To skip this introduction and go directly to read Alexander Mirescu’s In-Depth Analysis “Civil Society in Tunisia: The Arab Spring Comes Home to Roost,” click here.

The Arab Spring is now commonly understood as a tragedy, if not a colossal failure. Those who “knew” that Islam and democracy are fundamentally incompatible feel vindicated. Those critical of American foreign policy find their criticisms confirmed, whether the object of their criticism is that of realpolik – the U.S. should have never supported the purported democratic uprising – or more idealistic – the U.S. should have supported such forces sooner and more thoroughly. I believe these common understandings and criticisms are fundamentally mistaken, based as they are on lazy comparative analysis, not paying attention to the details of political and cultural struggles, and by ethnocentric obsessions and superpower fantasy, not realizing how much the fate of nations is based on local and not global struggles.

In today’s post on Tunisia, a very different understanding is suggested, as I as the author of The Politics of Small Things, see it. The uprising in the Middle East of 2011, sparked by protests in Tunisia, opened up possibilities for fundamental transformation. The possibilities were opened by ordinary people, when they spoke to each other, in their differences, about their common concerns, and developed a capacity to act upon their concerns. In most countries in the region, one way or another, the power these people created together faced other powers and has been overwhelmed. But the game isn’t over, as this report on civic associations in Tunisia shows. The report suggests a corollary to the old adage: those who live by the sword, die by the sword. The persistence of civic action in Tunisia suggests a continued opening: those who manage to speak and act in the presence of others, in their differences, with common principled commitment to their public interaction, open the possibility of an alternative to tragedy.

The promise of the Arab Spring may yet live in the country of its birth. I think we should pay close to this, as we are overwhelmed by the tragic reports and images coming out of Syria and Egypt.

To go directly to read Alexander Mirescu’s In-Depth Analysis “Civil Society in Tunisia: The Arab Spring Comes Home to Roost,” click here.

Now that the Obama administration has concluded that the red line has been crossed, that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons against its own people, there will be more military aid for the rebels from the U.S. and its allies. Although this will certainly affect the course of the war (though the rebels and their strong supporters, such as John McCain, will demand more), equally certain is that this aid will not on its own positively affect the prospects for a just peace, with an improved situation for the Syrian people in their diversity.

The dark situation that Hakan Topal described in his last post on Syria (and Turkey and its neo-Ottoman foreign policy) stands: profoundly undemocratic and illiberal, brutal and barbarian actions are on both sides of the Syrian military conflict. The victory of one side or the other is likely to yield very unpleasant outcomes, as each side reveals itself with more and more horrific means of fighting, and more and more sectarian commitments.

The story of the Syrian opposition is tragic. A very hopeful peaceful protest was heartlessly repressed. The bravery of peaceful protestors in the face of military force, including bombings, was remarkable. I watched the persistence of the protests in the face of brutal force with wonder and deep admiration. Violent resistance was an understandable last resort.

But as resistance fighters have replaced peaceful protesters, and as the war has escalated, with the fortunes of each side rising and falling, the nature of the war seems to have fundamentally undermined the ideals of the protest. Islamist true belief seems to have overwhelmed democratic and pluralistic commitment. Sectarian interest, defense and retribution seem to animate the resistance’s actions, no less than the actions of the government forces and the forces of Hezbollah.

I want to believe that out of this mess something less than horrific may result. But by reading the headlines and the debates here in the U.S., I see little that is promising. I am not an expert on Syria or the region, but as I read what the experts have to say, I despair. They don’t point to a way out. Yet without knowing exactly how it would work, I do see some basis of hope in action off the central political and military stage, not captured in headlines or in expert analysis.

Well before the Arab Spring, in May 2010, I read an interesting article in The New York Times about a literary salon in Syria. It reminded me of the kind of alternative cultural activity I first worked on during the communist years in Poland. The significance of the Polish and the Syrian activities was clear to me: the existence of a space apart from the logic of the existing order, where people could speak and act freely changed the nature of the repressive order. This suggests the possibility of a different order, with a changed relationship between power and culture, in my terms “reinventing political culture,” immediately in a small way, and, perhaps, in a big way in the long term. This happened in Poland. I hope it can also happen in Syria. I see some positive signs.

A couple of weeks ago the Polish translator of Reinventing Political Culture, Agata Lisiak, sent me a note about a new Syrian blog, Syria Untold. She knows my perspective as well as I do and she recognized how important this blog could be. It’s an instance of the politics of small things under extreme circumstances, in wartime conditions. It’s an instance of a small group of people working creatively to reinvent political culture. I think it provides a glimpse of a broad range of activities that provides an alternative to despair. It tells the story of an emergent alternative to tragedy in Syria.

The blog is only a couple of months old, but it is already very impressive. Its self-description:

“Syria Untold is an independent digital media project exploring the storytelling of the Syrian struggle and the diverse forms of resistance. We are a team of Syrian writers, journalists, programmers and designers living in the country and abroad trying to highlight the narrative of the Syrian revolution, which Syrian men and women are writing day by day. Through grassroots campaigns, emerging forms of self-management and self-government and endless manifestations of citizen creativity, a new outspoken Syria has emerged, after decades of repression and paralysis. With mainstream media focusing increasingly on geostrategic and military aspects and less on internal dynamics developing on the ground, we believe there are many aspects of the Syrian struggle that remain uncovered, many stories that we would not like to see forgotten. Welcome to the stories of daily resistance and creativity. Welcome to Syria Untold.”

Clearly this is an example of what I call “the politics of small things,” telling the story of other practices of the politics of small things around Syria.

Syria Untold tells the history of the resistance starting before the Arab Spring. It gives day to day descriptions of non-violent opposition around the country. Playful protests are reported, e.g. even Syrian snowmen want freedom. Other “untold stories” include reports on the work of Syrian artists commenting on the course of the Syrian transformation, a beautiful animated cartoon of a tulip overthrowing a tank by the famous artist, Ali Farzat, the work of “The Rebel Painter of Horan,” and the musicians in the city of Duma using the instruments of war to make music.

The emerging alternative media landscape is sketched. The story of the “creative state building” in the city of Raqqa within the chaos of war is told. The deep significance of demonstrations in the small town Bustan al-Qasr (The Palace Orchard) which seek to maintain the ideals of peaceful resistance and self governance after the withdrawal of the Syrian army is revealed:

“As one of the signs from their countless demonstrations highlights, the people of Bustan al-Qasr inisist that ‘in the Syria of the future there will be no revenge but justice, and everyone without distinction will be held accountable for their actions.’”

There is also a report on an independent Internet Radio station reinforcing this theme. The radio declares:

“We believe that our problem is that we don’t listen to each other. Our message isn’t aimed at any one group over others, rather we try to reach every Syrian heart and especially those of the so called ‘silent majority.’”

Syria Untold is published both in Arabic and English. I don’t know for sure, but I imagine that the Arabic version is even more impressive, as the stories of an alternative to the tragedy is enacted and reported. I don’t know how consequential beyond its immediate creators and audience it will be. But I do know that Syria is different because such a project exists. And I do see an alternative to a tragic end is visible in its actions: grounds for hope.

