cultural studies

[renjith p george]

Raymond Williams’ Conclusion to Culture and Society

The history of the idea of culture is a record of our reactions in
thought and feeling, to the changed conditions of our common life. Our
meaning of culture is a response to the events which our meanings of
industry and democracy most evidently define. (285).
In making his conclusions, a triad of influence that has preoccupied
the book is raised again in the shape of culture, democracy and
industry. Culture is according to Williams’ a reaction to changes ‘in
the condition of our common life’ (285). Different reactions and
resulting situations have created different cultures and consequently
there are many different kinds of culture:
The idea of culture describes our common inquiry but our conclusions
are diverse, as our starting points were diverse. The word, culture,
cannot automatically be pressed into service as any kind of social or
personal directive. (285)
Of the three major issues at stake in these developments (art,
industry, democracy), each has three phases which Williams proceeds to
describe. I outline his findings in the table below.
PHASE Industry Democracy Art
1. 1790 – 1870: a phase of working out new attitudes to industrialism
and democracy. The rejection of production and the social relations
of the factory system Concern at the threat of minority values by
popular supremacy of the new masses. A period of questioning the
intrinsic value of art and its importance to the common life.
2. 1870 – 1914: narrower fronts, specialism in the arts, direct
politics. Sentiment versus the machine. Emphasis on community,
society versus the individual ethic. Defiant exile: art for art’s
sake.
3. 1914 – 1945: a phase of large scale organisations and the mass
media. Acceptance of machine production. Fears of the first phase
are renewed in the context of ‘mass-democracy’ and ‘mass
communications’. The reintegration of art with the common life of
society centred on the word ‘communication’.
Some of these opinions concerning art, industry and democracy did of
course cross periods, but they were not the common or general view
according to Williams.
Mass and Masses
Williams notices that the word ‘masses’ is often associated with a
‘mob’ and he sees this emerging from three social tendencies:
1. the concentration of population in industrial towns;
2. the concentration of workers in factories;
3. and the development of an organized and self-organizing working
class prone to social and political massing.
Yet the masses was a new word for mob, and the traditional
characteristics of the mob were retained it its significance:
gullibility, fickleness, herd-prejudice, lowness of taste and habit.
The masses, on this evidence, formed a perpetual threat to culture.
Mass-thinking, mass-suggestion, mass-prejudice would threaten to swamp
considered individual thinking and feeling. Even democracy, which had
both a classical and a liberal reputation, would lose its savour in
becoming mass-democracy. (288)
Williams sees the new problem as the power of the media to change
public opinion. Yet he also finds a certain prejudice in the term,
‘mass-democracy’. Democracy is the rule of the majority and Williams
wonders whether this might also constitute mass rule, mob rule of the
rule of lowness and mediocrity. Williams considers the label,
‘masses’, and identifies it with working people:
But if this is so, it is clear that what is in question is not only
gullibility, fickleness, herd-prejudice or lowness of taste and habit.
It is also from the open record, the declared intention of the working
people to alter society in many of its aspects, in ways which those to
whom the franchise was formerly restricted deeply disapprove. (288)
For Williams, Mass-democracy does not exist, there is only democracy:
‘Masses=majority cannot be glibly equated with masses=mob’ (289).
In continuing to challenge the term, ‘masses’, Williams considers the
notion of the individual or ‘man in the street’. Williams asks, are we
each only the man on the street or are we something more than that? In
a collective image, the masses are different to us as we are unique
individual yet they are similar so that the public includes us yet is
not us.
I do not think of my relatives, friends, neighbours, colleagues,
acquaintances, as masses ; we none of us can or do. The masses are
always the others, whom we don’t know, and can’t know. Yet now, in our
kind of society, we see those others regularly, in their myriad
variations, stand, physically, beside them. They are here and we are
here with them. And that we are with them is of course the whole
point. To the other people, we also are masses. Masses are other
people. (289)
This way of seeing others is sometimes exploited though for political
and cultural motives.
Mass Communication
The rise of the printing press was intensified in 1811 by the
invention of the steam driven press and by rotary presses in 1815.
