The Public Sphere Problem

If rhetoric is central to community, morality, and practical reason, then the next question is: How healthy is this dimension of human life? Not healthy, answers Jürgen Habermas. The diagnosis and the cure are an object of study.

The heart of Habermas' critique lies in his concept of legitimacy -- patterns of discourse must underlie a public identity which guides relationships of public life. In doing so, his work contrasts with those who see themselves as political scientists, and most sociologists of our century who view public life in terms of structures and institutions. At the same time there is a second reorientation involved here which connects "public" more broadly than to government. Government is merely a particular solution to the public problem. Typically today politics is viewed as a subject of study in social contexts from the family to the office to the nation-state. Viewed this way, problems of social identity are fundamentally problems in our rhetoric. This opens up so many new ways of thinking about social relationships and political communication that the studies are practically reinvented. The diagnosis has now crossed from the academic to the public media. Laments for the low state of public discourse are a part of editorial pages and talk shows. It is a part of the same movement.

Given the locating of the problem in the quality of discourse, the theoretical issues which follow have to do with the preconditions and praxis of a satisfactory public discourse. Habermas' approach to addressing this problem has been markedly different from American approaches. You will read both. The European reading will be difficult because of the vocabulary and theoretical differences. Work through it carefully.

Clusters: Communicative Action; Argumentation in the Public Sphere; Communitarianism.

Questions to stimulate thought:

On Habermas (for October 16)

• Start by clarifying some terms as you read:  What is a public sphere? Political realm?  Public opinion? The Principle of Publicity?
• Habermas develops theory through historical argument.  What is historical.argument and how does it work? What its strengths?  Its weaknesses?
• How does Habermas array the economic, the political and the socio-cultural systems?
• What are the differences among Lifeworld, the technical, and the aesthetic spheres?
• What are the Marxist influences on Habermas' thought? How do they weigh against other factors?
• To what extent is Habermas' attack on "capitalism" misguided? To what extent is it accurate? Can you construct the target of his critique differently? Can the critique be constructed against traditional rhetorical theory?
• How does Habermas' approach to the public problem differ from American approaches? What are the strengths of each? What implications do they have on how we do theory?
• What is an "ideal speech situation"? What is its place in Habermas' approach?

Further Theoretical Issues (for October 23)

• What are the characteristics of an effectively working public sphere?
• Who is a citizen? Who isn't?
• What is citizenship according to Asen? According to Cammaerts? Is that different than how Habermas viewed it? How is citizenship a mode of public engagement?
• Compare Habermas and Chambers view of the role of religion in the public sphere.
• How do theorists articulate Habermas' view of religion's role in the public sphere? (In Chambers article)
• How does Habermas relate the concept of the Principle U into ethics and morality?
• What role is the media to play in the public sphere for Habermas, Cammaerts, and Rowland? Is it functioning effectively according to Rowland?
• Would Dahlgren say that the authority of mainstream media been altered by new technologies?
• What dangers and what possibilities are there for the public sphere in the Internet according to Dahlgren?
• Has globalization changed the definition of the public sphere? Of citizenship? Of media? What would Ryder say?
• How does the Internet expand the public sphere? Does it?

Synopsis of Key Moves and Questions to Guide Reading and Discussion (Prepared by Lisa Gring-Pemble, 1997)

Read * before October 16 (inquiry).  Read ** before October 23 (discussion).

Basic Readings:

• * Foss, Foss, and Trapp on Habermas.
• * Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. Thomas Burger. 1962; Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989.
• Habermas, Jürgen. Legitimation Crisis. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. 1973; Boston: Beacon Press, 1975. 1-16.
• Habermas, Jürgen. "Intermediate Reflections: Social Action, Purposive Activity, and Communication." The Theory of Communicative Action Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon, 1981, 1985. I: 273-338.
• Goodnight, G. Thomas. "The Personal, Technical, and Public Spheres of Argument: A Speculative Inquiry into the Art of Public Deliberation." Journal of the American Forensic Association 18 (1982): 214-27.
• McLaughlin, Lisa. "Feminism, the public sphere, media and democracy." Media Culture and Society 15 (1993): 599-620.
• Fisher, Walter. "Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument." Communication Monographs 51 (March 1984): 1-22.