“There are more than 8 million ordinary objects in this city that carry within them a sense of its inimitable expression. They express its thundering diversity or a thorough particularity; they connect us to other places, past and present or moor us to the here and now; they enliven or aggravate daily life; they epitomize the city at large or hold true to one of its neighborhoods. They may be small, held, and mobile, or large, unwieldy, and stationary. Well-designed or just well-used, they live and survive, creating a ripple of small meanings.”

With this declaration my colleague, Radhika Subramaniam, the chief curator of Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, invited New School faculty, including me, to contribute to her unusual show at the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery planned for this summer, “Masterpieces of Everyday New York: Objects as Story.”

Radhika hopes a diverse group — designers, artists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, historians, writers and musicians — will identify meaningful material objects in everyday life and use them to tell the story of our city. I am intrigued. She has provoked me to think about my material environment and how it speaks to me, and the broader theoretical and political implications of this.

As the author of The Politics of Small Things, I also have special interest. My “small things” was inspired by Arundhati Roy’s in the novel The God of Small Things: gestures and interactions among people as they define and create their social world, constituting their freedom and dignity, and power. In contrast, Radhika is pushing us to think about things material, not human, given in nature and shaped by men and women.

And indeed I have been thinking about such matters recently, taking part in The Politics of Materiality Conference at The New School, listening to an intriguing lecture by Nicolas Langlitz, “Homo Academicus Among Other Cooperative Primates,” attempting to make sense of the research and writing of Bruno Latour, pushed by a number of my challenging students, aided by attending Iddo Tavory’s class lecture last week on “Actor Network Theory,” featuring Latour. All this is about what is sometimes called post-humanism, not exactly my accustomed cup of tea, but worth a tasting. I glean insights, but as with all “isms,” I am skeptical.

With this in mind, I chose and am considering my “masterpiece,” what I think of as “Mike’s Memorial.” In fact, it is a miniature sign, an industrial sticky label: “Michael Asher, Monroe, N.Y., September 11, 2001” placed on a tile in a subway corridor, under the west side of Union Square Park, between 14 ^th Street and 16^th Street. The typed letters on the label are wearing out. A few years ago, I used my pen to restore my friend’s name. Mike’s label is part of a modest 9/11 memorial, on the tiles in the corridor, a label for each of those killed on that fateful day.

The memorial was created by John Lin. I have had trouble finding out much about it, I would really appreciate if someone who reads this tells us more. What I know is what I have been seeing for years and how I have responded.

I walk along the corridor, and not outside in the park, only when the weather is harsh, when I decide I want to remember or want to show a friend or colleague, not often. Few take note of the piece, probably no one but me inspects carefully Mike’s name.

The memorial remembers quietly. I know Mike’s family’s loss is first personal, as is my loss of a dear friend. This memorial understands that. I know that the American response to the 9/11 attack led to extraordinary suffering. Wisely, the memorial abstains from grandiose patriotism. I know that some, the critically inclined, many of my friends, students and colleagues strongly criticize American excesses, but sometimes they forget the suffering and trauma we have experienced. This memorial remembers. I sometimes over the last twelve years have felt lonely thinking about this the way that I do, but then this memorial reminds me that I am not alone, that the person who made it and those few who seek it out, chance upon and appreciate it are with me.

Latour, if I understand him correctly, would have the subway memorial be an actor in a network that includes me, Lin and other “actors” who appreciate his work, including a moving video by Sandi Bachom I found depicting the memorial,  that includes my handiwork. I rather think, student of Hannah Arendt that I am, about the video and the memorial as material artifacts, of human making, creating the setting within which humans act and interact. Latour’s approach reveals connections and developments which are otherwise invisible, clearly an advance. But the approach also minimizes the distinctiveness and special responsibility of human action.

The artists who have made these works are speaking to each other, their works speak to each other, and we respond. The works challenge us to make sense of our world. They constitute the setting for our action, for which we are responsible. “Mike’s Memorial” did not repair itself, the repair required my pen, and, crucially, it also required my decision to use it. The politics of small things includes small material things, and the capacity to speak and act in response to them, always with the potential that we may act together and change the world. Understanding that potential, being responsible for it, is what I get from Arendt and not the post–humanists.

I plan to report on the June opening of “Masterpieces of Everyday New York: Objects as Story,” perhaps joined by colleagues. I will then explore how I believe my book The Politics of Small Things and the memorial in the Union Square subway corridor are in dialogue, recognizing mourning, challenging and humbling those who pay attention, constituting the potential power of their concerted action.

“At the time the circumstances of my arrest in Poland seemed trivial. I hardly thought about them afterward. But now, when I consider the fall of 1989, and the fall of communism, my little run in with the Polish authorities seems highly suggestive of how things were then and what has since come to be.”

With these words, I opened my book After the Fall: The Pursuit of Democracy in Central Europe. I used a description of my brief detention in Lublin at a student theater festival to reveal the struggle for a free public in Communist times. I used my memory of the event to open my exploration of the relationships between public and private, and how the relationships formed the bases for the pursuit of democracy of post communist Central Europe.

In today’s post, I return to my experience in 1974 (drawing from the report in my book) to further my dialogue with Dayan Dayan, as we explore together the relationship between “monstration” and power. I report here first my recollections of my “trivial day” and why what seemed so unimportant at the time was of practical significance in Poland back then. I close by highlighting what I take to be the theoretical significance of my little story.

The Arrest

Disorientation is what I remember about that April afternoon in Lublin, when the People’s Militia detained me for a couple of hours. I was attending a Festival of Youth Theaters. The bulk of the theater presentations in Lublin that week were not very interesting. Some of the best theater groups of the Polish youth movement were not represented in this relatively minor festival, and others of mediocre quality were in great number. Veteran theater critics, journalists, directors, and actors were generally dissatisfied, particularly with one performance I attended, billed as a “happening.” It took place in a gymnasium and involved little more than a rock soundtrack, a colorful slide show, and some student actors playing with an orange and yellow sheet. When it ended, a group of Polish journalists wanted to make things more interesting. They grabbed the sheet and spread it over themselves. They stood on one another’s shoulders, made pyramids, and horsed around. And then they decided to go outside with their merrymaking and turn the pseudo-happening into the real thing.

The journalists under the sheet led the other members of the audience, along with the actors of the failed performance, down two flights of stairs onto a busy thoroughfare in downtown Lublin. And as soon as they hit the street, their act of ordinary horseplay became a public event. Crowds formed on both sides of the street. Theater participants mingled with shoppers, clerks, and workers in marveling at an open spontaneous public event.

But a few others, particularly one man in an oversized trench coat, seemed to be offended. He and a woman companion started shouting at those under the sheet: “You will hurt yourselves!” “Not only yourselves, but others!” “You can’t breathe properly under there!” And the like. With a refined, cosmopolitan sense of what happenings were supposed to provoke, the theater people laughed and enjoyed the couple’s contribution to the show. Others just scoffed at them and shouted back at them to leave the kids alone. The couple left. With that the interest of the passersby dissipated, and the happening moved on. The sheet-being turned up a side street and draped itself over a small Italian Fiat 850-S with German tourist license plates: my car.

Some friends coaxed me into the car with the sheet performers. When it was clear that the next logical step was to start the engine, at my Polish colleagues’ instigation, I turned on the ignition. Ten seconds later, the man in the oversized trench coat swept the sheet off my car and, with a paddy wagon behind him, showed us his identification. He was with the People’s Militia, and he politely indicated that we were to follow him.