Transport links have improved as have telecommunications.
Broadcasting, television and film have emerged. From these
developments, Williams notes a greater number of paper publications at
a lower price, more bills and posters, the rise of RV and broadcasting
programmes and the art of film. How valuable are these developments?
The development of the media has brought a means of communication that
is more impersonal: using photography of actors rather than actors,
radio broadcasts rather than meetings. However Williams says that we
cannot always compare conventional and mass communication fairly. The
result of mass communication has simply been a change in the
activities on which time is spent. Some critics dislike the one-way
sending of information, but Williams points to reading, which has been
providing information with no immediate possibility of response for
centuries.
Williams uses the term ‘multiple transmission’ to describe the
expansion of audience that mass communication has provided. The
audience has grown as a result of growing general education and
technical improvements and by some it is labelled mass communication.
With such a large audience, the media can no longer retain such a
personal feel, yet Williams bel;ieves that it is useful for some kinds
of address. His question though is, what information is being
communicated and how? It depends of course on the intentions of the
broadcaster. Williams suggests that broadcasts can be, ‘art.
education, the givingf of information and opinion’ or ‘manipulation –
the persuasion of a large number of people to act, feel, think, know,
in certain ways’ (292).
Mass Observation
Are the masses a mob? If it were so, then this would be a negative
aspect to mass communication and also to mass culture or popular
culture. Williams believes though that it is a question of
interpretation. There is always bad popular art, ‘written by skilled
and educated people for a public that hasn’t the time, or hasn’t the
education, or hasn’t, let’s face it, the intelligence to read anything
more complete, anything more careful, anything nearer the known canons
of exposition or argument’ (294). However there is some popular art
that is ‘bright, attractive, popular’ even if it is mediocre in
comparison with high art (294).
Popular culture supposedly emerged after the Education Act of 1870
when a mass literate public developed. However points to the 1730s and
40s when a middle class reading public demanded ‘that vulgar
phenomenon, the novel’ (295). Williams points out that there was
literacy before 1870.
Williams notes also that much of the art produced for the working
classes came from institutions on high, ‘for conscious political or
commercial advantage’ (295). The working classes did produce some
publications such as radical pamphlets, political newspapers and
publicity, but this was quite different to the literature produced for
them. This new bad literature from institutions was also absorbed by
the middle classes and the masses cannot so easily be equated with the
mob.
Contemporary historians concentrate on this bad literature and ignore
the fact that as an introduction of a greater literate society,
followers of all art forms have increased. Williams thinks that the
problem is that of the high art critic comparing his own tastes to
popular ones. What Williams calls strip papers (probably equivalent to
our tabloids) reproduce the kind of communication that go on in
working class communities to produce ‘that complex of rumour and
traveller’s tales which then served the majority as news of a
kind’ (298). Popular culture is not necessarily low in taste although
appreciation of literature should be significant in a society’s
education.
The problem with the mass media is that in order to make profit it
needs huge audiences, and thus it will draw audiences in as much as it
can and profit from people’’s ignorance. Williams praises the local
newspaper which is higher in quality than the strip newspaper and is
read by working class people: ‘Produced for a known community on the
basis of common interest and common knowledge, the local newspaper is
not governed by ‘mass’ interpretation’ (300). The regional newspaper
is not based on the reader’s lack of education but on a regional and
social grouping.
Communication and Community
Williams notes that communication, ‘is not only transmission, it si
also reception and response’ (301). Williams shows anxiety about mass
communications use of enticing psychological and linguistic
strategies, but he states that, ‘any real theory of communication is
also a theory of community’ (301). Williams believes that there has
been a dominative theory of communication that has called for the
science of penetrating the mass mind:
It is easy to recognize a dominative theory if, for other reasons, we
think it to be bad, A theory that a minority should profit by
employing a majority in wars of gain is easily rejected. A theory that
a minority should profit by employing a mass of wage slaves is
commonly rejected. A theory that a minority should reserve the
inheritance of knowledge to itself, and deny it to the majority, is
occasionally rejected. (301)
Mass communication has been though to be a minority exploiting a
majority, yet Williams states that we are all democrats now. Some may
wish to educate the majority through mass communication, but Williams
questions their methods, because what is really called for is,
‘telling as an aspect of living; learning as an element of
experience’ (302). Where education fails, it indicates a failure of
communication which produces a reaction. Williams is adamant that
people will not be told what to believe but must learn by experience.