Additional Readings:

• **Mills, C. Wright. “Mass Society and Liberal Education.” Power, Politics and People. Ed. Irving Louis Horowitz. London : Oxford University Press, 1963. 353-73.
• Battani, Marshall, David R. Hall and Rosemary Powers. “Cultures' Structures: Making Meaning in the Public Sphere.” Theory and Society 26.6 (1997): 781-812.
• Willard, Charles Arthur. "McWorld and the Tweed Jihad." Argumentation and Advocacy 33 (Winter 1997): 122-34. Ronald Lee. "Governing Without Passion: Willard's Call for a Rhetoric of Competence." 135-46.  James F. Klumpp. "On Behalf of His Time: Moving Beyond the Willardian Project on the Public Sphere." 147-59.
• Griffin, Cindy L. "The Essentialist Roots of the Public Sphere: A Feminist Critique." Western Journal of Communication 60 (Winter 1996): 21-39.
• Phillips, Kendall R. "The Spaces of Public Dissension: Reconsidering the Public Sphere." Communication Monographs 63 (September 1996): 231-48.
• Calhoun, Craig, ed. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992.
• Ryan, Mary P. "Gender and Public Access: Women's Politics in Nineteenth Century America." Habermas and the Public Sphere. Craig Calhoun, ed. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992. 259-87.
• Miller, Carolyn R. "The Polis as Rhetorical Community." Rhetorica 11 (Summer 1993): 211-240.
• Hogan, J. Michael. "George Gallup and the Rhetoric of Scientific Democracy." Communication Monographs 64 (June 1997): 161-79.
• Hollenbach, David, S.J. "Virtue, the Common Good, and Democracy." New Communitarian Thinking: Persons, Virtues, Institutions and Communities. Ed. Amitai Etzioni. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995. 143-53.
• Fowler, Robert Booth. "Community: Reflections on Definition." New Communitarian Thinking: Persons, Virtues, Institutions and Communities. Ed. Amitai Etzioni. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995. 88-95.
• Dahlgren, Peter. Television and the Public Sphere: Citizenship, Democracy, and the Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995.
• The Black Public Sphere Collective, ed. The Black Public Sphere: A Public Culture Book. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995.
• Robbins, Bruce, ed. The Phantom Public Sphere. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993.
• Asen, Robert. (2003) "The multiple Mr. Dewey: Multiple publics and permeable borders in John Dewey's theory of the public sphere". Argumentation and Advocacy 39, pp. 174-188
• Bennett, W. Lance and Robert M. Entman, eds. Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy. New York: Cambridge UP, 2001.
• Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books, 2002.  Also, Warner, Michael. (2002) "Pubics and Counterpublics" (abbreviated version). QJS 88(4), pp. 413-425.  Wittenberg, David. (2002) "Going out in Public: Visibility and Anonymity in Michael Warner's 'Publics and Counter Publics'". QJS 88(4) pp. 426-433.
• Schudson, Michael. "Why Conversation is Not the Soul of Democracy." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 14 (1997): 297-309.
• Hauser, Gerard. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetorics of Publics and Public Spheres. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1999.
• Wyatt, Robert O., Elihu Katz, and Joohan Kim. "Bridging the Spheres: Political and Personal conversation in Public and Private Spheres." Journal of Communication 50.1 (2000): 71-92.
• Boggs, Carl. “The Great Retreat: Decline of the Public Sphere in Late Twentieth Century America .” Theory and Society 26.6 (1997): 741-780.

