Global Public Sphere Research Articles

NGO Narratives in the Global Public Sphere

NGO Narratives in the Global Public Sphere

New Media and Social‐political Change in Iran

AbstractThe increasing penetration of new communication technologies into everyday life has attracted a growing interest in the social, economic and political implications of these technologies. Most studies have looked at Western democratic societies and the literature on the developing countries is unfortunately small in comparison. In 2009 Iran witnessed a political upheaval in the aftermath of the presidential election in which the Internet was utilized effectively by the political opposition. News and videos of police brutality and repression were uploaded online, including onto social networking sites, in what was called the ‘Twitter Revolution’. Expectations rose on the capacity of new media to bring about democratic change in Iran. Later developments, however, showed that ‘mouse clicks’ alone do not produce profound political changes. In this article we look at the role of the new media and the social and political functions it took on in the post election period. We suggest that, firstly, new media has helped ordinary citizens and the political opposition challenge the government's monopoly of information. Secondly, we suggest that new media have paved the way for the emergence of a global public sphere for Iranians across the globe. This article also looks at the social and cultural impacts of the satellite channels which have been an ongoing source of concern for the Iranian conservative regime. Finally we take a critical stance and analyze the effects of new communication technologies in light of the ‘digital divide’ and ‘the radicalization of the Green Movement’.

Global Justice and the Public Sphere: The Dynamics of Fraser’s Critical Theory

In this paper, I locate Fraser’s theory in relation to Rawls’ concept of justice as fairness, but particularly to Habermas’ shift of focus to the social institutions and practices where deliberation takes place, in a decentered idea of justice. I identify Fraser’s key intervention through her feministinspired critique of Habermas in relation to power and its effects upon the structural exclusions from the public sphere. At the same time, I note that Fraser drew attention to power struggles within that sphere; it is contested internally thanks to the deliberations of a plurality of competing publics drawn from among the dominated. I also trace the development of Fraser’s theory of justice through the various stages of her familiar double-headed account in terms of recognition and redistribution, to its current form in which, in the post-Westphalian context, the third dimension of the political site of the injustice of misrepresentation has been integrated. I argue that this new prominence given to the political is in part the result of the exchange with Honneth. Finally, I turn to the concept of a nascent global public sphere, developed along the lines of Habermas’ decentered notion of authority, using the example of the challenges to the legitimacy of the US and UK decision to declare war against Iraq. Keywords - misrepresentation, recognition, post-Westphalian, public sphere, critical theory

Remediating Gorilla Girl: Rape Warfare and the Limits of Humanitarian Storytelling

Dian Fossey and the gorillas remain familiar figures in the global public sphere. But how do their life stories relate to the ongoing presence of mourning and violence in central Africa now? This essay considers feminist engagements with the "distant suffering" of victims of rape warfare at this unique contact zone where species meet.

DESTERRITORIALIZAÇÃO DO DIREITO: VOLUNTARISMO ESTATAL E ESFERA PUBLICA GLOBAL

This study presents initial reflections on Giacomo Marramao’s contributions to International Law, particularly regarding to an understanding of the deterritorialization and reterritorialization of Law, which goes back to studies by Deleuze and Guattari on these concepts. It also draws a parallel between the work of the Italian philosopher and Octavio Ianni’s sociological studies, mainly concerning to “modernidade-mundo” (world- modernity). It further outlines digressions on the present phase of International Law, characterized by the Westphalian Conventions and the possible post- Hobbesian order, especially on jus cogens international norms, State voluntarism and the efficacy of international law in protecting human rights. Finally, working from the Habermasian idea of a global public sphere, it takes up the dialogue with Marramao on criteria for universality and difference.

