Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-k7p5g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T10:44:25.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Public Sphere and Comparative Historical Research

An Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Andreas Koller
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In state-of-the-field surveys of historical sociology and of historical social science at large, the study of the public sphere is missing. The rise of historical social science has not led to an established tradition of comparative historical research on the public sphere. This article gives an introduction to this topic and to this special issue, seeking to clarify the definition of the object of study and its stakes and providing an overview of analytic and historical dimensions relevant to the comparative historical study of the public sphere. The article argues that this search for an integrative framework is a necessary condition for well-defined comparative historical research, for incorporating the fragmented research from numerous disciplines, and thus for improving our understanding of the historical formation and the transformations of this central sphere of social life.

Type
Special Section: History and the Social Sciences: Taking Stock and Moving Ahead
Information
Social Science History , Volume 34 , Issue 3: In Honor of Charles Tilly , Fall 2010 , pp. 261 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2010 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Julia,Clemens, Elisabeth S.,Orloff, Ann Shola eds. (2005) Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Alexander, Jeffrey C.,(2006) The Civil Sphere. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Alexander, Jeffrey C. ed. (1998) Real Civil Societies: Dilemmas of Institutionalization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict(1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Anheier, Helmut K. (2004) Civil Society: Measurement, Evaluation, Policy. London: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah, (1968) The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego, CA: Harvest.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah (1973) The Origins of Totalitarianism. Fort Washington, PA: Harvest.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah (1998) The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Aries, Philippe (1989) “Introduction,” in Chartier, Roger (ed.) A History of Private Life. Vol. 3, Passions of the Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: 1–12.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla (1992) “Models of public space: Hannah Arendt, the liberal tradition, and Jürgen Habermas,” in Calhoun, Craig (ed.) Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 73–98.Google Scholar
Berlant, Lauren (2008) The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1996) The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Boyle, James (2008) The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Brunkhorst, Hauke (2002) “Globalising democracy without a state: Weak public, strong public, global constitutionalism.” Millennium 31: 675–90.Google Scholar
Burawoy, Michael (2005) “2004 presidential address: For public sociology.” American Sociological Review 70: 4–28.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig (1993) “Civil society and the public sphere.” Public Culture 5: 267–80.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig (1998) “The public good as a social and cultural project,” in Powell, Walter W. and Clemens, Elisabeth S. (eds.) Private Action and the Public Good. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press: 20–35.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig (2002) “Imagining solidarity: Cosmopolitanism, constitutional patriotism, and the public sphere.” Public Culture 14: 147–72.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig (2003a) “The democratic integration of Europe: Interests, identity, and the public sphere,” in Berezin, Mabel and Schain, Martin A. (eds.) Europe without Borders: Remapping Territory, Citizenship, and Identity in a Transnational Age. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press: 243–74.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig (2003b) “Information technology and the international public sphere,” in Douglas Schuler and Peter Day (eds.) Shaping the Network Society: The New Role of Civil Society in Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 229–51.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig (2006) “The privatization of risk.” Public Culture 18: 257–63.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig (2006) “The privatization of risk.” Public Culture 18: 257–63.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig, ed. (1992) Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig, and McGowan, John, eds. (1997) Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Chartier, Roger, ed. (1989) A History of Private Life. Vol. 3, Passions of the Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cooley, Charles Horton (1966) Social Process. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Cooley, Charles Horton (1983) Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