Recent Work: (Selected by Elizabeth Gardner and Sheri Parmelee)

• Asen, Robert. “Imagining the Public Sphere.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002): 345-67.
• ** ---. “A Discourse Theory of Citizenship.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90.2 (2004):189-211.
• Benchimol, Alex. “Remaking the Romantic Period: Cultural Materialism, Cultural Studies, and the Radical Public Sphere.” Textual Studies 19.1 (2005): 51-70.
• Bennett, W. Lance, Victor W. Pickard, David P. Lozzi, Carl L. Schroeder, Taso Lagos, and C. Evans Caswell. “Managing the Public Sphere: Journalistic Construction of the Great Globalization Debate.” Journal of Communication 54, no. 3 (2004): 437-55.
• Brants, Kees. “Guest Editor's Introduction: The Internet and the Public Sphere.” Political Communication 22.2 (2005): 143-46.
• Burkart, Roland. “On Jürgen Habermas and Public Relations.”  Public Relations Review 33, no. 3 (2007): 249-54.
• ** Cammaerts, Bart. “Citizenship, the Public Sphere, and Media.” Reclaiming the Media: Communication Rights & Democratic Media Roles. 3 (2007): 1-8.
• Cammaerts, Bart and Leo van Audenhove. “Online Political Debate, Unbounded Citizenship, and the Problematic Nature of a Transnational Public Sphere.” Political Communication 22.2 (2005): 179-96.
• Carlin, Diana B., Dan Schill, David G. Levasseur and Anthony S. King. “The Post 9/11 Public Sphere: Citizen Talk about the 2004 Presidential Debates.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 8.4 (2005): 617-38.
• **Chambers, Simone. “How Religion Speaks to the Agnostic: Habermas on the Persistent Value of Religion.” Constellations 14, no. 2 (2007): 210-23.
• Cooke, Maeve. “A Secular State for a Postsecular Society? Postmetaphysical Political Theory and the Place of Religion.”  Constellations 14, no. 2 (2007): 224-38.
• Couldry, Nick, and Tanja Dreher. “Globalization and the Public Sphere: Exploring the Space of Community Media in Sydney .” Global Media and Communication 3, no. 2 (2007): 79-100.
• Dahlberg, Lincoln. “The Habermasian Public Sphere: Taking Difference Seriously?” Theory and Society 34.2 (2005): 111-136.
• Dahlberg, Lincoln. “The Internet, Deliberative Democracy, and Power: Radicalizing the Public Sphere.” International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 3, no. 1 (2007): 47-64.
• ** Dahlgren, Peter. “The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication.” Political Communication 22.2 (2005): 147-62.
• Delicath, John W. and Kevin Michael DeLuca. “Image Events, the Public Sphere, and Argumentative Practice: The Case of Radical Environmental Groups.” Argumentation 17.3 (2003): 315-333.
• Ferree, Myra Marx, William A. Gamson, Jurgen Gerhards, and Dieter Rucht. “Four Models of the Public Sphere in Modern Democracies.” Theory and Society 31.3 (2002): 289-324.
• Finnegan, Cara A. and Jiyeon Kang. “‘Sighting' the Public: Iconoclasm and Public Sphere Theory.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90 (November 2004): 377-402.
• Garnham, Nicholas. “Habermas and the Public Sphere.” Global Media and Communication 3, no. 2 (2007): 201-14.
• Gordon, Janey. “The Mobile Phone and the Public Sphere: Mobile Phone Usage in Three Critical Situations.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 13, no. 3 (2007): 307-19.
• Gunaratne, Shelton A. “Public Sphere and Communicative Rationality: Interrogating Habermas's Eurocentrism.” Journalism & Communication Monographs 8, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 93-156 Communication and Mass Media Complete , EBSCO host (accessed September 27, 2007).
• Habermas, Jurgen. “Political Communication in Media Society: Does Democracy Still Enjoy an Epistemic Dimension? The Impact of Normative Theory on Empirical Research.” Communciation Theory 16, no. 4 (2006): 411-26.
• Hands, Joss. “Civil Society, Cosmopolitics and the Net: The Legacy of 15 February 2003.” Information, Communication & Society 9, no. 2 (2006): 225-43.