At the militia headquarters, we had to hand in our papers. The Poles presented their personal “legitimacja,” I my American passport. Then we were taken to a secured lockup area. I presented unanticipated problems. They hadn’t expected an American to be at this obscure performance, let alone at a place where the divide between theater performance and political order had been breached. They wanted to put an end to the event in as uncompromising a way as possible. But the officers on duty did not seem to have the authority to either release us, or further process our detention.

They told us that they had to confirm our story with the theater festival organizers. But first they confiscated film from the cameras of the journalist photographers. And then we waited.

While we were locked up in the militia station, my Polish friends, veterans of Poland’s subtle politics of cultural life, assured me that nothing serious would happen. They realistically assessed our situation. If I weren’t there, some greater unpleasantness might ensue. Maybe they would be detained without being formally charged for the permissible forty-eight hours. But our little escapade on the street was not really significant, and the city wouldn’t want to risk an international incident over it. Indeed, the local party hacks might have been afraid that their actions would meet disapproval in Warsaw. It was the era of détente. Poland was experiencing an apparent economic boom based on loans from Western governments and banks. Tensions were relaxed and political muscle was not to be flexed. Therefore, the Poles predicted that we would wait for a few hours and then would be warned and released. And they turned out to be right. After two hours, our papers were returned (though not the film) and we were released with a warning not to take part again in “an unauthorized theater event.”

In spite of the benign outcome, when I returned to the festival and later to my apartment in Warsaw, I was shaken up. I had not intended to become involved in Polish politics, except to study its relation to Polish culture. I knew the relationship was intimate, but hadn’t expected to be caught up in it. Yet, the whole adventure almost immediately became the subject of jokes, and I soon forgot it. But I was to be reminded of it again.

A photographer in our group, it seemed, had somehow managed to retain a roll of film documenting what had happened. And months after the event, a weekly newspaper in Krakow, Student, published an account – not a news story, but a comic-book rendition of Little Red Riding Hood. The sheet-being was depicted as Little Red Riding Hood, and the city street became the forest in which we met the Big Bad Wolf: the undercover agent who finally showed his teeth when we were in Grandmother’s House – my car. The newspaper didn’t reveal all of the circumstances of the arrest, but it clearly showed the political police doing its work.

In retrospect, I realize that this happening was more successful than any other I have observed or read about. It crossed the divide between the aesthetic and the social, and it developed a life of its own, encompassing a large and formidable territory. These reflections included. It began inside its own repressive context: it was confined to a gymnasium, because the authorities did not permit performances outside of conventional settings. The authorities wanted only channeled innovation, knowing that without the proper channels, cultural autonomy might not easily find acceptable limits. But those in the world of theater, as well as in the other arts and sciences, pushed limits as a matter of fundamental principle; and in Lublin that day, they improvised.

This activity of the young intellectuals was part of a long struggle with totalized political regimes over the issue of free public space. The happening revealed the nature of the battlefield. On the one side were the soft and hard totalitarians. On the other side were those who provoked the rulers, who struggled for room to act on their own, who were true to their cultural vocations, and those who saw the room so created, enjoyed it, and became collaborators with their resistance.

For the authorities, youth theater was a safety valve. For those involved in this theater, well understanding their situation, it was a base for freedom and for what I call the politics of small things.

The Ironies of Consequence

I discussed this event in Paris with Daniel Dayan and his student at Sciences Po. My key reasons for recalling that long ago, far away event here and in Paris: the Polish authorities worked to keep free speech and action as invisible as possible. The project of monstration, of showing such speech and action to a public, was enacted on that day in an improvised street theater happening, leading to my arrest. The authorities worked to restrict visibility, as my Polish friends and I worked to expand it. They wanted to block the show, but months later a Polish newspaper, retold the story as a fairy tale, elliptically but clearly monstrated the repressive apparatus in action. This media institution witnessed, recorded, translated (avoiding censorship) and illustrated the workings of both the power of the Party State and of an emerging opposition to this power before this opposition was organized. Later this power developed more fully in Poland and around the old Soviet bloc, with internal and international media reporting. It is important to note that the showing on that day in Lublin and later in the Krakow newspaper in important ways made the later developments possible. A seemingly trivial event, after the fact, was consequential. Dayan and I are struck by this, by the ironies of consequence, when the small turns out to be large, and the large, small. The monstration of official politics and the politics of small thing, needs careful examination.

To be continued…

I recently returned from a very enjoyable and very fruitful week in Paris, combining business with pleasure. I spent time with family, and also enjoyed a series of meetings with my dear friend and colleague, Daniel Dayan. We continued our long-term discussions and debates, moving forward to a more concerted effort, imagining more focused work together. His semiotical approach to power will inform my sociological approach and visa versa, with Roland Barthes, Victor Turner, Hannah Arendt and Erving Goffman as our guides. At least that is one way I am thinking about it now. Or as Daniel put it a while back in an earlier discussion: my politics of small things will combine with his analysis of the politics of even smaller things.

We had three meetings in Paris, a public discussion with his media class at Science Po, an extended working breakfast and lunch at two different Parisian cafés, and a beautiful dinner at his place, good food and talk throughout. I fear I haven’t properly thanked him for his wonderful hospitality.

At Sciences Po, Dayan presented a lecture to his class and I responded. This followed a format of public discussion we first developed in our co-taught course at The New School in 2010. He spoke about his theory of media “monstration,” how the media show, focusing attention of a socially constituted public. He highlighted the social theory behind his, pointing to Axel Honneth on recognition and Nancy Fraser’s critique of Honneth, Michel Foucault on the changing styles of visibility: from spectacle to surveillance, Luc Boltanski on the mediation of distant suffering and especially J. L. Austin on speech acts.

At the center of Dayan’s interest is his metaphor of “the media as the top of the iceberg.” He imagines a society’s life, people showing each other things, as involving a great complexity of human actions and interactions, mostly submerged below the surface of broad public perception, not visible for public view. The media’s role is to go down and bring up, deciding what is important, what is worthy of attention, to show and illuminate. As Austin was interested in the fact that sometimes the mere articulation of speech – “acts,” Dayan is interested in how “media act.” By making some things apparent, and some not, they set the agenda, both forming and informing publics.

A key activity of the media, then, is witnessing, where the media record, translate and illustrate for its public. This is Dayan’s framework, as I understand it, most interesting in the details of its application as it provides a means to consider the relationship between media and power. Daniel draws on Austin here. He makes fine distinctions concerning media expression, applying to the media Austin’s terms: exercitives, verdictives, commissives, expositives and behavitives. As he explains it, this makes sense. But I have a concern, which he and I discussed at length.

Dayan focuses on the relationship between the media and power, making fine distinctions, applying Austin as a way of analyzing forms of expression and showing, but he does not make what I take to be the important distinctions between forms of power. Not only the disciplining power of the truth regime in the fashion of Foucault, and the Weberian notion of coercive power and its legitimation, but also the notion of power that emerges from the capacity of a group of people to speak to each other as equals, reveal their individual qualities through their individual actions and then develop the capacity to act in concert. In his presentation at Science Po, Dayan didn’t present in his framework how the media facilitate political power in the sense of Hannah Arendt. I pointed this out, and we discussed this extensively. We did not disagree; rather, we saw the topic of media and power from different directions, with different perspectives.