A dominative attitude indicates distrust concerning the masses with
their strikes and riots, but Williams explains that there are not
marks of untrustworthiness, but ‘symptoms of a basic failure in
communication’ (303). Strike are then, ‘a confused, vague reaction
against the dominative habit’ (303). Some governments rely on apathy
and inertia to control the masses (this strikes a chord), but this is
disastrous for democracy and the common interest. Transmission must be
‘an offering’ that recognises equality of being (304).
Culture and Which Way of Life?
Williams points out that while in the past culture was the pastime of
‘the old leisured classes’ it is now ‘the inheritance of the new
rising class’ (306). For Williams, ‘working class culture’ is key.
Working class culture is not the dissident element of proletarian
writing such as post-Industrial ballads. Neither is it a simple
alternative to Marxist-defined, ‘bourgeois culture’, a term that
evokes Williams’ scepticism. Williams writes that, ‘even in a society
in which a particular class is dominant, it is evidently possible both
for members of other classes to contribute to the common stock, and
for such contributions to be unaffected by or in opposition to the
ideas and values of the dominant class’ (307). Williams is not then
setting up Working Class Culture as an opponent to tradition, but
suggests something more complex.
In the development of culture, Williams believes that the common
language of English plays an important role. Williams criticises the
upholding of standard English and he wonders whether the English
language could be put to more interesting uses (308-309).
Williams wonders whether there is ‘any meaning left in “bourgeois” ’
and he notes that education has enabled a more even access to culture.
Yet a culture is in turn dictated by a subject’s way of life:
We may now see what is properly meant by ‘working-class culture’. It
is not proletarian art, or council houses, or a particular use of
language; it is rather the basic collective idea, and the
institutions, manners, habits of thought, and intention which proceed
from this. Bourgeois culture, similarly, is the basic individualist
idea and the institutions, manners, habits of thought, and intention
which proceed from that. […] The culture which it [the working class]
has produced […] is the collective democratic institution, whether in
the trade unions, the co-operative movement or a political party.
Working-class culture, in the stage through which it has been passing,
is primarily social (in that it has created institutions) rather than
individual (in particular intellectual or imaginative work). When it
is considered in context, it can be seen as a very remarkable creative
achievement. (313)
The Idea of Community
Williams believes that there are two notions of community: one of
service (middle class) and the other of solidarity (working class).
Williams describes his experience of growing up in a community of
solidarity and his difficulty in understanding the servant system in
England. He turns to a political pamphlet entitled How we are Governed
which demands conformity in a kind of national service system, but
Williams states: ‘The idea of service, ultimately, is no substitute
for the idea of active mutual responsibility’ (316). The notion of
service offers someone a role in which they simply perform a function
and without the solidarity of Williams’ community must climb the
ladder of promotion and success alone.
The Development of a Common Culture
Solidaity in contrast with service is, ‘potentially the real basis of
a society’, yet Williams realises that the negative, defensive aspects
of solidarity must be changed (318). Williams recommends that
‘diversity has to be substantiated within an effective community which
disposes of majority power’ and that the aim must be that of
‘achieving diversity without creating separation’ (318, 319).
Solidarity does not mean exclusion: ‘A good community, a living
culture, will […] not only make room for but actively encourage all
and any who can contribute to the advance in consciousness which is
the common need’ (320). Neither does solidarity mean being closed to
possibilities, since ‘while the closed fist is a necessary symbol, the
clenching ought never to be such that the hand cannot open, and the
fingers extend, to discover and give shape to the newly forming
reality’ (320).
Reference
Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society 1780 - 1950. 1958. London:
Penguin, 1985.




