Global Public Sphere Research Articles

Global 24/7 news providers

The study of international and global news to date has focused on the operation of foreign news values, the unequal flows and emergent contra-flows of transnational news as well as the phenomenology of 24/7 live broadcasts. Today these debates are often played out under opposing `global dominance' and `global public sphere' positions. Each in its own way is concerned about communications democracy — whether its discerned curtailment by processes of geo-political economy or temporal-spatial extension by increased global cultural flows. In this article we contend that there is a `democratic lacuna' at the heart of these debates. This silence concerns how exactly leading world news channels — principally CNNI and BBC World but also international competitors such as Sky and Fox News — communicatively present the voices, views and values of contending interests and identities from around the world. Elaborating a new conception of `communicative frames' based on contemporary positions of social and political theory and applying this to a large corpus of news output, we begin to evaluate generalizing theoretical claims, both critical and celebratory, about the contribution of global 24/7 news to processes of global dominance or an emergent global public sphere.

Global Citizens or Faraway Viewers? São Paulo Residents Talk About the 2006 Lebanon Conflict

As the emergence of a global public sphere becomes a possibility, growing out of denser economic, political and communicative networks as well as demanded by increasingly complex international problems, questions arise about the capacity and willingness of various national publics to engage in the global debate. This paper shows the results of a news reception analysis with the public of the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil during the months of July–November 2006, when the Lebanon conflict was broadly covered by the Brazilian media. The paper identifies the modes of engagement with the news about the international conflict, the types of reasoning used by these publics in interpreting the news, and the types of debates and conversations they have or don’t have about the conflict. Special attention is given to the personal experience of learning about conflicts abroad and to the relationship between this experience and the construction of a new civic identity where participation in global affairs is an important element. The research shows that Sao Paulo residents are informed and care about international events, but to a large extent lack the resources and the spaces where they could reflect upon them. It also shows that young people tend to experience global events more intensely as part of their world than the general population.

The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance

The public sphere is the space of communication of ideas and projects that emerge from society and are addressed to the decision makers in the institutions of society. The global civil society is the organized expression of the values and interests of society. The relationships between government and civil society and their interaction via the public sphere define the polity of society. The process of globalization has shifted the debate from the national domain to the global debate, prompting the emergence of a global civil society and of ad hoc forms of global governance. Accordingly, the public sphere as the space of debate on public affairs has also shifted from the national to the global and is increasingly constructed around global communication networks. Public diplomacy, as the diplomacy of the public, not of the government, intervenes in this global public sphere, laying the ground for traditional forms of diplomacy to act beyond the strict negotiation of power relationships by building on shared cultural meaning, the essence of communication.

Okinawa and the U.S. military: identity making in the age of globalization

List of Illustrations Preface to the 2017 Edition Acknowledgments Note on Japanese Names and Translations 1. Introduction 2. The Rape Incident and the Predicaments of Okinawan Identity 3. Reduced to Culture Without Politics and History: A Critique of Modern Okinawan Studies 4. We Are Okinawans of a Different Kind: Henoko History, Camp Schwab, and Working-Class Ideology of Difference 5. We Are Okinawans: Local Identity in a Global Perspective 6. Nago City Referendum: Constructing Okinawan Citizenship 7. The Nago City Mayoral Election and the Changing Tide of Okinawan Resistance 8. Conclusion: Anthropologists as the Third Person, Anthropology in the Global Public Sphere Notes Chronology References Index

Social Movements, the Media and the Emergence of a Global Public Sphere

This article focuses on the anti-apartheid movement, perhaps the most highly transnationally integrated social movement during the post-war era, and compares it with the contemporary movement for global justice. The article specifically analyses strategies of public communication; the formation of `alternative media' and a movement `counterpublic' with global reach. The major questions addressed in the article are: What were the main strategies of public communication of the anti-apartheid movement — and what was their impact? How did the counter-public(s) of anti-apartheid relate to the established media dominating the global public sphere? What are the implications of the case of anti-apartheid for contemporary research and theorising on transnational/global public spheres and counterpublics? What are the similarities and differences between the anti-apartheid movement and the global justice movement regarding strategies of public communication? Theoretically, it raises the question about the concept of `society' and its empirical referent in the context of increasing globalization. It is argued that in the context of social movement studies, there is a need to develop a conceptual framework around the concept of `global civil society'.