I illustrated my point by discussing gay marriage, an issue in the news that day in both France and the United States. In the U.S.: the opening hearings at the Supreme Court concerning two cases, one focused on the Federal Defense of Marriage Act and the other focused on a California referendum on gay marriage was widely reported. In France: at the same time, also widely reported, there was a mass demonstration in Paris against gay marriage, against a likely new law (since enacted) legalizing marriage equality. I noted that from the American court hearings commentators judged that it is highly likely that the official recognition of gay marriage would proceed, pushed by broad popular support, while in France, the legislation yielding the same result was meeting popular resistance. There is an interesting irony here.

Media monstration of actions in the Supreme Court revealed the relationship between official power and the power of concerted action. The popular support for gay marriage was a result of a long media monstrating march, from the Stonewall Riots to the Supreme Court, LGBT rights have been emerging as American commonsense. Gay activists meeting, talking and acting together, seen by their friends and colleagues, but also by many strangers thanks to media presentations, have appeared as normal citizens, worthy of full citizens rights. As Daniel and I might put it, the politics of small things became large, through monstration.

In the meanwhile in France, marriage equality’s road to legalization was more a consequence of big politics. It was part of the Socialist Party Platform, upon which François Hollande ran. Public opinion had not been clearly formed around the issue. More popular was the longstanding traditional commonsense that marriage, and more specifically parenting, should be between a man and a woman, and not between two men or two women. The long road of the politics of small things, shown by the media didn’t exist. While in the U.S. the story was of a conservative Supreme Court trying to keep up with changes in the society, in France official power was ahead of public opinion, at least this is the way it looked at the time of our discussion.

Dayan and I don’t completely agree on marriage equality, and more specifically on the importance of parenting equality. Yet, we both saw in this example (and others we discussed during my visit and our discussions) a platform for dialogue, about the connections among the politics of small things, big politics, monstration, and media and publics.

At our breakfast, lunch and dinner, we explored this. We discussed his ideas about media and hospitality, the analogy between media and museums, my concern that we have to consider not only the media, but also media as a facilitator of all social interaction, monstration as a sphere of gesture (thus our common interest in the sociology of Erving Goffman), the media as a system of monstrative institutions, the relationship between the new (small) media and big media, terrorism as it monstrates, our topic, and Israel – Palestine (a zone of conflict about which we disagree) and “politics as if.”

The politics of the consequential and the inconsequential: people, activities, events and monstrations, the relevance of irrelevance, this fascinates us. We will continue to work on it, and we will report here about our progress, from time to time. I will explain more in my next post.

– Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

Over the course of my career as a practitioner and researcher in the field known as “peacebuilding,” I have worked alongside thousands of people in conflicted societies, including in Iraq, Burma, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, the Balkans, and elsewhere. In this article, I explore a dilemma I see in the field, namely the increasingly singular emphasis on grand narratives of peace, known as “Peace Writ Large.” I fear that this frame, while valuable in many ways, may have the unintended consequence of actually undermining inquiry into and support for the powerful micro interactions that occur in even the most polarized conflicts. I argue that we must not lose sight of the power embodied in “peace writ small.”

Since the mid-1990s, approaches to theory-building, policy-making and intervention in conflict have increasingly emphasized macro, long-term societal changes, first under the rubric of “conflict transformation” and now “peacebuilding”.

Building on Johann Galtung’s fundamental concept of positive peace (meant to contrast with “negative peace,” meaning the cessation of violence), “Peace Writ Large” articulates an expansive vision, embracing human rights, environmental sensitivity, sustainable development, gender equity, and other normative and structural transformations. (Chigas & Woodrow, 2009). Anderson and Olsen (2003:12) define Peace Writ Large as comprising change “at the broader level of society as a whole,” which addresses “political, economic, and social grievances that may be driving conflict.” Lederach (1997:84), integrates Peace Writ Large into his definition of peacebuilding, which is:

“…a comprehensive concept that encompasses, generates and sustains the full array of processes, approaches and stages needed to transform conflict toward more sustainable, peaceful relationships…Metaphorically, peace is seen not merely as a stage in time or a condition.  It is seen as a dynamic social construct.”

The focus in this article does not allow space for a full discussion of the rich dialogues and debates relevant to peacebuilding or Peace Writ Large. That said, I note that in my own work I have found that this meta approach expands our tools of engagement and pushes us to move beyond official “Track I” diplomacy and state-based mechanisms, to involve civil society, youth, women, faith leaders and others left out of traditional approaches to violent conflict.  I have worked with university educators in Iraq, police in Northern Ireland, resistance leaders in Burma, human rights defenders in Maldives, Lebanese youth, international observers in the West Bank, development practitioners in Timor-Leste, and others, to support them in articulating and strengthening their own roles in relation to peace. I have seen how a broad view of peacebuilding is critical for deeply transforming intractable conflicts.

However, I see that this trend also presents serious problems for theory and practice. Fundamentally, the problem comes down to what is being noticed and privileged in research and practice. As the lens widens to embrace a grander narrative of peace, dynamics of conflict and violence appear even more monolithic and without solutions. The fragile seams and small spaces, in which people and institutions do take enormous risks to engage across conflict lines, are overlooked or disregarded. They are obscured like hairline cracks in a massive obelisk.  These cracks represent micro peace capacities that must be noticed, analyzed, and strengthened. In fact, a recent report by a leading institution in the field explicitly prescribes this approach: “Rather than focusing on micro-level interventions, a systems approach to peace allows for macro-level planning and cumulative impact.” (Alliance for Peacebuilding, 2012:6)  My concern is that the increasing focus on Peace Writ Large actually leads us away from the very sites that offer some of the most innovative and powerful opportunities to change the dynamics of intractable conflict. I suggest that this could be one of many reasons that observers write increasingly of “incomplete” and “unconsolidated” peace (Daadler & Froman, 1999).

Therefore, I suggest we explore the power of the small in the context of the monolithic. Important preliminary research has already been done on the impacts of “peace writ little,” defined as “a local or community level of sustainable peace…coming from work on more effective mechanisms for resolving interpersonal disputes, land conflicts…or political, cultural and/or ethnic tensions at a local level.” (CDA Reflecting on Peace Practice Program, 2012:2)  However, I am here arguing for the need to look at an even more granular level of interaction, at what might be termed “peace writ small”.

Several social theorists have worked to illuminate the intrinsic power of the very small. In Violence, his epic exploration of the dynamics of social violence, Randall Collins focuses on micro interactions and face-to-face encounters, from muggings to the 9/11 cockpit fights. In explaining the importance of interaction, versus structures or institutions, Collins argues that, “…everything we have hitherto referred to as ‘structure’…can be found in the real behavior of everyday life, primarily in repetitive encounters. (Collins, 2008:17)

Social psychologist Peter Coleman’s groundbreaking work on intractable conflict focuses primarily on broad systemic and structural concerns.  However, some key concepts in his “Attractor Landscape Model” shed light on the power of micro interactions. For instance, “latent attractors”, are small but important anomalies in the conflict narrative. Individuals who transgress conflict norms to do business with enemies, serendipitous encounters, and mundane, (if hidden) interactions go against the script of the hegemonic conflict narrative. He calls these “latent attractors” because they may have the power to begin coaxing conflict out of its intractability. Coleman argues that, “These cracks in the foundation of our understanding of the conflict and of the other parties are often important sources of different information.  These latent attractors may prove to be avenues for escaping the conflict.” (Coleman, 2011:101)

Jeffrey Goldfarb’s work has influenced my own thinking and practice. Goldfarb describes the often hidden political power of everyday social interaction (Goldfarb, 2006). This power is particularly important in contexts of total institutions, authoritarian regimes, and intractable conflicts.