Curran, James (1991) “Rethinking the media as a public sphere,” in Dahlgren, Peter and Sparks, Colin (eds.) Communication and Citizenship: Journalism and the Public Sphere. London: Routledge: 27–57.Google Scholar
Curran, James (2006) “Media history: The neglected grandparent of media studies,” in Leung, Kenneth W. Y., Kenny, James, and Lee, Paul S. N. (eds.) Global Trends in Communication Education and Research. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton: 17–35.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. (1971) Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Delanty, Gerard, and Engin, Isin, eds. (2003) Handbook of Historical Sociology. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Deutsch, Karl Wolfgang (1966) Nationalism and Social Communication: Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John (1954) The Public and Its Problems. Chicago: Swallow.Google Scholar
Dewey, John (1982) “A new social science,” in The Middle Works, 1899–1924. Vol. 11, 1918–1919. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press: 87–96.Google Scholar
Dewey, John (1987) “Authority and social change,” in The Later Works, 1925–1953. Vol. 11, 1935–1937. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press: 130–49.Google Scholar
Dewey, John (2000) Liberalism and Social Action. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.Google Scholar
Domhoff, William (2006) Who Rules America? Power, Politics, and Social Change. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. (2002) “Concluding remarks: Public sphere, civil society, and political dynamics in Islamic societies,” in Hoexter, Miriam, Eisenstadt, Shmuel N., and Levtzion, Nehemia (eds.) The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies. Albany: State University of New York Press: 139–61.Google Scholar
Eley, Geoff (1992) “Nations, publics, and political cultures: Placing Habermas in the nineteenth century,” in Calhoun, Craig (ed.) Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 289–339.Google Scholar
Emirbayer, Mustafa, and Mimi, Sheller (1999) “Publics in history.” Theory and Society 28: 145–97.Google Scholar
Fine, Gary Alan, and Harrington, Brooke (2004) “Tiny publics: Small groups and civil society.” Sociological Theory 22: 341–56.Google Scholar
Fishkin, James S. (1991) Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Fishkin, James S., and Laslett, Peter, eds. (2003) Debating Deliberative Democracy. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Fleck, Christian, Andreas, Hess, and Lyon, E. Stina, eds. (2009) Intellectuals and Their Publics: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy (1992) “Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy,” in Calhoun, Craig (ed.) Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 109–42.Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton (2002 [1982]) “Preface, 1982,” in Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: xi–xiv.Google Scholar
Gerhards, Jürgen, and Neidhardt, Friedhelm (1991) “Strukturen und Funktionen moderner Öffentlichkeit: Fragestellungen und Ansätze,” in Müller-Doohm, Stefan and Neumann-Braun, Klaus (eds.) Öffentlichkeit, Kultur, Massenkommunikation: Beiträge zur Medien- und Kommunikationssoziologie. Oldenburg, Germany: Bibliotheks- und Informationssystem der Universität Oldenburg: 31–89.Google Scholar
Giugni, Marco, McAdam, Doug, and Tilly, Charles, eds. (1999) How Social Movements Matter. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1961) Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Goldstone, Jack A., ed. (2003) States, Parties, and Social Movements. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Amy, ed. (1998) Freedom of Association. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1973) “Zur Kritik an der Geschichtsphilosophie (R. Koselleck, H. Kesting) [1960],” in Kultur und Kritik: Verstreute Aufsätze. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp: 355–64.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. 2, Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1989[1962]) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1992a) “Concluding remarks,” in Calhoun, Craig (ed.) Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 462–79.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1992b) “Dialectics of rationalization,” in Dews, Peter (ed.) Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with Juürgen Habermas. London: Verso: 95–130.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1992c) “Further reflections on the public sphere,” in Calhoun, Craig (ed.) Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 421–61.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1996a) “Civil society and the political public sphere,” in Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 329–87.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1996b) “Deliberative politics: A procedural concept of democracy,” in Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 287–328.