A rchive Date
[ 06-02-2003 ]
Category
[ Sociology ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
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[Political Science
Social Structures and The Public Sphere
Simon Magus
Public or Private Sphere refers to or have multiple meanings that are concurrent to one another. In the modern senses - it is understood to mean a description of the development of historical middle-class society.
The Public Sphere, in the bourgeois sense, consists of and is derived from a particular notion that private persons come together for a common purpose; and, in so doing - within the context of a civil society - this becomes the public, Society written large. Within this sphere, men, guided by reason, strive to free themselves of seemingly arbitrary laws and regulations imposed upon by a dominant class.
Capitalism, commercialism and mercantilism (as they relate to the modes of production) brought about a realignment of political and social structures that helped to transform and replace previous forms of government.
This represented the emergence of one underlying social class to replace a previously dominant one. Social or political status, therefore, can be seen as the shuffling of seats or transference of power from one group to another – such as, authoritarians giving way to aristocrats. These then give birth to a middle class or Bourgeoisie.
As trans-formative process, it plays a significant role in democratic societies as they become increasingly dependent on capitalization and industrialization of the means of production, capital, wealth accumulation and exchange of good and services. It creates the means by which political clout is measured and social status is obtained or dispensed.
The free flow of information and ideas, communicated among the educated or bureaucratic middle-class, solidify and become a necessary extension to the state’s economic and political well-being. The fortunes of the educated and, increasingly specialised, middle-class is dependent upon their dominance of social institutions (seat of political power) – which they acquire time.
Concurrent and corresponding consequences also occur: changes within the means, methods and processes of production, wealth accumulation – commercial enterprise and other commodity exchange. This has effects on social status and other political aspects of society. Because they often affect the well-being of the State, they become Public matters.
The emergence of the printing press brought fundamental changes to the relationship between the rulers and the ruled; and as information regarding the activities of private individuals become ‘more’ widely known or disseminated it too affected underlying social relationships as well.
Commercial economy also altered the power/political relationships of individuals (supposedly) brought together by reason of common interests.
The removal of divine rights from the political equation, naturally, negates any and all claims to divine legitimacy. If it were so- that ‘all men are king or queen of his or her domain’ – then, in the private spheres of their lives, all men would be free to exercise their inalienable rights (derived from Nature) to freely pursue life, liberty and happiness – unencumbered or unrestrained.
This, naturally, evolves as a natural consequence of belief in the notion that ‘all men are born equal’ and sovereign. Thus, a monarch or a noble can only be a legitimate ruler if and when ‘free men’ have willingly or voluntarily given some or all of their natural (subjective) rights over to another equally sovereign person.
Laws of contradictions
The commercial economic basis of society pre-supposes that the accumulation of capital or wealth depends on having or being in control of one’s own property or possessions(s). This is further validated through Common laws, Statutes or Regulations (all derivatives of Civil Law) and which, in civil society, is expressed as constitutional or civil rights - guarantees under a legal constitution and system of Law.
The private sphere remains or refers to that intimate area within the public sphere that is concerned with the conjugal relationships between individual and/or private citizens with inalienable rights. It represents an area of society that, by convention, seeks and receives special protection from undue intrusion by the state or any of its agencies.
With commercialisation, civil society (public and private spheres) underwent a transformation that rests primarily on the need for, or access to, previously ‘private’ information. News and media became inseparable twins - indispensable in defining the public or civil realms of society. The marketplace (or workplace) provides venues or become forums in which citizens interact and engage in critical social discourses about society in general or a particular sense.
Arts and Letters and the Middle Class:
Capitalism may have given birth to mercantilism (or vice-versa) but it was the freeing up of men of Arts and Letters (educated men) that became the means by which civil society became liberalised. They envisioned and constructed the bridge between the ordinary (private) citizens and the dominant ruling class – aristocracy. In effect, they helped to blur or remove any line of demarcation that may have existed between public and private spheres in civil society.
Natural Rights, freedoms and liberties
Civil Society, the realm of commodity exchange and social labour
- Conjugal or Family rights based on property ownership |
Political Realm
Arts and Letters (press and social clubs)
Market of culture products
- Towns |
Administrative and Executive arms of civil government
State policing
- Courts, nobles or aristocratic society |
It’s also worth noting when discussing public and private spheres of civil society - in the context of democratic ideals – that the lines of demarcation are still not so clear. In the sphere of the conjugal family there exists a certain ‘publicness’ within the ‘privateness’ of familial relationships. One that manifests itself in a public nature as property, ownership, wealth, status - the basis of sovereignty.
