scholarly journals Second-Order Arguments, or Do We Still Need Tolerance in the Public Sphere?

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 319
Author(s):  
Aleksei V. Loginov
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
The Public ◽  
Pragmatic Argument ◽  
Analytical Argument ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The University ◽  
Liberal Concept

A number of widely discussed court decisions on cases of insults against religious feelings in Russia, such as the relatively recent “Pokemon Go” case of blogger Ruslan Sokolovsky or the lawsuit filed against an Orthodox priest by Nikolai Ryabchevsky in Yekaterinburg for comparing Lenin with Hitler, make pertinent the question of why toleration becomes so difficult in matters concerning religion. In this paper, I revise the classical liberal concept of toleration (David Heyd, Peter Nicholson, and John Horton), arguing that it is challenged by contemporary philosophers, who see no room for applying this concept in the “domain of identities”. The most prominent case of “primordial” identity, that is, the notion of identity as a given, is the claim of devoted believers for recognition. Should we replace the principle of toleration by the principle of recognition since the latter better corresponds to identity claims? To address this question, in the first part of the article I describe the mechanism of tolerant attitude (Nicholson, Heyd) and in the second part, I analyze the debates about the possibility or impossibility of inner religious toleration (Avishai Margalit, Cary Nederman, and Maxim Khomyakov) and further compare toleration and recognition as normative principles. In the light of the debates I took part in the conference hosted by the University of Southern Denmark in October 2019 as part of the project “Religious Majority/Minority in Public Space in Russia and Northern Europe: Historical-Cultural Analysis”, I come to the conclusion that the principle of toleration is preferable to the principle of recognition because the “second-order” arguments for toleration in a secular state will be universally acceptable (pragmatic argument) and, therefore, the principle of toleration is more logical (analytical argument). Following Peter John’s thesis about minimal recognition embedded in toleration, it may also be concluded that we need a normatively charged idea of citizenship, which could provide us with universal “second-order” foundation.

scholarly journals The Work of Raymond Williams

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim McGuigan
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Research Seminar ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The University ◽  
Labour Power

This podcast is a recording of Jim McGuigan's talk "The Work of Raymond Williams" that he presented in the CAMRI Research Seminar at the University of Westminster on October 15, 2014.In the talk, Jim McGuigan surveys Williams’s work and its enduring relevance to media and cultural analysis and why Williams’ 1983 book was mistakenly entitled 'Towards 2000', since it is as fresh and relevant to understanding the world now as it was when originally published. Jim has recently edited a collection of writings for Sage selected from the whole of Raymond Williams’s career, 'Raymond Williams on Culture and Society'. He has also edited and added to Williams’s 'Towards 2000', originally published in 1983, to be republished this year with the new title, 'A Short Counter-Revolution – Towards 2000 Revisited', also by Sage. Jim has also written several critical appreciations of Williams’s work, some of which have appeared in recent issues of 'Keywords', the journal of the Raymond Williams Society, and 'The Sociological Review'. His previous book publications include 'Cultural Populism' (1992), 'Culture and the Public Sphere' (1996), 'Modernity and Postmodern Culture' (1999, 2006), 'Rethinking Cultural Policy' (2004), 'Cool Capitalism' (2009) and 'Cultural Analysis' (2010). He is currently writing a book for Palgrave Macmillan to be entitled, 'Neoliberal Culture'. Until recently, Jim sold his labour power to Loughborough University. He is now a freelance scholar, writer and artist.McGuigan, Jim, ed. 2014. Raymond Williams: A Short Counter-Revolution. London: Sage.http://www.uk.sagepub.com/books/Book242744?siteId=sage-uk&prodTypes=any&q=mcguigan&fs=1McGuigan, Jim, ed. 2014. Raymond Williams on Culture and Society. London: Sage.http://www.uk.sagepub.com/books/Book234838?siteId=sage-uk&prodTypes=any&q=mcguigan&fs=1

Habermas, Cultural Hegemony, and the Educational Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Arabic Speaking

This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.

The public and the private: reconfiguring the interrelationship during a civil act

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Natalia Kostenko
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Physical Interaction ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

The subject matter of research interest here is the movement of sociological reflection concerning the interplay of public and private realms in social, political and individual life. The focus is on the boundary constructs embodying publicity, which are, first of all, classical models of the space of appearance for free citizens of the polis (H. Arendt) and the public sphere organised by communicative rationality (Ju. Habermas). Alternative patterns are present in modern ideas pertaining to the significance of biological component in public space in the context of biopolitics (M. Foucault), “inclusive exclusion of bare life” (G. Agamben), as well as performativity of corporeal and linguistic experience related to the right to participate in civil acts such as popular assembly (J. Butler), where the established distinctions between the public and the private are levelled, and the interrelationship of these two realms becomes reconfigured. Once the new media have come into play, both the structure and nature of the public sphere becomes modified. What assumes a decisive role is people’s physical interaction with online communication gadgets, which instantly connect information networks along various trajectories. However, the rapid development of information technology produces particular risks related to the control of communications industry, leaving both public and private realms unprotected and deforming them. This also urges us to rethink the issue of congruence of the two ideas such as transparency of societies and security.

