scholarly journals Durkheim, Development and the Devil: A Cultural Sociology of Community Conflict

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mervyn Horgan
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Local Media ◽  
Community Conflict ◽  
Symbolic Coding ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Devil

Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life provides a theory of the eminently social processes by which people, places, times and things come to be seen as sacred or profane. He demonstrates how the sacred is a locus of collectivization essential to the formation of the solidaristic bonds that characterize a moral community. Recent work in cultural sociology suggests that the mobilization of the binary discourse of civil society—the sacred/profane—is key to democratic deliberation in the public sphere (Alexander 2006). Drawing on participant observation, local media resources, and printed and online materials, this paper examines the deployment of this binary discourse in a conflict around the rezoning of agricultural land in rural Nova Scotia (2009-2011). Substantively, this case demonstrates how the symbolic coding of rural/agricultural space as sacred played a significant role in the rejection of the proposed rezoning. At a theoretical level, this paper reaffirms that the Durkheimian vision of the symbolic power of the sacred remains a core cultural resource in social organization and political mobilization, and a vital conceptual resource in sociological analysis.

One Europe or several Europes? The cultural logic of narratives of Europe — views from France and Britain

2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Rovisco
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Cultural Logic ◽  
The Public ◽  
Active Debate ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Key Events ◽  
Analytical Tools

Bringing together humanities and social science perspectives, this article applies narrative genres and symbolic classifications as analytical tools to examine competing cultural understandings of Europe, in France and Britain, through 2003 and 2005. Drawing on data from newspaper coverage of a set of key events of European debate, the author discusses how narratives and symbolic configurations of Europe are constructed differently in France and Britain in the context of the symbolic struggle to define who are core Europeans. Through the lens of a cultural sociology approach, the author argues that, in order to make their claims about Europe valid and plausible, political and cultural elites have to be able to translate the cultural idea of Europe into public narratives that resonate with the expectations and beliefs of the wider national public. This is particularly the case in moments of crisis or uncertainty over the meaning of Europe when novel demands and events, deriving from social or political pressures, generate a more active debate in the public sphere about Europe and EU affairs.

Multiethnic Parastates and Nation-Building: The Case of the Transnistrian Imagined Community

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ion Marandici
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
The Public ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Local Media ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Identity Discourses ◽  
The Public Sphere

AbstractThis article explores nation-building processes in the Transnistrian imagined community. While some scholars describe Transnistria’s nation-building strategy as a civic, multicultural project, the analysis of recent demographic and educational data corroborated with the close examination of local media content and official discourses—all point to the emergence of a distinct political culture marked by the increasing use of the Russian language in the public sphere, and the politicization of the Moldovan identity. Discourses about ethnic and national identity in the region have evolved as the Transnistrian elites reimagine the political community as part of the Russkii Mir. These circumstances suggest that, in the long run, the breakaway region might function as the southeastern frontline of Russian irredentism with the elites of the Pridnestrovska͡ia Moldavska͡ia Respublika continuing to call on the Russian Federation to annex the parastate instead of seeking a peaceful reintegration into Moldova.

Democracy and public communication: A Durkheimian lens on Habermas

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-33
Author(s):  
Atle Møen
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Communicative Rationality ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Rational Discourse ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Way

The article proposes a comparison of Durkheim’s and Habermas’s views about public communication and democratic deliberation. They seem to share an understanding that democratic deliberation requires support from the public sphere. Nonetheless, Durkheim believed that rational public communication must gain strength from ceremonies, whereas Habermas essentially focused on communicative rationality and rational discourse within the public sphere. The article thus asks whether Habermas’s theory of rational discourse implies a rationalist fallacy, largely because he offers no plausible explanation of the way in which social actors are emotionally motivated to participate in rational discourses, rather than resorting to violence and manipulation. Could Durkheim’s view about public communication, and its need to gather strength from collective ceremonies and collective sentiments, resolve this theoretical conundrum in that Durkheim’s view is complementary to Habermas’s?