Goldfarb describes the overall framework as “the politics of small things.” He theorizes that everyday life is a significant domain for politics. Concurring with Foucault’s analysis, he notes that control, discipline and subversion are present and observable in everyday life. (Goldfarb, 2008).  However, Goldfarb sees something that Foucault missed: in such interactions, there are also possibilities for change. Goldfarb (2009) explains that

The politics of small things happens when people meet, speak and develop a capacity to act together on the basis of shared commitments, principles or ideals. Through these contacts, they develop political power. This power is constituted in social interaction. It has its basis in the definition of the situation, the power of people to define their social reality. In the power of definition, alternatives are constituted to the existing order of things.

He further asserts that when this power involves the “meeting of equals, respectful of factual truth and open to alternative interpretations of the problems they face,” it has the capacity to democratize relations and the social order. In my work, I have seen that these are precisely the conditions for building peace.

In illustrating the politics of small things, Goldfarb offers the example of a small group of people in an oppressive society sitting around a kitchen table, sharing frustrations, identifying “seams” in the smothering fabric of the regime, and discussing coping strategies. Alternative interactions, not condoned within the intractable conflict, are acted out at these tables. Therefore, these apparently mundane interactions become extraordinary sites in which people can reach outside of the constraints of repression and conflict. If we peer into markets, theaters, hospitals, pubs, schools, and even military checkpoints, Goldfarb asserts that we may see that “…people make history in their social interactions…democracy is in the details.” (Goldfarb, 2006:1) I have repeatedly found this to be the case in some of the world’s worst conflicts.

Microscopes in Action

I conclude my discussion with an example of “peace writ small” and the politics of small things in action. In 2005, I led a training and dialogue on peacebuilding with a group of Iraqis involved in economic development. The participants shared some goals, but the stratifications within the group were also significant, and the group was reflective of Iraq’s demographic diversity.

The event focused on increasing community participation in economic and political development.  One hallmark of the facilitating methodology I used in this initiative is allowing participants a great deal of freedom during the process.[1] Small groups engaged, discussed, and planned action. Participants moved freely from group to group, often appearing to exit the formal process altogether. People drank tea, smoked in the garden, and shared food. To a great degree, they met as equals.

Much of the interaction appeared totally unrelated to the task. At one point, one of my Iraqi colleagues suggested I should bring order back to the apparently chaotic process. I chose to not intervene.

In the closing plenary, participants each reflected on the experience, as they passed a symbolic item (a branch from an olive tree) around the circle. When the olive branch reached a young woman from the minority Turkoman community, she began speaking in the Turkoman language, rather than in Arabic or Kurdish, the two official (and dominant) languages of the country.

Suddenly, an older Sunni Arab man interrupted loudly, scolding her for not speaking in Arabic. He shouted, “Iraqis speak Arabic! Why are you here if you are not a real Iraqi? Speak in Arabic!” This man came from Baquba, a city that had seen intense violence. As we had agreed to allow people to conclude in any language, I reminded him not to interrupt. The woman quietly finished her comments.

When the olive branch reached the man who had interrupted, he started to say the foundational Muslim blessing, often invoked at important moments: “Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim – In the name of God, most Gracious, Most Compassionate…” After several words, he faltered and stopped. People prompted him with the next words of the blessing, but he held up his hand for silence. Then he started to weep, unable to complete his thoughts. He passed the olive branch to the next participant.

At the conclusion of the event, a participant complained that I had not really “taught” the group about democracy (one of their objectives). Suddenly, the elderly man who had interrupted earlier spoke up again, disagreeing strongly with the criticism. He insisted that the group had, in fact, “truly practiced democracy…because we were allowed to speak in our Mother Tongue and say what we needed to!” Others agreed, and the mood shifted to joyous celebration, unity and optimism, and away from tension and polarization.[2]

I maintain that this interaction was an example of the transformative power of the politics of small things and peace writ small. In this experience, the group transgressed the stultifying intractable conflict narratives. The historical pluralism in Iraq was re-embraced, and the ethnically divisive and anti-minority narrative of the Baath party (and of the current sectarian violence) was actively resisted. This group had met and spoken as equals, had developed a capacity to act, and ultimately had redefined the situation. This group engaged alternatives, which is miraculous in the context of intractable conflict. The man’s angry ethnocentrism, rooted in the intractable conflict narrative, had given way to tears and a renewed sense of freedom and possibility. A new narrative was enacted in that room, which, I believe, has long-ranging and important consequences for peace.

Conclusion

While I remain passionately committed to the optimistic vision of Peace Writ Large, I increasingly also believe in the power of the small to help guide the practice and study of peace building. A recent report by the Alliance for Peacebuilding (2012) argues that “Peacebuilding is on the cusp of a true revolution”. I concur, and I believe that the real revolution for the field will be in the details.

References

Peacebuilding 2.0: Mapping the Boundaries of an Expanding Field, Alliance for Peacebuilding, Fall 2012

Anderson, Mary B., Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – Or War, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1999

Anderson, Mary B. & Olson, Laura, Confronting War: Critical Lessons for Peace Practitioners. Cambridge, MA: The Collaborative for Development Action, Inc., 2003

CDA Reflecting on Peace Practice Program. Issue Paper: “CLAIMS AND REALITY OF LINKAGES BETWEEN PEACE WRIT LARGE AND peace writ little”, 12 March 2012

Chigas, Diana and Woodrow, Peter, “Envisioning and Pursuing Peace Writ Large”, Berghof Handbook Dialogue No. 7, Peacebuilding at a Crossroads? Dilemmas and Paths for Another Generation, Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, (2009), accessed at this Web address.

Coleman, P.T., Vallacher, R., Nowak, A. and Bue Ngoc, L., Intractable Conflict as an Attractor: Presenting a Dynamical Model of Conflict, Escalation, and Intractability (June 1, 2005). IACM 18th Annual Conference.

Coleman, Peter T., The Five Percent: finding solutions for seemingly impossible conflicts, New York: Public Affairs, 2011

—- “Polarized Collective Identities: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature”, International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, Teachers College Columbia University, p.3

Collins, Randall, Violence: a micro-sociological theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008

Daalder, Ivo & Froman, Michael, “Dayton’s Incomplete Peace”, Foreign Affairs

Vol. 78, No. 6 (Nov. – Dec., 1999), pp. 106-113, Council on Foreign Relations

Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge, New York: Pantheon Books, 1980

—-Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Random House, 1995

Goffman, Erving, The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959

Galtung, Johann, True worlds: a transitional perspective. New York: Free Press, 1981

Goldfarb, Jeffrey, the politics of small things. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006

—- “The Sociology of Micro-politics: An Examination of a Neglected Field of Political Action in the Middle East and Beyond”, Sociology Compass, Vol. 2, Issue 6, Nov. 2008, 1816-2008

—-“Resistance and Creativity in Social Interaction: For and Against Memory in Poland, Israel–Palestine, and the United States”, International Journal of Politics Culture and Society, Springer, Vol. 22 No 2, June 2009

—-Reinventing Political Culture: The Power of Culture versus the Culture of Power, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012

Lederach, John Paul, Building peace. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1997

—-Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996

Ross, Marc Howard, Cultural contestation in ethnic conflilct. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Vallacher, R. R., Coleman, P. T., & Nowak, A. (in press).  “When do conflicts become intractable? The dynamical perspective on malignant social relations.”  In L. Trop (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Intergroup Conflict.  New York: Oxford University Press.