Deriving Norms from ‘Global Space’: The Limits of Communicative Approaches to Global Civil Society Theorizing

This paper outlines the limits of the conception of ‘global space’ at the centre of attempts to establish the existence of certain communicative norms of ‘global civil society’. It particularly focuses on theoretically asserted claims made for an idealized global public sphere which are the basis upon which theoretical structures of communicative values and global norms are constituted. These, in turn, are used to inform normative critiques, from the standpoint of ‘global civil society’, which challenge present international practices. The concluding sections outline the limitations of this political project, highlighting the problematic, de-socialized, nature of these conceptions of ‘global space’; which, in lacking any mediating framework between the asserted ‘moral autonomy’ of actors in global civil society and the global norms allegedly derived from them, makes communicative global civil society theorizing innately conservative in character. Este documento describe en forma general, los límites de la concepción del ‘espacio global’ al centro de los intentos para establecer la existencia de ciertas normas de comunicación de la ‘sociedad civil global’. Se enfoca particularmente en opiniones teóricamente acertadas, elaboradas para una esfera global pública idealizada que son la base sobre la cual se constituyen las estructuras teóricas de los valores de comunicación y normas globales. Estas, a su vez, se usan para informar sobre las críticas normativas desde el punto de vista de la ‘sociedad civil global’, que desafían a las normas internacionales actuales. Las secciones conclusivas describen en líneas generales, las limitaciones de este proyecto político destacando la naturaleza problemática y de falta de socialización del ‘espacio global’; el cual careciendo de algún marco mediador entre la ‘autonomía moral’ impuesta por actores en la sociedad civil global y las normas globales supuestamente derivadas de aquellas, hace que el método de comunicación al planteamiento teórico de la sociedad civil global, parezca, inherentemente, de carácter conservador.

Global mediations

The last few years have witnessed an explosion in the number of 24/7 satellite news channels around the globe. Some theorists have heralded the arrival of 24/7 news delivery systems and channels as definitive of processes of globalization and foundational in the creation of a ‘global public sphere’. Others view them as simply the latest expansion of Western-led corporate interests and vehicles of cultural imperialism, propagating news flows from the West to the rest. This article contributes up-to-date empirical findings and arguments that variously support and problematize aspects of both these overarching theoretical positions and debates and does so by systematically mapping for the first time all 24/7 news channels broadcast in the world today. Our findings reveal a field characterized by complex stratifications, formations and flows that prompt the need for refined conceptualization and theorization.

Islam and Politics: A Fixed Relationship?

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements The author gratefully acknowledges support form the Danish Social Science Foundation for his research project, Islamic Radicalism and the global Public Sphere, on which this article is based.

Green public spheres and the green governance state: the politics of emancipation and ecological conditionality

A consistent thread weaves through all the articles in this edition. Each author, in some fashion, reflects upon the dual concepts of a ‘global green public sphere’ and the ‘global governance state’, as they intersect with the politics of environmentalism. Indeed, as is evidenced in the preceding pages, the politics of green concern transmute into a myriad of different collective forms. Despite this diversity of responses found within and between environmental groups, we conclude that most greens cross boundaries in a positive fashion. Through the construction of transnational networks of solidarity, movements become global entities, acting in concert to protect ecosystems and emancipate humans and non-humans from degradation and subjugation and expanding the public sphere of green debate transnationally. In certain instances, however, environmentalism is used as a tool for continued conquest and domination. These instances, although not generally reflective of green movements as a whole, are often writ large due to the relative power, in comparative terms, of the proponents. ‘Environment’, therefore, can be either a symbol for liberation or repression; emancipation or conditionality. It can be used to support democracy or, alternatively, to support authoritarianism; it can be used to attack neoliberalism and corporate-controlled globalisation, and it can be used to support it; it can be used to lionise concepts of ‘the local’, and it can be utilised to denigrate local systems of meaning in a neocolonial fashion.