Summary: The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction



In his essay, “The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction”,
Walter Benjamin discusses a shift in perception and its affects in the
wake of the advent of film and photography in the twentieth century.
He writes of the sense changes within humanity’s entire mode of
existence; the way we look and see the visual work of art has is
different now and its consequences remain to be determined. How does
human sense perception related to history? Is it a universal
perspective that is being critiqued here? Can there be a universal
perspective in the first place?
Benjamin here attempts to mark something specific about the modern
age; of the effects of modernity on the work of art in particular.
Film and photography point to this movement. Benjamin writes of the
loss of the aura through the mechanical reproduction of art itself.
The aura for Benjamin represents the originality and authenticity of a
work of art that has not been reproduced. A painting as an aura while
a photograph does not; the photograph is an image of an image while
the painting remains utterly original.
The sense of the aura is lost on film and the reproducible image
itself demonstrates a historical shift that we have to take account of
even if when we don’t necessarily notice it. What does it mean when
the aura is lost? How does it function and how does it come about?
Benjamin writes of the loss of the aura as a loss of a singular
authority within the work of art itself. But what comes through in
this new space left by the death to the aura? How does the
mechanically reproduced work of art manage to make up for this void?
As Benjamin continues, a tension between new modes of perception and
the aura arise. The removal of authority within the original work of
art infers a loss of authority, however, in regards to mass
consumption, this liberation is not necessarily contingent. The
cameraman, for example, intervenes with what we see in a way which a
painting can never do. It directs the eye towards a specific place and
a specific story; at the same time it is radical and revolutionary it
is also totalitarian. It guides us to a particular side of a story and
leaves other parts out. It dulls our perception towards the work of
art and introduces distraction as a mode of reception. The location of
anything we might call the aura has to be moved into a mythological
space; into the cult of genius. This cult of genius relates back to
the cultish characteristic of the aura itself; in its absence there is
a grabbling for a replacement. What does it mean to place an aura on
“someone” or “something”? Is it even necessary to reclaim the aura in
the first place? The mystical cult of the original in broken with the
loss of the aura, and now every one can go to a gallery, a museum, the
theater or the cinema. A whole new appreciation of art is introduced
while at the same time, a whole new mode of deception and distraction
also enters.
For Benjamin, the aura is dead and it exists in an improbable and
mystical space. But in the making of our own myths therein lies an
aesthetic interpretation of these reproducible images; there is a
temporal world that is there for you, where you do not truly
participate. The object consumes man at the same time man consumes it.
Mass consumption revels in this consequence of the loss of the aura.
For Benjamin, a distance from the aura is a good thing. The loss of
the aura has the potential to open up the politicization of art,
whether or not that opening is detrimental or beneficial is yet to be
determined. However, it allows for us to raise political questions in
regards to the reproducible image which can be used in one way or
another.
Yet Benjamin makes it clear that in this new age of mechanical
reproduction the contemplation of a screen and the nature of the film
itself has changed in such a way that the individual no longer
contemplates the film per say; the film contemplates them. A
constantly moving image in the disjunction of the physical arrest of
watching a moving image move, changes the structure of perception
itself. Within the reproducibility of images there is an increase of
submission towards the film itself. In and of itself this marks a
symptom and not a cause of something terrible that is happening. How
can we think of subjectivity in the age of mechanical reproduction?
What does it mean to reflect back onto ourselves after being absorbed
by these inauthentic and politicized images? What does the
aestheticization of the work of art mean now when the aura is lost?
Key passages:
“During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception
changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which
human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is
accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical
circumstances as well” (Benjamin, 222).
“The surgeon represents the polar opposite of the magician. The
magician heals a stick person by the laying on of hands; the surgeon
cuts into the patient’s body. The magician maintains the natural
distance between the patient and himself; though he reduces it very
slightly by the laying on of hands, he greatly increases it by virtue
of his authority. The surgeon does exactly the reverse; he greatly
diminishes the distance between himself and the patient by penetrating
into the patient’s body, and increases it but little by the caution
with which his hand moves among the organs. In short, in contrast to
the magician—who is still hidden in the medical practitioner—the
surgeon at the decisive moment abstains from facing the patient man to
man; rather , it is through the operation that he penetrates into
him” (Benjamin, 233).