‘Party in the street’: The partisan politics of space

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
State Power ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Public space is often understood as an important ‘node’ of the public sphere. Typically, theorists of public space argue that it is through the trust, civility and openness to others which citizens cultivate within a democracy’s public spaces, that they learn how to relate to one another as fellow members of a shared polity. However, such theorizing fails to articulate how these democratic comportments learned within public spaces relate to the public sphere’s purported role in holding state power to account. In this paper, we examine the ways in which what we call ‘partisan interventions’ into public space can correct for this gap. Using the example of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), we argue that the ways in which CPIM partisans actively cultivate sites of historical regional importance – such as in the village of Kayyur – should be understood as an aspect of the party’s more general concern to present itself to citizens as an agent both capable and worthy of wielding state power. Drawing on histories of supreme partisan contribution and sacrifice, the party influences the ideational background – in competition with other parties – against which it stakes its claims to democratic legitimacy. In contrast to those theorizations of public space that celebrate its separateness from the institutions of formal democratic politics and the state more broadly, the CPIM’s partisan interventions demonstrate how parties’ locations at the intersections of the state and civil society can connect the public sphere to its task of holding state power to account, thereby bringing the explicitly political questions of democratic legitimacy into the everyday spaces of a political community.

scholarly journals UNDERSTANDING LAW AND RELIGION AS CULTURE: MAKING ROOM FOR MEANING IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2006
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between law and religion in contemporary civil society has been a topic of increasing social interest and importance in Canada in the past many years. We have seen the practices and commitments of religious groups and individuals become highly salient on many issues of public policy, including the nature of the institution of marriage, the content of public education, and the uses of public space, to name just a few. As the vehicle for this discussion, I want to ask a straightforward question: When we listen to our public discourse, what is the story that we hear about the relationship between law and religion? How does this topic tend to be spoken about in law and politics – what is our idiom around this issue – and does this story serve us well? Though straightforward, this question has gone all but unanswered in our political and academic discussions. We take for granted our approach to speaking about – and, therefore, our way of thinking about – the relationship between law and religion. In my view, this is most unfortunate because this taken-for-grantedness is the source of our failure to properly understand the critically important relationship between law and religion.

scholarly journals Simulation, Control and Desire. Urban Commons and Semi-Public Space Resilience in the Age of Augmented Transductive Territorial Production

2019 ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfredo Manfredini
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
External Control ◽  
The Public ◽  
Spatial Production ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
Urban Commons

Considering place-based participation a crucial factor for the development of sustainable and resilient cities in the post-digital turn age, this paper addresses the socio-spatial implications of the recent transformation of relationality networks. To understand the drivers of spatial claims emerged in conditions of digitally augmented spectacle and simulation, it focuses on changes occurring in key nodes of central urban public and semi-public spaces of rapidly developing cities. Firstly, it proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of problems related to socio-spatial fragmentation, polarisation and segregation of urban commons subject to external control. Secondly, it discusses opportunities and criticalities emerging from a representational paradox depending on the ambivalence in the play of desire found in digitally augmented semi-public spaces. The discussion is structured to shed light on specific socio-spatial relational practices that counteract the dissipation of the “common worlds” caused by sustained processes of urban gentrification and homogenisation. The theoretical framework is developed from a comparative critical urbanism approach inspired by the right to the city and the right to difference, and elaborates on the discourse on sustainable development that informs the United Nations’ New Urban Agenda. The analysis focuses on how digitally augmented geographies reintroduce practices of participation and commoning that reassemble fragmented relational infrastructures and recombine translocal social, cultural and material elements. Empirical studies on the production of advanced simulative and transductive spatialities in places of enhanced consumption found in Auckland, New Zealand, ground the discussion. These provide evidence of the extent to which the agency of the augmented territorialisation forces reconstitutes inclusive and participatory systems of relationality. The concluding notes, speculating on the emancipatory potential found in these social laboratories, are a call for a radical redefinition of the approach to the problem of the urban commons. Such a change would improve the capacity of urbanism disciplines to adequately engage with the digital turn and efficaciously contribute to a maximally different spatial production that enhances and strengthens democracy and pluralism in the public sphere.

scholarly journals Public space: an exhibition of photography and video

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Franchi
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
General Public ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Unrestricted Access ◽  
Private Corporations ◽  
The Public Sphere

Public Space is a photographic and video project examining the relationship between the public sphere and private corporations. The project explores various sites throughout Toronto and New York that are on private property but have been built with the intention of allowing the general public to have unrestricted access to these areas. These spaces are referred to as Privately Owned Public Space or “POPS”. The goal of the project is to question and document, through photographic and video practice, these spaces within the urban environment and to challenge others to consider whether these spaces are effective in achieving their intended use and if they are truly accessible to the general public. Loss of the public space is an ongoing issue that faces cities and developers often receive concessions to bylaw zoning requirements in exchange for incorporating POPS. This thesis project is a personal exploration of how these spaces are changing the urban environments of North American cities in the twenty first century.

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