DESTERRITORIALIZAÇÃO DO DIREITO: VOLUNTARISMO ESTATAL E ESFERA PUBLICA GLOBAL

This study presents initial reflections on Giacomo Marramao’s contributions to International Law, particularly regarding to an understanding of the deterritorialization and reterritorialization of Law, which goes back to studies by Deleuze and Guattari on these concepts. It also draws a parallel between the work of the Italian philosopher and Octavio Ianni’s sociological studies, mainly concerning to “modernidade-mundo” (world- modernity). It further outlines digressions on the present phase of International Law, characterized by the Westphalian Conventions and the possible post- Hobbesian order, especially on jus cogens international norms, State voluntarism and the efficacy of international law in protecting human rights. Finally, working from the Habermasian idea of a global public sphere, it takes up the dialogue with Marramao on criteria for universality and difference.

Deliberation and Global Criminal Justice: Juries in the International Criminal Court

The jury system is one of the oldest deliberative democratic bodies, and it has a robust historical record spanning hundreds of years in numerous countries. As scholars and civic reformers envision a democratic global public sphere and international institutions, we advocate for the inclusion of juries of lay citizens as a means of administering justice and promoting deliberative norms. Focusing specifically on the case of the International Criminal Court, we show how juries could bolster that institution's legitimacy by promoting public trust, increasing procedural fairness, foregrounding deliberative reasoning, and embodying democratic values. Juries would present novel logistical, philosophical, and legal problems, but we show how each of these might be overcome to make juries a viable element of global governance.

Towards a post-secular political order?

The ‘return of religion’ as a social phenomenon has aroused at least three different debates, with the first being the ‘clash of civilizations’, the second criticizing ‘modernity’, and the third focusing on the public/private distinction. This article uses Habermas’ idea of a post-secular society as a prism through which we examine the return of religion and impact on secularization. In doing so, we attempt to understand the new role of religion as a challenger of the liberal projects following the decline of communism. Against this background, section four focuses on Habermas’s central arguments in his proposal for a post-secular society. We claim that theproblematiquein Habermas’s analysis must be placed within the wider framework of an emerging global public sphere. In this context we examine the problem of religion’s place in political process and the two readings of Habermas as suggested by Simone Chambers.

Obama and the Image

This paper argues that in the spring of 2008 a new political movement appeared in the United States, a movement not aware of itself until that moment. It was a movement grown among multiple publics that did not fit the pre‐defined scripts of identity politics. It was a grass‐roots initiative of citizens bearing witness to their collective responsibility in the eyes of a global public sphere that found its own visibility in and through the campaign of Barack Obama. The paper is primarily a discussion of this collective image of which the image of Obama is also part. The discussion of the collective image also includes some consideration of the new media forms that facilitate the free circulation of images, media that deterritorialise political control and democratise its distribution. Part I introduces this collective image, and was written just after the US Presidential nominating conventions. Part II was written while waiting for the results of the 2008 presidential election, and engages directly with Mitchell’s argument regarding the lives of images. Part III, written after Obama’s victory, considers what might be said by this event, and speculates on the political future of the empowering image.

Cosmopolitanism and Global English: Language Politics in Globalisation Debates

While it is commonly agreed that language standardisation was an integral feature of the historical formation of the modern nation state, current debates on globalisation and its effects on the nation state rarely address language issues in more than a superficial fashion. Yet the quadrupling of the number of English speakers in the last half-century and other changes associated with ‘global English’ would seem to have more substantial political implications. Particularly in the recent wave of discussions of cosmopolitanism, language questions seem to lurk below the surface but are rarely addressed explicitly or comprehensively. Important exceptions to this neglect of current language issues include Daniele Archibugi, who addresses these questions head on, and Nancy Fraser's most recent attempt to rethink Habermas' critical theory of the public sphere. This article agrees with both Archibugi and Fraser that language is an important, even central, aspect of political responses to processes of globalisation, specifically cosmopolitanism. However, I argue that Antonio Gramsci's approach to the politics of language in the early twentieth century highlights the insufficiency of Archibugi's reliance on the metaphor of Esperanto as well as the intractable nature of Fraser's critique for any critical theory of global public sphere(s), despite her attempt to advance such a theory. I do this by looking at Gramsci's critique of Esperanto from 1918 and his later prison writings concerning language politics in Italy. Gramsci, I argue, provides a much more adequate approach to contemporary questions of the politics of language, which includes an understanding of the continued role of the state which is most often obscured both by cosmopolitan perspectives and by much research on global English in fields outside political science.