“The act of reaching for a lighter or a spoon is familiar routine, yet
we hardly know what really goes on between hand and metal, not to
mention how this fluctuates with our moods. Here the camera intervenes
with the resources of its lowerings and liftings, its interruptions
and isolations, its extensions and accelerations, its enlargements and
reductions. The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does
psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses”(Benjamin, 237).
“Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of
a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation;
before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations.
Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped
a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested….The
spectator’s process of association in the view of these images is
indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change. This constitutes
the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be
cushioned by heightened presence of mind. By means of its technical
structure, the film has taken the physical shock effect out of the
wrappers in which Dadaism had, as it were, kept it inside the moral
shock effect” (Benjamin, 238).
“The distracted person too, can form habits. More, the ability to
master certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that their
solution has become a matter of habit. Distraction is provided by art
presents a covert control of the extent to which new tasks have become
soluble by apperception. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to
avoid such tasks, art will tackle the most difficult and most
important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does
so in film. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing
noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes
in apperception, finds in the film its true means of
exercise”(Benjamin, 240).
“Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the
Olympian gods, is now one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached
such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as aesthetic
pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which
Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing
art”(Benjamin, 242).



Summary : Dialectic of Enlightenment

For Kant, Enlightenment liberates us from authority. Those who hold
authority—have mystery. The priest has special access to the mystery
of religion; it is through him where God comes towards us. The
Enlightenment says that human reason is capable of answering all the
questions that the previous authority had answers to. When you have a
rational claim, you’ve laid a path that someone else can easily follow
to the same conclusion. The light of the Enlightenment leads to
knowledge in this respect. For Kant, this frees us from
authoritarianism; we now understand the light of the world from our
own reason.

In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno contest Kant and
the positivity of Enlightenment. For Horkheimer and Adorno, there is a
continuity of the age of myth within Enlightenment and modernity in
general. Modernity fulfills what myth always wanted to. Do we really
see the world in the light of our reason? Is that the effect of the
Enlightenment? Can we be placed back into a position of reflection
after this shift of modernity? Is there something about modernity
itself which sustains a purposes in the violence of second half of the
twentieth century? For Horkheimer and Adorno, what was promised to us
in the age of Enlightenment was never an honest one: now it is a
nightmare.
Horkheimer and Adorno ask what it means to think of modernity as
progress in this post-Enlightenment era? Why would anyone like the
Enlightenment anyway when all it has done is lead us down this violent
and barbaric path? Is this the price we must pay for progress; a
simple bitter pill we have to swallow in order to keep going forward?
As rational creatures, we are authorities on to ourselves, since
reason itself is an authority. What could possibly be wrong with this
description?
Here Horkheimer and Adorno try to account for why the world is the way
it is. The irrationality that lies within a non-rational observation
leaves us not with a question of truth, but of effect which in and of
itself constitutes a new construction of truth. There is a loss of
animism in modernity, leaving us with the knowledge that there is no
soul or spirit in every object. But if man is no longer an eidos, then
where does this leave us?
After the Enlightenment, man becomes a master of nature. The mind does
not conquer matter, rather, there is a “happy match” between the two.
What goes on in the mind matches well with nature once man has become
a master of it and for the most part, himself. The “mastery” of nature
is a confirmation of said “happy match”, thus making mastery something
we are totally fine with. It’s no coincidence then, that the
Enlightenment is connected to the scientific method: where there is
place for everything that has yet to be thought and conquered. In this
happy match between mind and matter we are bound to ourselves.
Sovereignty in this instance takes on two roles: one of unlimited
knowledge where we are unlimited in what we can now and that in and of
itself is a nucleus of power. Second, that there is freedom and being
unbound by tradition. Scientific reasoning then, is a realization of
these two points. That science is the model of scientific reasoning as
the only plausible (and best) explanation for the way things are gives
us power over tradition, making us feel free of it. The unlimited
knowledge leaves science as an arbiter of what remains legitimate.