Social Institutions and the Public Sphere:
The ascendancy of arts and letters as means to improving one’s social status, along with the commercial interests (free exchange of goods, services or labour) transformed and realigned the existing power relations - away from the aristocrats and into the hands of the middle class.
It was an atmosphere in which all interested parties, regardless of their considered self-interests, found a legitimate function for the state and its institutions: territorial sovereignty maintained by commercial enterprises. Individual sovereignty became almost indistinct with the Sovereign the State.
The converging of the upper strata of the bourgeoisie and aristocrats ensured that prevailing social controls and functions of previous institutions were retained as they represented the landed and monied.
Any critical public debates of such state of affairs took place through art and literature; and, in this manner, had far reaching social implications.
In time, there was an emergence and growth of other public groups and associations that represented the private and commercial interests of artisans, craftsmen, shopkeepers, labourers and so forth. A middle- middle-class, as it were, that sought to be seen as a necessary component of the commercial interests of the state as a territorial entity.
Salons and coffee-houses gave rise to or provide avenues to forums in which public social discussion took place; and as the power and utility of such organisations grew they tended to become (or were seen as) enclaves of radical political activity by the upper middle classes and monied aristocrats.
State leadership or the dominant class and their institutions had the most to lose with such developments. This applied to the Church as public institution as well since its political power rested in the vested interests of the State or it’s embodiment in a very public and social sense.
Equally important to further development of the Territorial State is an educated population. The Church and the Clerics had known .
Control the flow of information and you can dominate with near impunity. It is what makes tyrants tyrannical, laws unjust and states illegitimate. Political power emanates from the will of the people who consider themselves citizens of a civilized society.
Constitutional Equality.
The middle class, freed from obligations to or patronage of the nobility became free of “…. Opinions and became emancipated from the bounds of economic dependence”.
Salons became places where middle class and aristocratic intellectuals met to engage in smart discourses for a purpose other than mere pleasure. Ideas for discussions no longer had to first be vetted by patrons to acquire legitimacy or political currency.
Academies arose out of salons, as did literary societies, which were populated by private persons engaged in productive work and which included public officials of towns and cities – a preponderance of which were middle class academies. Literary societies strove to avoid the social exclusiveness that predominated the salons and coffee-houses.
Academies emerged as public institutions pre-occupied with the native tongue, perceived as the medium of communication and understanding between people in their common quality as human beings, and nothing more than human beings.
In seeking to remove or reduce the social barriers imposed from above by previous forms of social structure and control the middle class interacted with socially prestigious and politically influential nobles as “common human beings”.
The political consequences of such intermingling was the emergence of the precept that political equality among free men, in opposition to absolute monarchs or authority, engenders a need for social equality and a responsibility that falls outside the scope of the constituted State.
The public sphere, in the broader sense of a civil public was largely private. And, because of the seditious potential of such discussions, it only became public in stages that in a manner that tried to maintain and protect advocates and proponents ‘seditious notions’.
This resulted in a dialecticism in which ‘secret associations’ argued about the need to bring about necessary social transformations through association that were more public, less secret. And with time, they came to be guided and informed by public members of the middle classes who had risen to social and political positions as public officials or dignitaries.
Another consequence of such civic upheaval is that a publicness develops in public places where free and educated men gather to discuss social issues that affected all aspects of their private lives – closer to the ideals of liberal democracy – in forums where the private persons were engaged as active participants
As free and open associations, representative of political wills, they assumed institutional traits where:
- Social status was disregarded and replaced by a ‘parity of equality’ in which the authority of arguments ruled the day against rank or social hierarchies.
- The parity of common humanity where private persons constituted and defined the limits and bounds to which persons in public or officious capacities were allowed to use their rank or prestige was suspended or became equivalent to gentlemen’s agreements.
- Economic dependencies (in theory) held no influence.
- Laws of the marketplace or the state were suspended within free associations that had developed out of constitutions that sought to address their particular needs or requirements of associations. Much like the Church of earlier times.
- Discussions in the public sphere pre-supposed that existent problems or social issues had not been previously or properly given due attention to bring about socially satisfactory solutions. These covered areas and subjects of ‘common concern’ that had previously been in the domain of the State or Church authorities – either of which held a monopoly or sway over interpretation as espoused from pulpits, through philosophy, literature, art and so forth.