[2] From ZM personal field notes.

In today’s “in depth” post, I use a close reading of Barack Obama’s Nobel Lecture to examine peace and the social condition. It is a continuation of a lifetime exploration. Over the years, I have been impressed by the specific promise and limitations of the force of arms and of non-violent collective action

When I was a young man, I tried to be a pacifist, as I reported here. I was strongly opposed to the war in Vietnam, didn’t want to take part, explored the possibility of being a conscientious objector, but perceived the limits of nonviolent resistance. I couldn’t convince myself that it was possible to effectively fight against Nazism without the force of arms. I couldn’t become a pacifist.

Yet, as an adult, and as an eyewitness to the successful democratic revolutions in Central Europe, I was just as impressed by the way non-violent action could be more effective than violence, seeing the success of my friends and colleagues in the so called velvet revolutions around the old Soviet bloc, as being greatly influenced by the character of their non-violent collective action. The non-violent democratic means had a way of constituting the end, imperfect, but nonetheless, truly functioning democracies. This insight informed my explorations of “the politics of small things” and “reinventing political culture.” in the midst of the disastrous “war on terrorism.”

The means have a way of determining the ends. This is a key proposition, which has informed my political reflections in recent years, concerning the transformation of Central Europe, and also concerning the attempted transformations in the Middle East and North Africa, and to politics of Occupy Wall Street. The proposition also informs my review and analysis here of President Obama’s Nobel Lecture (Obama, 2009) as an exploration of the topic of peace and the social condition. I think Obama confronted the complexity of the social condition, though the situation of his winning the prize was both awkward and rightly controversial from a variety of different points of view. The controversy reflects the complicated relationships between violence and non-violence, war and peace, and, ironically, given the depth of Obama’s speech, his response to the controversy have confirmed that Obama earned his prize. This is my tentative conclusion in my latest analysis of Barack Obama as the American storyteller-in-chief.

To read “Peace and the Social Condition: Barack Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize,” click here.

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 disappear because they have been made invisible. Sometimes there is no public to observe because a given public was denied visibility. The media who could have served as midwives turned abortionists. Potential publics went down the drain of unrealized destinies. They became “non publics” because they are made invisible, because they were terminated.

Publics can also disappear because they stopped being visible on their own; because they chose to become invisible. Instead of opting for Hirschman’s “voice” they faked “ loyalty.” They turned into “marrano” publics. They were not made invisible by others. Like Harry Potter, they chose to wear a mantle of invisibility (Dayan, 2005, Noelle Neuman I989). They were intimidated.

Most of the “non publics” discussed here tend to be publics that used to exist and exist no longer. But the temporality of  “non publics ” also includes “not yet publics,” publics that exist potentially, linger in the limbos waiting to be born. Such publics –like Sleeping Beauty – seem to be awaiting the prince charming (be it a text or an event or a conjuncture). Are they passively waiting for the kiss of life?

No. Goldfarb shows that these publics-in-the-making are far from being amorphous or idle. They not only rehearse their parts, but already enact them in improvised venues: around kitchen tables, in cinematheques, in bookstores or experimental theaters. Waiting for a chance to step on the public stage, they strike the observer by their degree of readiness. The Politics of Small Things allowed them to survive and invent substitutes to a healthy public sphere (Goldfarb 2006).

But there is yet another form of “non public.” This is what we call an “ audience.“ Such a statement calls of course for some explanation.

Full Publics, Almost Publics and Non Publics: The Question of Audiences

Publics in general can be defined in terms of the social production of shared attention. The focus of collective attention generates a variety of attentive, reactive or responsive, “bodies,” such as publics, audiences, witnesses, activists, bystanders and many others. Among such “bodies” two deserve special attention, since, in many ways, they are constructed as antonyms. “Publics“ and “audiences ” enact different roles in the economy of social attention. They also differ in relation to the autonomous or heteronomous nature of their visibility.

Publics are generally conceived as mere providers of attention, as responding bodies, as willing or unwilling resources from which seekers of collective attention will be able to help themselves. Yet publics are not always mere providers of attention. Some publics are themselves calling for attention and trying to control it. They are architects of attention, organizing the attention of other publics (towards the issues they promote).

Many publics have thus something in common with “active minorities” à la Moscovici. They purposefully act as “opinion leaders” on a large scale. Like the media, and before the media, they are providers of visibility, agents of deliberate “monstration“ (Dayan 2009). These are ”full” publics. In comparison to these full publics, audiences, no matter how active, are still confined to the reception end of communicative processes.

The question of attention is linked to the question of visibility. “Full“ publics not only offer attention, they require attention. They need other publics watching them perform. They are eager to be watched. They strike a pose. Their performance may be polemic or consensual. It cannot be invisible. Such publics must “go public” or they stop being publics. Not so for audiences. Audiences often remain invisible until various research strategies quantify, qualify, materialize, their attention. For audiences to become visible, one often needs the goggles of various methodologies (Dayan 2005).

Thus, if we use public as a generic term, and if we choose visibility as the relevant criterion, one can speak of two sorts of publics. The first sort, “full” publics, is performing out in the open. It is a collective whose nature requires the dimension of visibility. In appropriating a famous Barthes’ phrase, one could speak of “obvious“ publics. No matter how intellectually active, the second sort (“audiences”) is not publicly performing. Its habitat is the private sphere. In public terms, audiences remains invisible, unless they are made visible, materialized, conjured up as in a séance that would use statistics instead of a Ouija board. In reference to Barthes (I970) I would define “audiences” as “obtuse” publics (Dayan 2005).

Of course, one should not forget that “obvious publics“ and less obvious ones are often composed of the same people. Publics easily become audiences and vice versa. They are not separated by some conceptual iron curtain. If separated, they are separated in Goffmanian fashion. They are separated by a stage curtain; the curtain that separates public performance (“full” publics) from non performance (“almost publics”, “audiences”) (Dayan 2005). In the political domain, “audiences” become “publics” when their concern for an issue prevails over their engagement with the narrative that raised it and triggers public commitment. I suggest that it is this “coming out” in public that constitutes an audience into a full public. And of course, the same “full” public can revert to the status of a mere audience, whenever unconcerned by the issue at hand.

Audiences have been described here as “almost publics,” “obtuse publics” or “non performing publics.” Audiences seem to provide us with an interesting example of “non publics.” Yet it seems more constructive to describe them as another form of public. After all, in many languages, “public” is a generic word, covering all sorts of social bodies that provide collective attention, including what is generally understood by “audience” (Dayan 2005, Livingstone 2005).