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (2006a) “Political communication in media society: Does democracy still enjoy an epistemic dimension? The impact of normative theory on empirical research.” Communication Theory 16: 411–28.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (2006b) “Religion in the public sphere.” European Journal of Philosophy 14: 1–25.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (2007) “Kommunikative Rationalität und grenzüberschreitende Politik: Eine Replik,” in Peter Niesen and Benjamin Herborth (eds.) Anarchie der kommunikativen Freiheit: Jürgen Habermas und die Theorie der internationalen Politik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp: 406–59.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (2009) “Einleitung,” in Politische Theorie. Vol. 4 of Philosophische Texte: Studienausgabe in fünf Bänden. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp: 9–34.Google Scholar
Hallin, Daniel C. (2008) “Neoliberalism, social movements, and change in media systems in the late twentieth century,” in Hesmondhalgh, David and Toynbee, Jason (eds.) The Media and Social Theory. London: Routledge: 43–58.Google Scholar
Hallin, Daniel C., and Mancini, Paolo (2004) Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hirschman, Albert O. (1982) Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action.Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hohendahl, Peter Uwe, ed. (2000) Öffentlichkeit: Geschichte eines kritischen Begriffs. Stuttgart: Metzler.Google Scholar
Hölscher, Lucian (1979) Öffentlichkeit und Geheimnis: Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Entstehung der Öffentlichkeit in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Koselleck, Reinhart and Stierle, Karlheinz. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.Google Scholar
Hunter, Floyd (1953) Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Hunter, Floyd (1959) Top Leadership, U.S.A.: A Study of Decision Makers. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Ikegami, Eiko (2000) “A sociological theory of publics: Identity and culture as emergent properties in networks.” Social Research 67: 989–1029.Google Scholar
Imhof, Kurt (2006) “Moderne: öffentlichkeit und sozialer Wandel,” in Die Diskontinuität der Moderne: Zur Theorie des sozialen Wandels. Frankfurt am Main: Campus: 185–211.Google Scholar
Imhof, Kurt, Heinz, Kleger, and Gaetano, Romano, eds. (1993–99) Krise und sozialer Wandel: Analyse von Medienereignissen in der Schweiz. 3 vols. Zürich: Seismo.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Jane (1961) The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1996) “An answer to the question: What is enlightenment?” in James Schmidt (ed.) What Is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions. Berkeley: University of California Press: 58–64.Google Scholar
Kivisto, Peter, and Faist, Thomas (2007) Citizenship: Discourse, Theory, and Transnational Prospects. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Klinenberg, Eric (2007) Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media. New York: Metropolitan.Google Scholar
Koller, Andreas (2009) “Kontrafaktische Voraussetzungen,” in Brunkhorst, Hauke, Kreide, Regina, and Lafont, Cristina (eds.) Habermas-Handbuch: Leben–Werk–Wirkung. Stuttgart: Metzler.Google Scholar
Lippmann, Walter (1960) Public Opinion. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Lippmann, Walter (1993) The Phantom Public. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
Ludes, Peter (1993) “Scheinöffentlichkeiten: Medienwissenschaftliche Aufklärungsversuche,” in Faulstich, Werner (ed.) Konzepte von Öffentlichkeit: Drittes Lüneburger Symposium zur Medienwissenschaft. Bardowick: Wissenschaftler-Verlag: 58–82.Google Scholar
Lynch, Marc (2006) Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Mahoney, James, and Rueschemeyer, Dietrich (2003) Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Merton, Robert K. (1936) “The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action.” American Sociological Review 1: 894–904.Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright (2000) The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mische, Ann, and White, Harrison C. (1998) “Between conversation and situation: Public switching dynamics across network domains.” Social Research 65: 695–724.Google Scholar
Negt, Oskar, and Kluge, Alexander (1993 [1972]) Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Neidhardt, Friedhelm (1994) “Öffentlichkeit, öffentliche Meinung, soziale Bewegungen,” in Neidhardt, Friedhelm (ed.) Öffentlichkeit, öffentliche Meinung, soziale Bewegungen. Opladen: Westdeutscher-Verlag: 7–41.Google Scholar
Ober, Josiah (2008) Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Pajnik, Mojca, and Downing, John D. H., eds. (2008) Alternative Media and the Politics of Resistance: Perspectives and Challenges. Ljubljana: Peace Institute.Google Scholar