American Foreign Policy Legitimacy and the Global Public Sphere

Since 9/11, the legitimacy of American foreign policy has been a topic of intense debate. Some conceptualize legitimacy in terms of power, others in terms of values, and still others in a broad con...

Genealogies of the Global

The term global suggests all-inclusiveness and brings to mind connectivity, a notion that gained a boost from Marshall McLuhan's reference to the mass-mediated ‘global village’. In the past decade it has rapidly become part of the everyday vocabulary not only of academics and business people, but also has circulated widely in the media in various parts of the world. There have also been the beginnings of political movements against globalization and proposals for ‘de-globalization’ and ‘alternative globalizations’, projects to re-define the global. In effect, the terminology has globalized and globalization is varyingly lauded, reviled and debated around the world. The rationale of much previous thinking on humanity in the social sciences has been to assume a linear process of social integration, as more and more people are drawn into a widening circle of interdependencies in the movement to larger units, but the new forms of binding together of social life necessitate the development of new forms of global knowledge which go beyond the old classifications. It is also in this sense that the tightening of the interdependency chains between human beings, and also between human beings and other life forms, suggests we need to think about the relevance of academic knowledge to the emergent global public sphere.

Coetzee, Agamben, and the Passion of Abu Ghraib

In this article, I address J. M. Coetzee's chapter “The Problem of Evil” in Elizabeth Costello (2003); specifically, I discuss the danger of texts that attempt to represent evil letting loose that evil in the world. This insight is pushed by connecting it to the problem of sovereignty as put forth in Agamben's Homo Sacer (1998). To demonstrate the connection of evil and sovereignty, three different sets of images are analyzed that circulated in the global public sphere in 2004: frames from the Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of the Christ (2004); pictures of the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners from Abu Ghraib; and beheading videos of U.S. citizens and other nationals working for the U.S.‐led occupation forces in Iraq. Different explanations have been given for their circulation, but it is argued, following Agamben's notion of “homo sacer,” that they are contestations over sovereignty of Iraq and more widely of the Middle East.

The Real World of (Global) Democracy

In this paper, I want to argue for a certain account of the reasons that we might have to want to democratize the global public sphere. My principal argument is that global democratic reform ought to be guided by an account of democracy that emphasizes the realization of people’s interests rather than by one that aims to increase their democratic agency. Such an account draws our attention to the many institutions in actually existing democracies that, though not directly democratic, nonetheless aim to realize citizens’ interests while remaining answerable to directly democratic institutions. Surveying the global sphere, we are able to discern both existing institutions that can be harnessed to democratic ends, as well as new institutions that would have to be set up to increase global democratic institutions’ responsiveness to relevant interests. I. Two Accounts of Democracy

The Anarchist in the Coffee House: A Brief Consideration of Local Culture, the Free Culture Movement, and Prospects for a Global Public Sphere

This paper examines one particular Public Sphere experiment - the rise of a global Free Culture Movement that aims to limit the spread of strong intellectual property regimes - and the complications it encounters when it crosses a very different value set at work in global cultural policy debates - the protection of native or local culture. Through this case study, I want to suggest that perhaps the Public Sphere is not the best model to idealize when we think globally and dream democratically. Habermas' Public Sphere is as temporally and geographically specific as Benedict Anderson's notion of imagined communities, and similarly has been inflated to cover disparate experiences that don't precisely map to the specific historical experience the original work covers.