A Genealogical View of Publics: Personae Fictae, Discursive Beings, Observable Realities

Speaking of “non-publics” presupposes of course an ontology of publics. Publics are at once discursive constructions and social realities. Must we choose?

For Schlegel, “public“ was not a thing but a thought, a postulate, “like church.” A similar awareness of possible reification is expressed by literary historian Hélène Merlin (Merlin I994), for whom the public is a “persona ficta,” a fictive being. Of course church- or, more precisely, the unity of church- is indeed a postulate. But any sociologist would point out that church is also an organized body, a political power, and an economic institution. Ambivalence concerning the reality of publics, or as it was put recently; “the real world of audiences” lingers to this day (Hartley I988, Sorlin I992).

Yet, following Hartley’s insight, it seems clear that – simultaneously, or at different times – publics do belong in Popper’s three universes: 1.) Publics are notions, ideations, or – as Schegel puts it – “postulates;” 2.) Publics also offer specific registers of action and specific kinds of subjective experiences; 3.) Publics finally constitute sociological realities that one can observe, visit or measure. Thus we might view publics as a process combining both (1) a persona ficta; (2) the enactment of that fiction; (3) resulting in an observable form of sociation. What this sequence suggests is the essential role played by the “persona ficta,” the “imagined public, “ when it comes to generating actual publics (Dayan 2005).

A public is a collective subject that emerges in response to certain fictions. Thus, as John Peters remarked a-propos Habermas’ 18th century, publics emerge through reading and discussing newspapers, where the notion of “public” is being discussed (Peters 1993). Observable realities are born from intellectual constructions. A given “persona ficta” serves as a model for an observable sociation. What is suggested here is that the observable realities differ, because the constructions that begot them also differ.

In the situation described by Peters, “public” belongs to the category of collective subjects that are imagined in the first person, by a “we.“ “Public” is then one example, among many, of “imagined communities,” the most famous of which is of course the “nation“ (Nothing surprising in this, since Anderson‘s “nations” are essentially institutionalizations of reading publics). But publics are not always imagined in the first person. Only “obvious“ publics result from autonomous processes of imagination.

In the case of other publics, imagination relies on heteronomous processes. The adopted fiction is often created by outside observers. No less than autonomous processes, heteronomous ones lead to observable realities. But they do not lead to the same realities. Different sorts of “publics” can indeed be referred to the professional bodies that produced them and to the professional or lay uses they allow.

Thus the audiences of quantitative research could be described as the result of a demographic imagination. They are the version of publics that demographers construct. Similarly, meaning-making audiences could be described as semioticians’ publics. They are produced by reception scholars either for academic purposes (extending to the speech of readers a know-how gained in the analysis of texts) or for ideological purposes (rebutting Adorno’s “great divide” and redeeming the” popular”).

Both result in observable facts. Yet a demographer’s audience and a semiotician’s audience are quite different from each other. An empirical object that consists in being counted is not the same as one that consists in being listened to. When demographers look at publics, they see age groups or classes. When semioticians look at publics, they see interpretive communities.

A last point concerning the type of public so far described as “obvious” or as “autonomous.“ It seems to be produced by the members of the public themselves, and, up to a point, it is. But of course this sort of public is also modeled by the narratives of journalism, since, beyond the publishing of polls, a large part of the journalistic production consists in what one could call “publi-graphy,“ the chronicling of publics. In a way – whether political or cultural – autonomous publics are only autonomous up to a point. They are also children of journalistic imagination.

What this genealogical analysis means is that different varieties of publics are born in the eyes of their observers. It is therefore essential to closely watch those who watch publics. Who is interested in publics? The question of “who? “ translates into the question of “why?” Why should this or that “persona ficta” be conceived at all? What purposes does it serve? Publics often start their careers as a glint in the eye of social observers.

NOTES

This text represents my attempt at summarizing a few former essays on Publics. These essays are listed in the bibliography.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

* Barthes, Roland (I97O ). “ le Troisième Sens. Réflexion sur quelques photogrammes d’ Eisenstein “. Cahiers du du Cinéma. Juillet I97O

* Callon, M. ( 2002 ) “ Lay scientists and Medical Publics “ Oral communication. * Autour de la notion de Public. Symposium “ Connaissance et Culture”. Université de Paris X Nanterre.. Dec 2, 2002

* Dayan, D ( I992 ) ” Les Mystéres de la Réception. ” Le Débat. n° I7. Paris Gallimard I44: I62

* Dayan, D ( I998 ) “ Le Double Corps du Spectateur : Vers une définition processuelle de la notion de public, Serge Proulx. ed Accusé de Réception.: Le Téléspectateur construit par les Sciences Sociales. Québec, Presses de l’université de Laval

* Dayan, D ( 2001) “ The Peculiar Public of Television “. Media, Culture & Society. London, Sage, vol 23, N° 6 November 2001.743-765

* D ayan, D (2005) “Paying Attention to Attention : Audiences, Publics, Thresholds & Genealogies “. Media practice” 6.1

* Dayan, D (2005) “Mothers, Midwives and Abortionists “ In Sonia Livingstone, ed. Audiences and Publics, London, Intellect press.

° Dayan, D, E Katz & Mario Mesquita (2003) Televisao, Publicos. Coimbra

* Dayan,D & E Katz (2011) Preface to Luckerhoff,J.and D. Jacobi Looking for Non-Publics. Montreal, Quebec University Press ””

* Fiske, J. ( I992 ) “Audiencing : A cultural studies approach to watching television, “.Poetics : 2I (I992) 345 – 359.

* Goldfarb, Jeffrey C. (2006) The Politics of Small Things. Chicago, University of Chicago Press

* Goffman, E.( I959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday life. Garden City, NY- Doubleday.

* Hartley, J. ( I987) “Invisible Fictions, Paedocracy, Pleasure,” Textual Practice, I : 2, I21-138

* Hartley, J. ( I988) “The Real World of Audiences,” Critical Studies in Mass Communications, Sept I998. 234-:238

* Ikegami,Eiko ( 2000 ) “A Sociological Theory of Publics: Identity and Culture as Emergent Properties in Networks,” Social research 67B

* Merlin, Heléne (1994) Public et litterature en france au XVII° siécle. Paris, les Belles lettres,

* Noelle -Neuman, E. (I984) The Spiral of Silence. Public opinion, Our Social Skin, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

* Peters, John Durham ( I993 ) “Distrust of Representation: Habermas and the Public Sphere”. Media, culture and Society. I5, 4

* Schudson, Michael (I997) “Why Conversation is not the Soul of Democracy, “ Critical Studies in Mass Communication, I4(4): 297-3O9

* Sorlin, P ( I992 ) “ le Mirage du Public “ Revue d’Histoire Moderne et contemporaine 39-I992 : 86-IO2

I want to make sense of resistance, and more: to inform it and take part. This has been a central thread of my intellectual and political life.

My latest projects examining this have taken place in new and old forms, Deliberately Considered and my most recent book, Reinventing Political Culture. This Monday at 7pm, we are having a party for the book at The New School, 6 East 16^th Street, Room 1103, the Wolff Conference Room, co-sponsored by the New School’s Sociology Department and its Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, my two primary intellectual homes. It will mostly be a party, with opportunities for guests to buy the book, at a discount, signed, if you like, but as we gather, my dear friend and colleague, Elzbieta Matynia, and I will also use the occasion to publicly discuss some of the implications of the Reinventing Political Culture, especially as it addresses two related questions. What scholarship can contribute to critical political life? And, what is a public sociology?