scholarly journals Lobbying Transparency: The Limits of EU Monitory Democracy

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 237-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Dinan
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Critical Appraisal ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Governance Processes ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Official Data ◽  
Monitory Democracy ◽  
The Eu

This article examines the origins and current operation of the EU’s lobbying transparency register and offers a critical review of the drivers and politics associated with lobbying reform in Brussels. The analysis considers the dynamics of political communication in EU institutions and draws on concepts of the fourth estate, the public sphere and monitory democracy to illustrate the particular challenges around lobbying transparency and opening up governance processes to wider scrutiny, and wider participation, at the EU level. This article draws upon interviews, official data and participant observation of some of the deliberations on lobbying transparency dating back to the 2005 ETI. The analysis is brought up to date by examining the data within the Transparency Register itself, both substantively in terms of the kinds of information disclosed and in relation to trends around disclosures and registration, since the register was launched over a decade ago. The article concludes with a critical appraisal of the evolving issue culture relating to lobbying transparency in Brussels as well as recommendations for the development of the Transparency Register itself.

The Detail is in The Devil

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David O’Shaughnessy
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Devil

Beginning in October 1786, Charles Dibdin published a weekly newspaper called The Devil. The conceit is that the Editor is on the point of suicide when the Devil intervenes to dissuade him, providing Dibdin (writing as both the Editor and the Devil) with a pretext to deliver biting satire and vitriolic diatribes against the manners of the age and the degeneration of the theatres and newspapers. This chapter provides an assessment of Dibdin’s career as a journalist, arguing that Dibdin consistently took up an antagonistic stance towards both the theatre and the newspapers, motivated by a belief that the capitulation of both industries to commercial forces amounted to a betrayal of their joint responsibilities to the public sphere. In so doing it provides a much-needed reflection on the intermedial and symbiotic relationship between the theatre and newspaper publishing in the 1780s.

scholarly journals Questioning public interest journalism in New Caledonia

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Mari M'Bala-Ndi
Keyword(s):  
New Caledonia ◽  
Critical Time ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Independent State ◽  
The Public ◽  
Local Media ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

Commentary: François Hollande’s five-year term of office as President of France overlaps a critical time for the future of New Caledonia, where a referendum is set to take place between 2014 and 2019 to decide whether or not the archipelago will remain within the French Republic or become independent. New Caledonia has a unique status in the polity of France. It is a special collectivity, more than a colonial territory, but less than a fully independent state within a Francophone commonwealth. It is the author’s contention, however, that within the public sphere of this unique political entity, it is the media in New Caledonia, rather than the government of metropolitan France that will play the decisive role in influencing the future of New Caledonia. Therefore, this commentary sets out to interrogate the role local media could play in the future of the archipelago and the implications for the New Caledonian public.

scholarly journals Media discourse and the public sphere

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (spe) ◽  
pp. 45-71
Author(s):  
Lilie Chouliaraki
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Prime Time ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Right To Privacy ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
Empirical Material

In this paper, I am attempting to throw into relief significant aspects of the function of television debate as a public sphere. My working assumption is that public dialogue, including its televised versions, involves primarily the establishment of a meaning horizon which delimits what is to be said and known, and which authorises as true certain meanings and knowledges at the expense of others. Put differently, there is a 'politics of truth' at play in every mediated debate which is central in the constitution of the debate as a public sphere. It is precisely this politics that I want to examine in this article. Using empirical material from a prime-time debate programme in Danish television, which is concerned with the right to privacy of public personalities, I analyse the forms of interactional control and dialogic organisation employed in the debate, so as to address the following questions: What are the communicative practices which confer upon the television debate genre the legitimacy of public debate? Which are the principles by which communication is regulated? Which are the domains of meaning construed by this regulation? And which is the potential for democratic deliberation released in these domains?

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