[PDF] Peopling The Public Sphere eBook

Author : Harry Browne
Publisher : Síreacht: Longings for Another
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 19,10 MB
Release : 2018
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781782052432

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This book is a critique of the public sphere, both as the centrepiece of some liberal theory about political communications, and as a description of actually existing media practice in Ireland and beyond - in traditional commercial news media and in social media. Written in an accessible style, but with endnotes as necessary, it is a call to more and deeper critical thinking about media, old and new, as well as a consideration of the communicative needs of a present and future movement for transformative political and economic change. The book introduces the public sphere as an historic idea and ideal, a place where democratic subjects deliberate and ensure civil society has a voice at the table of state. It challenges that idea, both in terms of its limitations in a globalised economy and its ultimately technocratic-consensual model of politics, its evasion of what Laclau and Mouffe call 'the ineradicability of antagonism'. It also begins a political-economy critique of the media, the presumed home of the public sphere in the post-18th-century-coffeehouse era. What we can and can't learn by looking at media behaviour through the lens of its proprietors' commercial interests is discussed. The biases of broadcasters and newspapers in the recent economic crisis are considered, along with the pressures and consequences of declining print circulation and migration of advertising online, as well as some initial questions about pluralism and the continuing important role of the public service media, in Ireland and elsewhere. This chapter includes an extensive review of previously unpublished results of a study into newspaper coverage of the Irish movement against the Iraq war. Public Sphere also moves the discussion online, where, though nearly infinite pluralism appears to rule the day, power and freedom are more elusive. Under the regime of 'communicative capitalism', we are all 'content providers', generally without remuneration. The continuing centrality of advertising and corporate power in digital media underlines the need to keep our eyes on the money even when talking about a networked information environment. The familiar question of whether online engagement acts as a substitute for 'real world' politics is supplemented, in this chapter, with an examination of the 'real' content of virtual politics, and of whether we can explain some of the weirdest recent turns in the global political journey in light of special features of the online world, such as the 'fake news' that is widely supposed to have elected Donald Trump. Finally, we look at media alternatives, if any, to the corporate control of potentially transformative communications. Although I regard the concept of the public sphere as hopelessly inadequate at best, I do, in keeping with the theme of the Sireacht series, seek to imagine a healthier environment for public communication in the context of a better Ireland and a better world.

Author : John E. Finn
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 26,21 MB
Release : 2014-03-24
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0700619623

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The U. S. Constitution begins with the soaring words “We the People,” but we, the people, have little to do with the document as most of us have come to know it. When most people think of the constitution they think of it as a legal instrument, the province of judges and lawyers, who alone possess the expertise and knowledge necessary to discern its elusive and complex meaning. This book outlines a very different view of the Constitution as a moral and philosophical statement about who we are as a nation. This “Civic Constitution” constitutes us as a civic body politic, transforming “the people” into a singular political entity. Juxtaposing this view with the legal model, the “Juridic Constitution,” John E. Finn offers a comprehensive account of the Civic Constitution as a public affirmation of the shared principles of national self-identity, and as a particular vision of political community in which we the people play a significant and ongoing role in achieving a constitutional way of life. The Civic Constitution is the constitution of dialogical engagement, of contested meanings, of political principles, of education, of conversation. Peopling the Constitution seeks nothing less than a new interpretation of the American constitutional project in an effort to revive a robust understanding of citizenship. It considers the entire constitutional project, from its founding and maintenance to its failure, with insights into topics ranging from the practice of deliberative democracy and the meaning of citizenship, to constitutional fidelity, civic virtue, the separation of powers, federalism, and constitutional interpretation. The Civic Constitution, in Finn’s telling, is primarily a political project requiring an active, engaged, and most importantly, constitutionally educated citizenry committed to the civic virtues of civility and tending. When we as citizens are unwilling or unable to tend to and sustain the Constitution, and when constitutional questions reduce to legal questions and obscure civic interests, constitutional rot results. And in post-9/11 America, Finn argues, constitutional rot has begun to set in. With its multi-dimensional vision of constitutional governance, Finn's book stands as a corrective to accounts that locate the Constitution in and conceive it essentially as a legal instrument, making a powerful and impassioned argument for restoring the people to their rightful place in the politics and practice of the Constitution.

Author : Noriko Kawamura
Publisher : University of Washington Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 10,41 MB
Release : 2011-06-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0295802049

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In the post-Cold War era, problems of war and peace have become complicated and ambiguous, involving such nonmilitary issues as the north-south dichotomy of power, resource depletion, and globalization of capitalism. To create a twenty-first-century intellectual and theoretical foundation for peace studies, Building New Pathways to Peace considers both the old concepts of tolerance, shalom, and wa, and the relatively new concepts of human security, decent peace, credibility, accountability, plurality, multiculturalism, and transnationalism. It also elucidates impediments to and necessary conditions for actualizing peace.

