By Daniel Dayan, February 8th, 2013 The Diversity of “Non-Publics”: Former Publics, Future Publics
Publics are far from constituting a monolithic ensemble, an obedient army marching in good order. The nature of their concerns allows defining at least three types of publics. First there are political publics, which could be called following Dewey’s model “issue driven” publics. Political publics are flanked on one side by taste publics or aesthetic publics, which are oriented towards “texts” or “performances.” They are flanked on the other side, by recognition seeking publics for whom the dimension of visibility tends to be a major goal (Dayan 2005, Ehrenberg 2008). “Recognition seeking publics” (such as those of soccer or popular music) use their involvement with games or performances in order to endow themselves with visible identities. They can easily turn into political publics
Aesthetic publics (the reading publics of literature, the active publics of theater, the connoisseur publics of music and the arts) have always been singled out as exemplary by theorists of the public sphere, and by Habermas in particular. Yet, despite this ostensible privilege, aesthetic publics have been often ignored, or analyzed as mere training grounds for political publics. “Salons” were first celebrated, and then turned into antechambers to the streets. Interestingly the publics, which tend to be best studied, are political publics. Aesthetic publics have been often neglected. This is why approaches that pay aesthetic publics more than a lip service, approaches such as those of Goldfarb (2006) or Ikegami (2000) are so important.
Of course, the three types of publics outlined above are ideal types. We know they often overlap in reality. But, besides overlapping or “ morphing ” into each other, they share an important dimension. Publics have careers. They have biographies. They go through different stages, including birth, growth, fatigue, aging, death, and some -times resuscitation. Let us first address moments and ways in which publics fade, disappear, and become “non publics.”
A Matter of Life and Death
First of all, publics can die a natural death. They can become “non publics” because what brought them into life no longer exists or no longer attracts their attention. But we should also consider other, much less consensual possibilities: termination or suicide.
Publics can . . .
Read more: On Un-publics: Former Publics, Future Publics, Almost Publics, Observers and Genealogies
By Vince Carducci, December 21st, 2012 
University of Illinois Chicago political scientist Kelly LeRoux (who got her PhD at Wayne State University here in the D) and co-author Anna Bernadska recently published a study, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, that shows a positive correlation between participation in the arts and engagement with civil society. They analyzed more than 2700 respondents to the 2002 General Social Survey, conducted biannually by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and generally considered one of the primary sources of data on American social trends. Their analysis found that people who have direct or indirect involvement with the arts are more likely to also have direct participation in three dimensions of civil society: engagement in civic activities, social tolerance, and other-regarding (i.e., altruistic) behavior. These results hold true even when factoring in demographic variables for age, race, and education.
Most studies on the social impact of the arts address economics and related externalities such as improved educational outcomes and general community well being. (See, for example, the work of Ann Markusen of the Project on Regional and Industrial Economics at the University of Minnesota summarized in my blog post here.) The study by LeRoux and Bernadska is different in that it empiricially investigates ties between the arts and citizenship. Instead of seeking a market rationale for arts patronage, the authors stress the benefits for civic virtue. The study is also noteworthy because rather than looking at the direct impact of community and other arts projects, such as mural painting, theatrical productions, and the like, it takes an audience-studies approach more typically associated with media and communications analysis.
It’s important to note that the authors demonstrate correlation not causation. In statistics, correlation establishes the dependence of certain variables on one another, which is useful in predictive modeling. But the relationship, either positive (the more of one variable, the more of the other) or negative (the more of one variable, the less of the other), doesn’t necessarily mean that the one is specifically the cause of the . . .
Read more: The Aesthetics of Civil Society
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 27th, 2012 
The seminar on “New New Social Movements” has just ended and our tentative findings are in: there is indeed a new kind of social movement that has emerged in the past couple of years. Our task has been to identify and understand the promise and perils of this new movement type, to specify its common set of characteristics, its causes and likely consequences. We began our investigations in Wroclaw and will continue in the coming months. This is the first of a series of progress reports summarizing our deliberations of the past couple of weeks. -Jeff
The new movements are broad and diverse. Our informed discussions ranged from the uprisings of the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, including also the protests in major Romanian cities and the mining region, protests against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in Poland, protests in Israel concerning issues of housing, food, healthcare and other social demands, and the protests in Russia over the absence of democracy in the conduct of the affairs of state and elections. Participants with special knowledge of these social movements presented overviews in light of the social science theory and research of our common readings. We then all compared and contrasted the movements. We worked to identify commonalities and differences in social movement experiences.
We started with readings and a framework for discussion as I reported here. I had a hunch, a working hypothesis: the media is the message, to use the motto of Marshall McCluhan. But I thought about this beyond the social media, as in “this is the Facebook revolution.” Rather my intuition, which the seminar participants supported, told me that the social form (in this sense the media) rather than the content is what these movements share.
There is a resemblance with the new social movements of the recent past studied by Alain Touraine and Alberto Melucci, but there is something else that distinguishes the new social movements of the moment: a generational focus on the creation of new publics to address major . . .
Read more: Politics as an End in Itself: From the Arab Spring to OWS, and Beyond – Part 1
By E. Colin Ruggero, November 18th, 2011 
I spent the early evening of November 8th wandering around the Occupy Philadelphia (OP) encampment. I was trying to clear my head before a scheduled talk by well-known social movement scholar (and one of Glenn Beck’s “most wanted”), Frances Fox Piven.