Park, Robert Ezra, Burgess, Ernest W., and McKenzie, Roderick D. (1925) The City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott (1967a) “On the concept of political power,” in Sociological Theory and Modern Society. New York: Free Press: 297–354.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott (1967b) “On the concept of influence,” in Sociological Theory and Modern Society. New York: Free Press: 355–82.Google Scholar
Pateman, Carole (1988) “The fraternal social contract,” in John Keane (ed.) Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives. London: Verso: 101–27.Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles S. (1986) “The fixation of belief,” in Fisch, Max H. (ed.) Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. Vol. 3, 1872–1878. Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 242–56.Google Scholar
Peters, Bernhard (2008) Public Deliberation and Public Culture: The Writings of Bernhard Peters, 1993–2005, ed. Hartmut Wessler. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Peters, John Durham (1995) “Historical tensions in the concept of public opinion,” in Glasser, Theodore L. and Salmon, Charles T. (eds.) Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent. New York: Guilford: 3–32.Google Scholar
Peters, John Durham (2005) Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Powell, , Walter, W., and Elisabeth, S. Clemens, eds. (1998) Private Action and the Public Good. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Polletta, Francesca, and Lee, John (2006) “Is telling stories good for democracy? Rhetoric in public deliberation after 9/11.” American Sociological Review 71: 699–723.Google Scholar
Powell, Walter W., and Steinberg, Richard, eds. (2006) The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Revel, Jacques (2003) “History and the social sciences,” in Theodore Porter and Dorothy Ross (eds.) Cambridge History of Science. Vol. 7, The Modern Social Sciences. New York: Cambridge University Press: 391–406.Google Scholar
Scannell, Paddy (1990) “Public service broadcasting: The history of a concept,” in Goodwin, Andrew and Whannel, Garry (eds.) Understanding Television. London: Routledge: 11–29.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. (1999) The Cycles of American History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Schneiderhan, Erik, and Khan, Shamus (2008) “Reasons and inclusion: The foundation of deliberation.” Sociological Theory 26: 1–24.Google Scholar
Schudson, Michael (1998) The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sennett, Richard (1977) The Fall of Public Man. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Sennett, Richard (2000) “Reflections on the public realm,” in Bridge, Gary and Watson, Sophie (eds.) A Companion to the City. Oxford: Blackwell: 380–87.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda, ed. (1984) Vision and Method in Historical Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Somers, Margaret R. (1994) “The narrative constitution of identity: A relational and network approach.” Theory and Society 23: 605–49.Google Scholar
Somers, Margaret R. (2008) Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Splichal, Slavko (2003) Principles of Publicity and Press Freedom. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Stone, Geoffrey R. (2005) Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Symes, Carol (2007) A Common Stage: Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles (1999) “Two theories of modernity.” Public Culture 11: 153–74.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles (2004) Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Thernstrom, Stephan, and Richard Sennett, eds. (1969) Nineteenth-Century Cities: Essays in the New Urban History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, John B. (2005) “The new visibility.” Theory, Culture, and Society 22: 31–51.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (2000) “Processes and mechanisms of democratization.” Sociological Theory 18: 1–16.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (2005) Trust and Rule. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (2006) Why? What Happens When People Give Reasons… and Why. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (2007a) Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (2007b) “Grudging consent.” American Interest, September–October.Google Scholar
Turner, Stephen (2003) Liberal Democracy 3.0: Civil Society in an Age of Experts. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Warner, Michael (2002) Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone.Google Scholar
Weber, Max (1958) “Religious rejections of the world and their directions,” in Gerth, Hans and Mills, C. Wright (eds.) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press: 77–128.Google Scholar
Wessler, Hartmut, Peters, Bernhard, Brüggemann, Michael, Königslöw, Katharina Kleinen–v., and Sifft, Stefanie (2008) Transnationalization of Public Spheres. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond (1958) Culture and Society, 1780–1950. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond (1983) Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion (2000) Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar