in these social spaces. At a time when digital spaces are fast replacing physical ones, this book is a timely reminder of the struggles that led to the emergence of secular public spaces in Kerala. It contributes to similar studies on public space that have emerged from other parts of the world over the last decades. A major contribution to understanding modern India, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of social history, political science, political sociology, gender studies, linguistics, and South Asian studies.

Social Spaces and the Public Sphere

Social Spaces and the Public Sphere PDF Author: Harikrishnan Sasikumar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Every society produces its own social space-where people meet, engage and socialise in everyday life. Here, opinions are formed and "public consciousness" is shaped; it is a physical manifestation of the "public sphere". What, then, can these social spaces tell us about modernity and social relations in a society? I explore this question in my research, in the context of Kerala modernity. Using discourse analysis, participant observation, and personal interviews, my work traces the transformation of public spaces in nineteenth and twentieth century Kerala. Here, I move away from an abstract notion of the public sphere, to focus on physical public spaces. Henri Lefebvre's work on the production of (social) space, and the conceptualisation of a spatial triad-representations of space (conceived space), spatial practices (perceived space) and representational spaces (lived space)-allows us to study space "as itself". Modernity then becomes linked to a contest for-and in-space. Traditional social relations in pre-modern Kerala were determined by caste, and the lowered castes were excluded from mainstream society socially, ideologically, and indeed, spatially. The struggle for access to mainstream public spaces-markets, teashops, public roads-was pivotal in subverting this traditional social order. The socio-economic reforms of late nineteenth early-twentieth century created new spaces by the that continued to shape a rich and vibrant (masculine) modern public sphere centred around the various literary and science associations, reading rooms and libraries, film, arts and sports clubs, public grounds, etc. By the 1980s, a new struggle for spaces emerged between the state, capital and religion. Decentralisation project adopted by the government in the 1990s as a political response led to the creation of new spaces and a radical redefinition of civil society organisations in Kerala, thereby opening up a new spatiality-and new power struggle. Contemporary struggles in social spaces attempt to nurture on the one hand, the new grassroots movements, issue-based groups and rights-based organisations, while on the other, fight against the looming threat of political hijacking, privatization and communalisation. A spatial-history allows us to problematize a linear narrative of modernity, and account for its complexities in the contemporary times.

Transnationalizing the Public Sphere

Transnationalizing the Public Sphere PDF Author: Nancy Fraser
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745656609
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
Is Habermas’s concept of the public sphere still relevant in an age of globalization, when the transnational flows of people and information have become increasingly intensive and when the nation-state can no longer be taken granted as the natural frame for social and political debate? This is the question posed with characteristic acuity by Nancy Fraser in her influential article ‘Transnationalizing the Public Sphere?’ Challenging careless uses of the term ‘global public sphere’, Fraser raises the debate about the nature and role of the public sphere in a global age to a new level. While drawing on the richness of Habermas’s conception and remaining faithful to the spirit of critical theory, Fraser thoroughly reconstructs the concepts of inclusion, legitimacy and efficacy for our globalizing times. This book includes Fraser’s original article as well as specially commissioned contributions that raise searching questions about the theoretical assumptions and empirical grounds of Fraser’s argument. They are concerned with the fundamental premises of Habermas’s development of the concept of the public sphere as a normative ideal in complex societies; the significance of the fact that the public sphere emerged in modern states that were also imperial; whether ‘scaling up’ to a global public sphere means giving up on local and national publics; the role of ‘counterpublics’ in developing alternative globalization; and what inclusion might possibly mean for a global public. Fraser responds to these questions in detail in an extended reply to her critics. An invaluable resource for students and scholars concerned with the role of the public sphere beyond the nation-state, this book will also be welcomed by anyone interested in globalization and democracy today.

The Politics of Public Space in Republican Rome

The Politics of Public Space in Republican Rome PDF Author: Amy Russell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107040493
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
This book explores how public space in Republican Rome was an unstable category marked, experienced, and defined by multiple actors and audiences.

The Space of Opinion

The Space of Opinion PDF Author: Ronald N. Jacobs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199339643
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
While the newspaper op-ed page, the Sunday morning political talk shows on television, and the evening cable-news television lineup have an obvious and growing influence in American politics and political communication, social scientists and media scholars tend to be broadly critical of the rise of organized punditry during the 20th century without ever providing a close empirical analysis. What is the nature of the contemporary space of opinion? How has it developed historically? What kinds of people speak in this space? What styles of writing and speech do they use? What types of authority and expertise do they draw on? And what impact do their commentaries have on public debate? To describe and analyze this complex space of news media, Ronald Jacobs and Eleanor Townsley rely on enormous samples of opinion collected from newspapers and television shows during the first years of the last two Presidential administrations. They also employ biographical data on authors of opinion to connect specific argument styles to specific types of authors, and examine the distribution of authors and argument types across different formats. The result is a close mapping that reveals a massive expansion and differentiation of the opinion space. It tells a complex story of shifting intersections between journalism, politics, the academy, and the new sector of think tanks. It also reveals a proliferation of genres and forms of opinion; not only have the people who speak within the space of opinion become more diverse over time, but the formats of opinion-claims to authority, styles of speech, and modes of addressing publics-have also become more varied. Though Jacobs and Townsley find many changes, they also find continuities. Despite public anxieties, the project of objective journalism is alive and well, thriving in the older, more traditional formats, and if anything, the proliferation of newer formats has resulted in an intensified commitment (by some) to core journalistic values as clear points of difference that offer competing logics of distinction and professional justification. But the current moment does represent a real challenge as more and different shows compete to narrate politics in the most compelling, authoritative, and influential manner. By providing the first systematic study of media opinion and news commentary, The Space of Opinion will fill an important gap on research about media, politics, and the civil society and will attract readers in a number of disciplines, including sociology, communication, media studies, and political science.

Museums and the Public Sphere

Museums and the Public Sphere PDF Author: Jennifer Barrett
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118274830
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Museums and the Public Sphere investigates the role of museums around the world as sites of democratic public space. Explores the role of museums around the world as sites of public discourse and democracy Examines the changing idea of the museum in relation to other public sites and spaces, including community cultural centers, public halls and the internet Offers a sophisticated portrait of the public, and how it is realized, invoked, and understood in the museum context Offers relevant case studies and discussions of how museums can engage with their publics' in more complex, productive ways

The Public Space of Social Media

The Public Space of Social Media PDF Author: Therese Tierney
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136203591
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Social media is restructuring urban practices–through ad-hoc experimentation, commercial software development, and communities of participation. This book is the first to consider how practices contained within social media are situated within a larger genealogy of public space, including theories of communal identity, civitas and democracy, the fete, and self-expression. Through empirical research, the actual social practices of participants of networked publics are described and analyzed. Documenting how online counterpublics use the Internet to transmit classified photos, mobilize activists, and challenge the status quo, Tierney argues that online activities do not stop in online conversations; they are physically grounded through mobile GPS coordinates which are then transformed into activities in physical space—the street, the plaza, the places where people have traditionally gathered to demonstrate and express their opinions publicly.

Transcritique

Transcritique PDF Author: Kojin Karatani
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262263368
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Kojin Karatani's Transcritique introduces a startlingly new dimension to Immanuel Kant's transcendental critique by using Kant to read Karl Marx and Marx to read Kant. In a direct challenge to standard academic approaches to both thinkers, Karatani's transcritical readings discover the ethical roots of socialism in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and a Kantian critique of money in Marx's Capital. Karatani reads Kant as a philosopher who sought to wrest metaphysics from the discredited realm of theoretical dogma in order to restore it to its proper place in the sphere of ethics and praxis. With this as his own critical model, he then presents a reading of Marx that attempts to liberate Marxism from longstanding Marxist and socialist presuppositions in order to locate a solid theoretical basis for a positive activism capable of gradually superseding the trinity of Capital-Nation-State.

Imagination and the Public Sphere

Imagination and the Public Sphere PDF Author: Susan G. Cumings
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527551172
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Imagination and the Public Sphere is an interdisciplinary collection which explores the politics of identities and the equally challenging politics of social space, seeking the potential for authentic debate and dissent in a public sphere transformed by the mass media and consumer culture. Using both contemporary and historical examples, contributors to this volume address such intersecting, and at times competing, elements of lived experience and cultural practice as art and politics, celebrity culture and staged display, gender and religion, religion and science, religion and technology, and technology and teaching, aware of the dynamic interplays of expression and regulation and alert for the emergence of unanticipated ways of living and making meaningful connection. This collection asks, in an era that sees identities increasingly pre-packaged and lives thoroughly mediatized and multiply surveyed, what it means to have collectivity, collective life, and what it means to imagine new possibilities and perform them into being. It asks that we take part in addressing these questions together.

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere PDF Author: J?rgen Habermas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745692338
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This major work retraces the emergence and development of the Bourgeois public sphere - that is, a sphere which was distinct from the state and in which citizens could discuss issues of general interest. In analysing the historical transformations of this sphere, Habermas recovers a concept which is of crucial significance for current debates in social and political theory. Habermas focuses on the liberal notion of the bourgeois public sphere as it emerged in Europe in the early modern period. He examines both the writings of political theorists, including Marx, Mill and de Tocqueville, and the specific institutions and social forms in which the public sphere was realized. This brilliant and influential work has been widely recognized for many years as a classic of contemporary social and political thought, of interest to students and scholars throughout the social sciences and humanities.