Spaces for Talk: Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Genuine Dialogue in an International Advocacy Movement

Despite the digital divide that exists between the developed and developing world, communication technologies such as the Internet are providing new opportunities for transnational advocacy. This paper explores issues of identity and co-operation between actors participating in the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform (GCAR), led by the peoples’ movement La Via Campesina, focusing on the application of Internet-based services. While the movement has successfully reframed the land reform debate within the global public sphere, and makes use of the World Wide Web in its role as a strategic bridge-builder within the Campaign, digital connectivity does not necessarily overcome challenges of participation and representation.

Counterflows and counterpublics

: This study examines the re-presentation of Al-Jazeera news material on western television and websites, arguing that its worldwide resonance contributes to a ‘global public sphere’. The analysis reveals that while mainstream and global news networks systematically self-censor Al-Jazeera images that challenge the traditional framing of war in the United States, western-based websites (N = 102) invent a discourse missing from the mainstream by importing Al-Jazeera's reports. This engenders the emergence of online ‘counterpublics’ that challenge the local agenda proactively through presentation and discussion of the Other's take on news events.

The Day the Earth Stood Still? – Reading Jürgen Habermas' Essay “February 15” Against Ian McEwan's Novel Saturday

The third essay in Habermas' collection The Divided West is entitled “February 15, or: What Binds Europeans.” The essay regionalizes the global claims Habermas makes in the longer chapter “Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still Have a Chance?” That is, in “February 15” Habermas makes the case for a European post-national order that he hopes will become the vanguard for the emergence of universal cosmopolitanism. Habermas concludes that all that is lacking for the achievement of this beachhead from which Europe can, in its turn, champion a “community of free and equal citizens” in a “global public sphere,” is a “European identity.”

9. Human Rights: Historical Learning in the Shadow of Violence

AbstractThis paper emphasizes the historical dimension of human rights understood as a social ethic. Rather than timeless principles, human rights and the universality proper to them emerge in a process of suffering, conflict, political assertion, and institutional change. We can understand them as historical yet also universal by seeing that human rights arise in processes of social learning that take place in an increasingly globalized world. Such learning often has advanced in the face of dramatic violence, for example, the bombing of Hiroshima. But the demands on a global social ethic today are not only a matter of responding to threats and acts of dramatic violence in isolation. Attention to the example of Hiroshima suggests that the problem of violence is bound up with other questions about the regulation of emerging technical powers in a context of inequality and social conflict. To what extent can an ethic centered on human rights provide an ethics that can inform effective responses to these problems? To consider the promise of human rights, we look more closely at the kind of social learning they involve and explore in particular the role of social movements in forging new identities and reciprocities along with normative claims proper to a global public sphere (the anti‐apartheid movement provides an example). We go on to see that these political experiences can inform interpretations of historical experience that can inform a widened sense of historical possibilities, both those missed in the past and those that confront us today. While this argument may thicken our sense of the promise of a human rights ethic, it remains speculative, not least because of the limited effectiveness of these norms in practice today. We close with the suggestion that nonetheless a coherent ethical response is possible, one that in the wealthy parts of the globe might take the form of an ethic of democratic responsibility. This would both represent a distinctive kind of learning and perhaps contribute to a wider advance of human rights.

Research Note: Surveys of World Social Forum Participants Show Influence of Place and Base in the Global Public Sphere

This article examines survey findings on the political characteristics of attendees of the 2005 and 2007 World Social Forum meetings and the 2007 U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta. At each meeting, social forum attendees were generally less satisfied with the major institutions shaping the global economy and more active within social movements compared to the general population. Nevertheless, there was considerable variation in the political views and activities of attendees across these three venues, attesting to the importance of the forum location and local organizers for shaping participant composition. Differences between respondents from the host city and country and international respondents varied across venues, but local respondents were generally less radical, had fewer affiliations to political organizations, and protested less compared to other respondents.