Commoditisation of Information
As philosophical, literary and works of art came to be mass-produced, marketed and distributed as cultural products they became the forms and sources of readily accessible and consumable information for the general public.
As consumer items and commodities that were no longer strict components of the dominant classes, that is, of the Church or State, they became public representations and eventually lost their lustre of extra-ordinariness, became profane in character and perception.
The process that manages to convert culture into a commodity (commercial interests) underscores the existence of sub-cultures within society, regardless of its social or political structure; and brings to the fore public discussions of inclusiveness or exclusivity as principles within a liberal state.
Irrespective how inclusive the public is as a whole or in any given instance, it cannot close upon itself for it then reverts back to a private form and exhibits signs of exclusiveness
This becomes abundantly clear when the members of an organisation or citizens of the state are represented as being propertied, educated, readers, listeners, spectators or participants, and so forth.
The participatory requirements and expectations of social institutions drive the emergence of a dominant social class that embraces representative government based on the notion that governors can be responsive to the needs and special interests of the governed. That is, accountable to the people that they represent.
This begins to fall apart in practice with potentially severe political in consequences – such as, tyrannies, regardless of form or origin. The question that seems difficult to answer is how – to what limit or extent should the state exercise it power and control over its citizens, against their will.
Groups, organisations, associations or individuals evolved to become public ‘mouthpieces’ of its memberships – private citizens. At other times, they acted as the educators which placed created new emphasis on the need for new forms of institutions and means of controlling State apparatuses.
Illusion of Privacy
Social institutions consist of circles of private individuals with common enough interests and who are conscious of being part of a larger sphere – the Public: a sphere that demands a certain degree of publicness in most, if not, matters.
Most associations develop primarily in large urban areas where there is a heavy concentration of commercial activity; rural populations are often under represented. In addition, rural population were often uneducated and illiterate voices that were seldom heard the ‘Public Spheres’.
A public education, or the means of acquiring more than a rudimentary form of education, by rural citizens emphasized the exclusiveness of urban political associations – even as they propelled upper middle class members to elevated social statuses.
Commercialisation of cultural products ensured liberalisation of the public sphere would succeed, to some extent. 17th century aristocrats were not a ‘reading public’. They kept men of arts and letters, in the service of patrons and largely as advisors.
Literature and art as commodities or cultural products for mass consumption by a broad base of consumers did not gain root until the early 18th century when publishers replaced the patrons as author’s commissioners, commercial organizers and distributors. This was equally true of theatrical productions as social changes brought about changes in the composition of the audiences as well.
Concerts, which, prior to radical shifts within the social structure, were bound to functions that required representation – sanctity and dignity of worship, the glamour of festivities or the splendor of court ceremonies. As a mass product for public consumption these acquired the characteristics of cultural artifices. The establishment of music societies and academies brought about the requirement of payment for admission. In turn, this resulted in performances becoming commodity.
Music, no longer tied to a particular purpose other than that of commodity value, saw the emergence of audiences that no longer consisted only of the monied, propertied and educated. Freed from its function as a service of social representation of art – like other arts it, too, underwent a transformation that was reflective of men exercising their free choice and personal preferences in their consumption.
Tastes in art, no longer the prerogative of a select few in society – the courts or the church – came to be dependent on the perceptions of a consuming public and not only that of art critics, nobility or collectors. Market forces dictated direction and content as much as it had done previously when artists had been beholden to patrons and commissioners.
Privateness oriented to an audience
A distinguishing feature of the Bourgeois family from its predecessors is that the individual members and the physical home are viewed as being sovereign spheres within the State that, normatively, is apolitical.
Civil rights are derived from (subjective) natural rights and include ownership of property or possessions – seen as sovereign within familial rights and associations.
Since early on, the public sphere of the middle class has been bound up and inter-twined with aristocratic culture. In time it has evolved enough to disassociate itself from ‘courtly values or pretensions’. The bourgeois social structure has undergone significant transformation and consolidation to become, with time, the dominant strata of liberal democracies.
Their needs as an educated class may have found some satisfaction in the literary forms of domestic dramas and psychological novels instead of ‘courtly values or pretensions’ of those who frequented public theatres, museums and concerts but the managed to evolve and become representative of a public that seeks agreements, satisfaction and, perhaps, enlightenment through critical, rational public discussion– even while serving, first and foremost, the self-interests of the patriarchal conjugal family structures within the public arena of the State.]
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