Ten minutes before the talk was scheduled begin, I moved to the stage area and found a surprisingly large group of people had begun to gather. I was immediately struck by how out of place they looked based on my experience. They lacked the all-weather, busy or exhausted appearance that characterizes a lot of people I encounter at OP. But they also didn’t seem curious or confused. Their gaze took in the camp with understanding. They were nearly all white, young, and dressed similarly, most likely, college students.
I found a spot off to the side of the crowd as Piven was introduced and began to speak. Moments later, I was approached by a black couple, a woman and man, both in their late teens or early twenties, standing arm-in-arm, carrying shopping bags, with glowing faces. They appeared to be on a date and were clearly happy to be together, even in love.
Gesturing toward the stage, the young woman asked me, “What’s all this?” I began to reply that she, Piven, is an academic, but I was interrupted. “No,” the woman corrected me, “all this,” sweeping her arm across the entire encampment. I told her it was Philly’s answer to Occupy Wall Street, “You know, in New York.” She stared back at me, shaking her head slightly. The young man quickly said, “Oh, yeah, I think I heard about that, but I didn’t realize it was here too. Well, this is good because there are problems. I just didn’t know about it cause I didn’t see it on the news or anything.” I asked where they lived. “North Philly, like 21st and Cecil B. Moore.” This is less that 2 miles from where they stood now. Indeed, they live only blocks from Temple University, where Piven had spoken earlier in the day.
That evening, I . . .
Read more: Spirit of ’76: Occupy Philadelphia, Voicelessness, and the Challenge of Growing the Occupy Wall Street Movement
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, May 29th, 2011 
I started to write this post at 37,000 feet, between New York and Paris, flying to see my grandson, Ludovic, and his parents Michel and Brina (my daughter). Preoccupied by the private purpose of my visit, I tried to think about recent public events and their meaning. I was looking forward to private pleasures, working on public matters.
My trip is very much a family affair, no lectures, no meetings planned with colleagues. I am not even sure we will see any sites: Paris without the Eifel Tower or the Louvre, maybe a hardware store or two as Brina and Michael are in the middle of some serious home renovations.
But as I hurtled through the sky over the Atlantic, I wondered about how the private is linked to the public, aware of the fact that generally the French and Americans, and more particularly the French and American media, have dealt with this in very different ways, revealed in recent scandals.
Americans are more likely to look for the truth of the public by examining the private. The French are more convinced that private matters are not public issues. Both have important insights and blind spots, apparent in this week’s news and in the discussions here at DC.
Gary Alan Fine welcomed the candidacy of Tim Pawlenty. Fine, who enjoys what he calls pungent political discourse of the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, also recognizes the importance of serious political debate, seeing this possibility in Pawlenty. But there was another such candidate presenting serious alternatives to the Democrat’s positions, with a record of accomplishment. Many informed Republican partisans thought Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana would be an even more significant candidate. But the twice married to the same woman politician with an apparently complicated private life, chose not to run. His family, specifically his daughters, vetoed his run. Fear of public exposure of what should remain private deprived the Republicans of a candidate. Public debate and contestation has been diminished by the apparent confusion of public and private virtues.
![]( "Dominique Strauss-Kahn (official IMF portrait) © Unknown | IMF photographic archives") . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Thinking about Public and Private at 37,000 Feet
By Tim Rosenkranz, May 25th, 2011 
Tim Rosenkranz reports on the significance of a recent article by the German philosopher and social critic Jürgen Habermas. –Jeff
On April 7, 2011 Germany’s political news magazine “Süeddeutsche Zeitung” published a piece by Habermas in which he openly attacks Chancellor Angela Merkel for her “opinion-poll dominated opportunism.” While the article focused on the problem of European integration and the continuing democracy deficit of the institutional frame of the European Union, Jürgen Habermas points his finger at significant systemic problems of today’s democratic political process – between civil society, the public sphere, political elites and the media-sphere – the problem being the loss of larger political projects in a process driven by the short-term politics of public opinion polls.
While Habermas is still a vocal figure in the academic landscape, at least in the last decade, he limits his editorial participation in larger public debates in the media. If he does speak up, it is mostly concerning the problems of European integration and its democratic process. The recent article “Merkels von Demoskopie geleiteter Opportunismus” (“Merkel’s opinion-poll dominated opportunism”) is not an exception. What caught my attention, however, is that Habermas rarely criticizes German politicians directly in person. It is also unusual in that the article is a theoretical expansion within his larger intellectual frame of “deliberative democracy.”
Very atypical for him, Habermas condenses the larger theoretical problem in one paragraph, which I would translate accordingly:
In general, today’s politics seemingly is transforming into an aggregate condition defined by the abdication of perspective and the will to create (Gestaltungswille). The expanding complexity of issues demanding regulation compels [the political actors] to short term reactions within shrinking scopes of action. As if politicians have adopted the unmasking view of system theory, they follow without shame the opportunistic script of opinion poll dominated (demoskopiegeleitet) power pragmatism.
. . .
Read more: Jürgen Habermas on Power to the Polls
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