American Television as a Global Public Sphere

This article examines the hegemony of the American media industry, and the effect that American teltevision has on global publics and global citizens. On the one hand, American television newa (and other global news service) produces the subject position of the hlobal audience that encourages a new type of attentiveness, a new form of collective monitoring, and a new politics of publicity. This new subject position encourages social reflexivity, but it does so in an uneven way, which also provides a number of distancing mechanisms that allow viewers to escape from ethical responsibility. On the other hand, genres of American entertainment programming produce technologies of transnational cultural citizenship, allowing the popular to come into contact with the civil spherein public debates about cultural policy, in aesthetic publics (which combine cultural criticism and social commentary), and at the level of the social imaginary. In this way, American television provides a kind of hybrid public space, which combines local and global publics in a way that denaturalizes both, creating a situation of ideological competition between multiple discursive forms and competing forms of cultural origin.

Jokes and Butts: Can We Imagine Humor in a Global Public Sphere?

In his essay titled “Drawing Blood” for Harper's magazine in June 2006, written as a response to the Muhammad cartoon affair, Art Spiegelman argued convincingly that a cartoon is, first and foremost, a cartoon. It sounds straightforward, but is it really? Following Spiegelman, we can define caricatures as charged or loaded images that compress ideas into memorable icons, namely clichés. A cartoon must have a point, and a good cartoon can change our perspective on the ruling order. Spiegelman opens his discussion with classical caricatures such as Honoré Daumier's 1831 depiction of King Louis-Philippe as Gargantua and George Grosz's 1926 attack on the “Pillars of Society” (“Stützen der Gesellschaft”) as beer-drinking, pamphlet-reading, swastika-wearing men without brains. Spiegelman acknowledges these cartoonists as “masters of insult,” who often had to face trial or imprisonment for their transgressions (45). The question is whether the twelve cartoons of Muhammad, published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005, are in any way compatible with the great tradition of caricature.

International History, Religious History, Catholic History: Perspectives for Cross-Fertilization (1830—1914)

The essay explores what recent trends in international and religious (in particular, Catholic) history have to offer one another. On the one hand, the transformation of imperial history into global history and a new attention for the role of non-state actors in international politics are opening the eyes of international historians to religion as one of the main forces shaping the modern world. On the other hand, historians of religion are rediscovering the essentially transnational nature of their subject, and its enmeshment with politics at every turn. In the history of Catholicism, this takes the form of an aggiornamento of 'old-fashioned' themes such as ultramontanism, missionary expansion and the papacy. After having drifted apart for half a century, the two subdisciplines thus increasingly appear as natural allies in reconsidering the master narrative of modernity. The concept of 'religious internationalism', illustrated here through its Catholic variety, allows us to 'think together' the different aspects of religion's transformation into worldwide mass movements, and to grasp the key role of religion in creating a global public sphere that was conditioned by international politics, but in turn also refashioned the international system.

Understanding systems theory: transition from equilibrium to entropy

What we call systems theory is more a metatheory than a monolithic theory. It has provided a set of common signposts for all systems theorists to follow. This paper, written from the perspective of communications scholarship, examines the transition of systems theory from the age of equilibrium to the age of entropy during the middle of the twentieth century, and then to the age of emergence at the end of the century. It distinguishes between the old equilibrium-based systems theory and the entropy-based systems theory, as well as the ‘new’ emergence-centered social systems theory. It asserts the existence of close similarities between the fundamental concepts of systems theory and Asian philosophies, despite the cynical dismissal of these similarities by a Luhmann disciple. It documents how media sociology has applied chaos theory to justify market-driven journalism and claim the emergence of a global public sphere; and it looks at the potential of network analysis, an offshoot of systems theory.

Rethinking media events in the context of a global public sphere: Exploring the audience of global disasters in Greece

Abstract Current accounts on globalization and transnational media flows have reformed traditional debates on media events and have raised questions on the integrative potential of media events at a global level. This article addresses this issue by employing the case of global disasters as media events and exploring some of the characteristics of the global public sphere surrounding them in one of its particular actualizations: that of the Greek audience. The article is empirically grounded on focus group discussions through which questions of perception and framing of disasters as well as of the potential of promotion of global solidarity will be addressed.