However, the sovereignty of the human becomes one of bureaucracy and
technology, wherein there is a perfect rational management of life.
There is a removal of mystery in nature, where the curiosity to
discover what has yet to be known is removed. This lies within the
relationship between fear and mastery for Adorno and Horkheimer. A
fear of what lies outside of what we know begs for us to question
where our security rests. An alleviation of fear and an emergence of
complacency is where we stand in this new age of man’s rational
sovereignty.
Enlightenment is technology and it is also progress. Progress is
rendered as something other than progress in this moment; progress and
barbarism are not opposed to each other here. Technology shows us that
the myths of the past are false and this break with myth is a
transformation of a certain conception of myth in total. Enlightenment
overturns myth as an animism and disenchants the world. Technology is
a mindset: a worldview and a way of being. Instruments in the world
becomes symptoms of modernity and Enlightenment. It’s a total way of
being: there is an explanation and a reason for everything.
Bureaucratic reason then, portrays this way of being that manages our
human reason rationally. There is a promise in the Enlightenment to
return back to our rationality; everyone has the same sense of reason
and we can all be rationally understood and bureaucratically managed
because of it. Is it possible to be re-enchanted with the world? Is it
possible for us to reflect on our sovereign rationality? Is there a
way for us not to be bureaucratically managed? Or, would it inevitably
lead us back into a constant re-plugging into a system which has only
served to envelop us in violence, barbarism, a false sense of unity,
and isolation?
Key Passages:
“Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of
thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and
installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is
radiant with triumphant calamity. Enlightenment’s programs was the
disenchantment of the world. It wanted to dispel myths, to overthrow
fantasy with knowledge” (Adorno, Horkheimer, 1).
“Knowledge, which is power, knows no limits, either in its enslavement
of creation or in its deference to worldly matters. Just as it serves
all the purposes of the bourgeoisie economy both in factories and on
the battlefield, it is at the disposal of entrepreneurs regardless of
their origins. Kings control technology no more directly than do
merchants: it is as democractic as the economic system with which it
evolved. Technology is the essense of this knowledge” (Adorno,
Horkheimer, 2).
“What human beings seek to learn from nature is how to use it to
dominate wholly both it and human beings. Nothing else counts.
Ruthless towards itself, the Enlightenment has eradicated the last
remnant of its self-awareness. Only though which does violence to
itself is hard enough to shatter myths”(Adorno, Horkheimer, 2)
“The disenchantment of the world means the extripation of
animism”(Adorno, Horkheimer, 2).
“For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into
numbers, and ultimately one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns
it to poetry. Unity remains the watchword from Parmenides to Russell.
All gods and qualities must be destroyed”(Adorno, Horkheimer, 4-5).
“Each human being has been endowed with a self of his or her own,
different from all the others, so that it could all the more surely be
made the same”(Adorno, Horkheimer, 9).
“Humans believe themselves free of fear when there is no longer
anything unknown”(Adorno, Horkheimer, 11).
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
Jurgen Habermas
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is Habermas's
examination of a kind of publicity that originated in the eighteenth
century, but still has modern relevance. It begins by attempting to
demarcate what Habermas calls the bourgeois public sphere. He defines
the public sphere as the sphere of private people who join together to
form a "public." He traces the history of the division between public
and private in language and philosophy.
Before the bourgeois public sphere came representative publicity,
which existed from the Middle Ages until the eighteenth century. It
involved the king or lord representing himself before an audience; the
King was the only public person, and all others were spectators. The
public and private realms were not separated.
Economic developments were vital in the evolution of the public
sphere. Habermas emphasizes the role of capitalist modes of
production, and of the long-distance trade in news and commodities in
this evolution. The most important feature of the public sphere as it
existed in the eighteenth century was the public use of reason in
rational-critical debate. This checked domination by the state, or the
illegitimate use of power. Rational-critical debate occurred within
the bourgeois reading public, in response to literature, and in
institutions such as salons and coffee-houses. Habermas sees the
public sphere as developing out of the private institution of the
family, and from what he calls the "literary public sphere", where
discussion of art and literature became possible for the first time.