Reading Habermas in Anarchy: Multilateral Diplomacy and Global Public Spheres

States routinely justify their policies in interstate forums, and this reason-giving seems to serve a legitimating function. But how could this be? For Habermas and other global public sphere theorists, the exchange of reasons oriented toward understanding—communicative action—is central to public sphere governance, where political power is held accountable to those affected. But most global public sphere theory considers communicative action only among nonstate actors. Indeed, anarchy is a hard case for public spheres. The normative potential of communicative action rests on its instability: only where consensus can be undone by better reasons, through argument, can we say speakers are holding one another accountable to reason. But argument means disagreement, and especially in anarchy disagreement can mean violence. Domestically, the state backstops argument to prevent violence. Internationally, I propose that international society and publicity function similarly. Public talk can mitigate the security dilemma and enable interstate communicative action. Viewing multilateral diplomacy as a legitimation process makes sense of the intuition that interstate talk matters, while tempering a potentially aggressive cosmopolitanism.

Siam remapped: cyber-interventions by Thai Women

Most representations of Thailand which circulate in the global public sphere portray Thai women in two categories; both instances position them as happily subservient to western men. This article investigates how contributions by Thai women to internet discussions function simultaneously to renegotiate and reinscribe conceptions of nation, gender and community formation. It focuses on the Thai-managed, English language website SiamWEB.org (www.siamweb.org). The existence of this forum enables conversations between visitors that would otherwise not take place, providing a space for Thai women to respond to these dominant images. The article discusses SiamWEB.org’s strategic use of English, the in-process subject-position assumed of participants, and the persistent refusal of accepted conventions circumscribing national membership. Finally, it analyzes visitor responses, concluding that SiamWEB.org ‘remaps’ and redefines participants’ online identities, Thailand’s national borders, and the tenets of national affiliation.

The (Not So) Disparate Voices of E-Democracy

The (Not So) Disparate Voices of E-Democracy

Globalising Accountability within the International Organisation of Credit: Financial Governance and the Public Sphere

Recent developments concerning the international financial architecture have drawn attention to what many perceive to be an accountability deficit at the level of global decision making. This problem is explored here within the framework of an increasingly globalised structure of financial governance, drawing attention to the institutional barriers that stand in the way of operationalising traditional forms of accountability. In order to strengthen a global form of accountability in the absence of traditional democratic links between citizens and decision-making institutions, it is argued that accountability needs to be better internalised within those institutions that actually make decisions with global consequences. To be effective, however, this form of accountability demands the formation of a global financial public sphere, where norms of inclusion and publicness can be established and progressively instantiated. The first step towards realising such a development must be to understand accountability itself in terms of what can be called a logic of participation. This article therefore considers how such a logic can be formulated and grafted onto the existing foundations of global financial governance, and advances several strategies to strengthen accountability framed in this way.

Financial Governance and the Public Sphere: Towards a Global Modality of Governance?

Recent efforts to reform the international financial architecture have focused attention on the way in which decision-making occurs within an increasingly globalised structure of financial governance. I explore an important development within this structure: the emergence of what may be identified as a global financial public sphere. This article considers the formation and foundation of the global financial public sphere, and discusses its relationship to the globalised structure of financial governance. The argument of the paper is that a strengthened public sphere is both an increasingly significant attribute of financial governance and a welcome development, but one that is not yet fully consolidated.

Perpetual Peace or Perpetual Process: Global Civil Society and Cosmopolitan Legality at the World Trade Organization

This article argues that a contemporary form of ‘cosmopolitan legality’ serves as an animating force behind contemporary practices of global civil society and global governance. The first part provides an account of the recent history of civil society engagement with the World Trade Organization. It observes that civil society groups have focused their collective efforts on issues relating to procedural legitimacy, including accountability, openness, and transparency, potentially to the detriment of efforts to bring about more fundamental change. In the second part of the article, various theoretical approaches to cosmopolitan legality are discussed, including their claimed Kantian origins, and are mapped on to the preceding discussion of the place of a global public sphere in global governance. Programmatic approaches that purport to mobilize cosmopolitanism in the service of either a political or legal project are ultimately rejected, and a provisional alternative reading is suggested.