I hope the readers of Deliberately Considered who are in and around New York come to enjoy the party and take part in the discussion. The wonders of the Web allow for the circle of discussion to be much broader, for New Yorkers and for those who can’t make it on Monday.

Actually, the discussion started last Wednesday. Elzbieta and I met to talk about the book and the plans for the party over a delicious cappuccino at Taralluccci e Vino on 18^th Street near Union Square. She was in a notable self-reflective mood. What is it that we do? How does it relate to what other more professionally oriented scholars do and to what those who are more involved in direct political action (in power and resisting the prevailing powers) do? She talked about some presentations she has coming up: one in a conference at Harvard on women and the Arab Spring, the title of her talk will be “Revolution and its Discontents.” The other talk will be at Scranton University, her topic, “the greening of democracy.”

I told her that I have just turned down two attractive invitations I received to lecture in Poland in May, one to the Wroclaw Global Forum, to speak in the presence of the powerful, and the other to go to the remote town of Sejny, to speak to the remarkable Borderlands Foundation, a center of resistant sensibilities and creative activities, at their 21^st anniversary celebrations. For different reasons both offers were attractive, but for the same reason, I turned them down. I need time to teach and think. I am incapable of being a jet-setting intellectual non-stop. To work, I need to be closer to home, in my study and at The New School.

Over the years, I have gone out into the world, actively protested injustice and tried in my modest ways to support people who attempt to repair an imperfect world. My sociology has attempted to explain their repair work, as I supported it. How did young people in Poland manage to be independently creative and live according to their own ideals at the margins, in student theaters in a totalitarian political order? (The Persistence of Freedom) How is cultural independence sustained despite the workings of the market and state? (On Cultural Freedom) What does the sustained independence say about the alternatives to a decaying empire? (Beyond Glasnost: The Post Totalitarian Mind). How can we avoid in America the enervating false identification of cynicism with criticism? (The Cynical Society) How will democracy be constituted in totalitarian shadows? (After the Fall) What is the special role of intellectuals in supporting democratic life? (Civility and Subversion) And what are the alternatives to unthinking terrorism, anti-terrorism and anti-anti terrorism? (The Politics of Small Things)

Reinventing Political Culture continues my exploration and engagement. It underscores that my answers to the questions I have been addressing in my previous books are predicated upon the support and cultivation of a free and diverse public life, and that a central issue is the relationship between the powers and culture. I work to reinvent the concept of political culture in these terms and to show how the reinvention of specific political cultures, of specific configurations of the relationships between power and culture, has been a significant goal of creative political action in Central Europe, North America and the Middle East (the case studies of the book).

This is the way I began to answer Elzbieta’s concerns about public and more academic sociology over our coffee on Wednesday. We will continue the discussion on Monday. And I should add that this discussion will help inform my understanding of the amazing social movements of the past couple of years, from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park and beyond. I was invited to speak about these movements in May in Poland, invitations I unfortunately had to turn down. But I am committed to make sense of the resistance and reinvention of the activists in these movements, and in my modest way to support them, as has been my custom.

In Germany, the primary focus of discussion was my newest book, Reinventing Political Culture. In Wroclaw, the focus was on my previous book, The Politics of Small Things. I was there for the book launch of its Polish translation and to discuss with a group of students and colleagues the key theoretical chapter in it, “Theorizing the Kitchen Table and Beyond.” I spoke about the chapter in light of the uprisings, occupations, flash mobs and demonstrations in the past couple of years. In Paris, I talked with Daniel about our prospective new book, which would be a development of the themes I raised in my Wroclaw lecture.

Our major thesis will be: the politics of small things + the media = political transformation. One possible transformation is the reinvention of political culture: changing the way people relate power and culture, challenging the bases of power, moving culture from inheritance to creativity, rewriting the story people tell themselves about themselves.

Daniel and I want to explain how the interactions between people, face to face, but especially virtual, mediated interactions, yield the possibility of large-scale social, political and cultural change. We will link his work as a student of semiotics and media, with mine as a student of micro-politics and political culture.

In Wroclaw I shared an outline of a part our project, in a very preliminary form.  I reviewed my idea about the power of the politics of small things, the power of people meeting with shared principles, speaking and acting in each other’s presence, working in concert. This is how I account for the “on the ground” democratic supports of the great changes in 1989, of the anti war movement and the Dean campaign in the United States in 2004, and the Obama campaign in 2008. And it is how Dayan and I will analyze the changes of the past couple of years. In order to do so, we will have to consider systematically the role of new and old media.

We reject the idea that the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and the like can be explained simply by referring to the new media. We will question the notion that the new media automatically create fundamental challenges to the order of things. But we do understand their centrality. They facilitate and amplify the power of social interaction. The process of amplification is of special interest.

The social media expand the reach of the politics of small things. The resistance to people meeting is greatly reduced. The possibility of coordinating common action is greatly facilitated. Thus, the story of Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia and the work of Wael Ghonim in Egypt spread among people who were critically predisposed, and became visible to broader and broader circles. The way actions become visible is a special concern of Dayan’s.

My lecture in Wroclaw, in a sense, took off where my chapter on theorizing the kitchen table ended. I discussed the new evidence of the importance of the politics of small things, but I also started to address two of the key questions that my recent books left unanswered. When do small things matter? And why?

I pointed in two directions: to the foundations of public action and to links between publics. Sometimes actions in a particular place, at a particular time, resonate beyond those who are immediately involved. An extraordinary case in point is Occupy Wall Street, or as I have put it here, the ground zero social movement,  a few steps away from the former site of the World Trade Center, and steps away as well from a center of global capitalism. This needs further study. I suspect all social movements that reach a broader public have such a basis, whether it is given or simulated.

I also know that publics can be linked through new media and old. There is meaning to the chant of the sixties “the whole world is watching.” Getting people to watch beyond those who are immediately involved is required. Dayan names this the challenge of monstration. If not the whole world, at least broader public attention is necessary for social movements to succeed. There were ways that this was conventionally done through television, radio and print media. It still is so, we think, strengthened and supplemented by new media. Dayan and I will work on this together. A new puzzle is why the new developments supplemented by the new media, often lack clearly articulated goals and leadership. Sometimes this seems to be a matter of principle, but often not. We think it is also related to how the new media work.

I started talking about these matters with students and colleagues in Wroclaw. My next appointments to go public with this, ironically, will again be in Wroclaw.  I am scheduled to speak at the Wroclaw Global Forum, an international meeting of political and business leaders, and academics, this year’s topic “Reinventing the West: Prosperity, Security and Democracy at Risk?” I will be there to reflect on movements that present alternatives to the prevailing political economies. Later, in the summer, I will teach in The New School’s Democracy Diversity Institute a course on what I am calling The New “New Social Movements.”  Strange, I hadn’t been in Wroclaw for twenty years, now I am becoming a regular visitor.

I am now thinking about what I have just done and what I am planning on my plane flying over the Atlantic. I will post it on my arrival. Busy day busy person (and quite tired).