The public sphere was by definition inclusive, but entry depended on
one's education and qualification as a property owner. Habermas
emphasizes the role of the public sphere as a way for civil society to
articulate its interests.
The development of the fully political public sphere occurred first in
Britain in the eighteenth century. The public sphere became
institutionalized within the European bourgeois constitutional states
of the nineteenth century, where public consensus was enshrined as a
way of checking domination. The fully developed public sphere was
therefore dependent on many social conditions, which eventually
shifted.
Habermas argues that the self-intepretation of the public sphere took
shape in the concept of "public opinion", which he considers in the
light of the work of Kant, Marx, Hegel, Mill and Tocqueville. The
bourgeois public sphere eventually eroded because of economic and
structural changes. The boundaries between state and society blurred,
leading to what Habermas calls the refeudalization of society. State
and society became involved in each other's spheres; the private
sphere collapsed into itself. The key feature of the public sphere -
rational-critical debate - was replaced by leisure, and private people
no longer existed as a public of property owners. Habermas argues that
the world of the mass media is cheap and powerful. He says that it
attempts to manipulate and create a public where none exists, and to
manufacture consensus. This is particularly evident in modern
politics, with the rise of new disciplines such as advertising and
public relations. These, and large non- governmental organizations,
replace the old institutions of the public sphere. The public sphere
takes on a feudal aspect again, as politicians and organizations
represent themselves before the voters. Public opinion is now
manipulative, and, more rarely, still critical. We still need a strong
public sphere to check domination by the state and non-governmental
organizations. Habermas holds out some hope that power and domination
may not be permanent features.

Before the bourgeois public sphere came representative publicity,
which existed from the Middle Ages until the eighteenth century. It
involved the king or lord representing himself before an audience; the
King was the only public person, and all others were spectators. The
public and private realms were not separated.
Economic developments were vital in the evolution of the public
sphere. Habermas emphasizes the role of capitalist modes of
production, and of the long-distance trade in news and commodities in
this evolution. The most important feature of the public sphere as it
existed in the eighteenth century was the public use of reason in
rational-critical debate. This checked domination by the state, or the
illegitimate use of power. Rational-critical debate occurred within
the bourgeois reading public, in response to literature, and in
institutions such as salons and coffee-houses. Habermas sees the
public sphere as developing out of the private institution of the
family, and from what he calls the "literary public sphere", where
discussion of art and literature
became possible for the first time. The public sphere was by
definition inclusive, but entry depended on one's education and
qualification as a property owner. Habermas emphasizes the role of the
public sphere as a way for civil society to articulate its interests.
The development of the fully political public sphere occurred first in
Britain in the eighteenth century. The public sphere became
institutionalized within the European bourgeois constitutional states
of the nineteenth century, where public consensus was enshrined as a
way of checking domination. The fully developed public sphere was
therefore dependent on many social conditions, which eventually
shifted.
Habermas argues that the self-intepretation of the public sphere took
shape in the concept of "public opinion", which he considers in the
light of the work of Kant, Marx, Hegel, Mill and Tocqueville. The
bourgeois public sphere eventually eroded because of economic and
structural changes. The boundaries between state and society blurred,
leading to what Habermas calls the refeudalization of society. State
and society became involved in each other's spheres; the private
sphere collapsed into itself. The key feature of the public sphere -
rational-critical debate - was replaced by leisure, and private people
no longer existed as a public of property owners. Habermas argues that
the world of the mass media is cheap and powerful. He says that it
attempts to manipulate and create a public where none exists, and to
manufacture consensus. This is particularly evident in modern
politics, with the rise of new disciplines such as advertising and
public relations. These, and large non- governmental organizations,
replace the old institutions of the public sphere. The public sphere
takes on a feudal aspect again, as politicians and organizations
represent themselves before the voters. Public opinion is now
manipulative, and, more rarely, still critical. We still need a strong
public sphere to check domination by the state and non-governmental
organizations. Habermas holds out some hope that power and domination
may not be permanent features.