Author : Stewart Angas Weaver
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 152 pages
File Size : 19,49 MB
Release : 2015
Category : History
ISBN : 0199946957

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This clear, succinct, and elegant contribution to the 'Very Short Introductions' series surveys the history of global exploration and assesses the motives, for good and ill, of those who undertook it. Stewart Weaver traces the history of exploration from the first explorers (including Polynesian and Micronesian peoples, the ancient Greeks, Marco Polo, and Ibn BattÐta), to the European discover of America, the Enlightenment and exploration (focusing on James Cook), and the race to the north and south poles

Author : Lynn Staeheli
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 21,55 MB
Release : 2016-05-06
Category : Law
ISBN : 1135917094

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The People’s Property? is the first book-length scholarly examination of how negotiations over the ownership, control, and peopling of public space are central to the development of publicity, citizenship, and democracy in urban areas. The book asks the questions: Why does it matter who owns public property? Who controls it? Who is in it? Donald Mitchell and Lynn A. Staeheli answer the questions by focusing on the interplay between property (in its geographical sense, as a parcel of owned space) and people. Property rights are often defined as the "right to exclude." It is important, therefore, to understand who (what individual and corporate entities, governed by what kinds of regulations and restrictions) owns publicly accessible property. It is likewise important to understand the changing bases for excluding some people and classes of people from otherwise publicly accessible property. That is to say, it is important to understand how modes of access and possibilities for association in publicly accessible space vary for different individuals and different classes of people, if we are to understand the role public spaces play in shaping democratic possibilities. In what ways are urban public spaces "the people’s property" – and in what ways are they not? What does this mean for citizenship and the constitution of an inclusive, democratic polity? The book develops its argument through five case studies: protest in Washington DC; struggles over the Plaza of Santa Fe, NM; homelessness and property redevelopment in San Diego, CA; the enclosure of public space in a mall in Syracuse, NY; and community gardens in New York City. Though empirically focused on the US, the book is of broader interests as publics in all liberal democracies are under-going rapid reconsideration and transformation.

Author : Matthew Carmona
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 42,19 MB
Release : 2012-09-10
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 1136020497

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Public Places - Urban Spaces is a holistic guide to the many complex and interacting dimensions of urban design. The discussion moves systematically through ideas, theories, research and the practice of urban design from an unrivalled range of sources. It aids the reader by gradually building the concepts one upon the other towards a total view of the subject. The author team explain the catalysts of change and renewal, and explore the global and local contexts and processes within which urban design operates. The book presents six key dimensions of urban design theory and practice - the social, visual, functional, temporal, morphological and perceptual - allowing it to be dipped into for specific information, or read from cover to cover. This is a clear and accessible text that provides a comprehensive discussion of this complex subject.

Author : Miodrag Mitrašinović
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 536 pages
File Size : 14,30 MB
Release : 2021-03-30
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 1351202537

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Recent global appropriations of public spaces through urban activism, public uprising, and political protest have brought back democratic values, beliefs, and practices that have been historically associated with cities. Given the aggressive commodification of public re- sources, public space is critically important due to its capacity to enable forms of public dis- course and social practice which are fundamental for the well-being of democratic societies. Public Space Reader brings together public space scholarship by a cross-disciplinary group of academics and specialists whose essays consider fundamental questions: What is public space and how does it manifest larger cultural, social, and political processes? How are public spaces designed, socially and materially produced, and managed? How does this impact the nature and character of public experience? What roles does it play in the struggles for the just city, and the Right to The City? What critical participatory approaches can be employed to create inclusive public spaces that respond to the diverse needs, desires, and aspirations of individuals and communities alike? What are the critical global and comparative perspectives on public space that can enable further scholarly and professional work? And, what are the futures of public space in the face of global pandemics, such as COVID-19? The readers of this volume will be rewarded with an impressive array of perspectives that are bound to expand critical understanding of public space.

Author : Ryan Powell
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 30,52 MB
Release : 2019-07-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 022663437X

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In Coming Together, Ryan Powell captures the social and political vitality of the first wave of movies made by, for, and about male-desiring men in the United States between World War II and the 1980s. From the underground films of Kenneth Anger and the Gay Girls Riding Club to the gay liberation-era hardcore films and domestic dramas of Joe Gage and James Bidgood, Powell illuminates how central filmmaking and exhibition were to gay socializing and worldmaking. Unearthing scores of films and a trove of film-related ephemera, Coming Together persuasively unsettles popular histories that center Stonewall as a ground zero for gay liberation and visibility. Powell asks how this generation of movie-making—which defiantly challenged legal and cultural norms around sexuality and gender—provided, and may still provide, meaningful models for living.