• Harju, Auli. “Citizen Participation and Local Public Spheres: An Agency and Identity Focussed Approach to the Tampere Postal Services Conflict.” Reclaiming the Media: Communication Rights & Democratic Media Roles 92-106. Intellect Ltd., 2007 Communication & Mass Media Complete , EBSCO host (accessed September 30, 2007).
• Kelley-Romano, Stephanie and Mary Hoffman. “It's an SEC Thing: Trying Martha in the Public Sphere.” Critical Problems in Argumentation: Selected Papers from the 13 th Biennial Conference on Argumentation Sponsored by the American Forensic Association and National Communication Association, August. 2003. Ed. Charles Arthur Willard. Washington , D.C. : National Communication Association, 2005, 763-70.
• Klumpp, James F. “When Foundations Fail: Argument without Institutions of Fact.” Plenary Address: Wakeforest Argumentation Conference, Boca Raton , Florida (February 2006).
• McDonald, Kelly Michael and Sarah Taylor Partlow. “Guerilla Girls in Intercollegiate Debate: Testing the Liberal Model of the Public Sphere.” Critical Problems in Argumentation: Selected Papers from the 13 th Biennial Conference on Argumentation Sponsored by the American Forensic Association and National Communication Association, August. 2003. Ed. Charles Arthur Willard. Washington , D.C. : National Communication Association, 2005, 303-10.
• Meisenbach, Rebecca J. “Habermas' Discourse Ethics and Principle of Universalization as a Moral Framework for Organizational Communication.”  Management Communication Quarterly 20, no. 1 (2006): 39-62.
• Muhlberger, Peter. “Human Agency and the Revitalization of the Public Sphere.” Political Communication 22 (2005): 163-78.
• Pinter, Andrej. “Public Sphere and History: Historians' Response to Habermas on the "Worth" of the Past.”  Journal of Communication Inquiry 28, no. 3 (2004): 217-32.
• Prince, John. “Keeping the Conversation Going: Voluntary Associations in the Public Sphere(s).” Media International Australia Incorporating Culture & Policy 111 (May 2004): 145-57.
• Reese, Stephen. “Globalized Journalism in the Public Sphere.” Conference Papers—International Communication Association (2005): 1-23. Communication and Mass Media Complete, EBSCO host (accessed September 30, 2007)
• Roberts, John Michael. “From Populist to Political Dialogue in the Public Sphere: A Bahktinian Approach to Understanding a Place for Radical Utterances in London , 1684-1812.” Cultural Studies 18 (November 2004): 884-910.
• Rowland, Robert C. “A Liberal Theory of the Public Sphere.” Critical Problems in Argumentation: Selected Papers from the 13 th Biennial Conference on Argumentation Sponsored by the American Forensic Association and National Communication Association, August. 2003. Ed. Charles Arthur Willard. Washington , D.C. : National Communication Association, 2005, 281-87.
• **Rowland, Robert C. “Campaign Argument and the Liberal Public Sphere: A Case Study of the Process of Developing Messages in a Congressional Campaign.” Argumentation and Advocacy 42, no. 4 (2006): 206-15.
• **Ryder, Phyllis Mentzell. “In(ter)ventions of Global Democracy: An Analysis of the Rhetorics of the A-16 World Bank/IMF Protests in Washington , DC .” Rhetoric Review 25, no. 4 (2006): 408-26.
• Sinekopova, Galina V. “Building the Public Sphere: Bases and Biases.” Journal of Communicaiton 56 (2006): 505-22.
• Thompson, Jacob, and Matthew G. Gerber. “Public Deliberation and Debate About Global Warming: a Test of the Liberal Public Sphere.” Critical Problems in Argumentation: Selected Papers from the 13 th Biennial Conference on Argumentation Sponsored by the American Forensic Association and National Communication Association, August. 2003. Ed. Charles Arthur Willard. Washington , D.C. : National Communication Association, 2005, 38-48.
• Traboulsi, Fawwaz. “Public Spheres and Urban Space: A Critical Comparative Approach.” New Political Science 27.4 (2005): 529-41.
• Tsfati, Yariv, and Yoram Peri. “Mainstream Media Skepticism and Exposure to Sectorial and Extranational News Media: The Case of Israel .” Mass Communication & Society 9, no. 2 (2006): 165-87.
  

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