Sphere Of Debate Research Articles

Biopolitics and the Baby Bonus: Australia's national identity, fertility, and global overpopulation

This paper explores some recent issues impacting on Australia's public imagination of a national identity. Utilizing an analysis that draws on Foucault's concept of biopolitics as a mechanism of governance, the paper examines how notions of Australian national identity develop through distinct but discursively-related fields: (1) policies and public discourse on the Australian Commonwealth Government's promotion of fertility through the Baby Bonus scheme; (2) public debate and popular culture texts on global overpopulation and climate change; and (3) the movement of populations and peoples of Australia in terms of how policies of migration and responses to refugees inflect dialogue on national identity. Discussing these together through the framework of biopolitics, it is argued that governmentality in Australia is not only biased towards the production of particular types of Australian identity but particular types of Australian. Drawing predominantly on news discourses, the paper examines some of the ways in which the interface between these different fields and objects of biopolitical regulation can be understood through public sphere debate, popular cultural texts, and an assessment of the ways in which Foucault's biopolitical technologies continue to centre on national, neo-liberal issues and exclude concerns around global overpopulation, resource sustainability, and world climate.

Reflexive Thinking - A Substitute for Analogy? An Example of a Debate on Ancient Economy

Traditional debates on analogical thinking, which is at the root of all knowledge about the past, were founded on the scientific-methodological postulate of the striving for increased control of conditions that affect the research situation, that is, the pre-methodological consensus on the need for objectifying, depersonalizing and regulating research. Faithful to the inherited ideals of objective social science, the archaeological discussion on analogy has for decades focused exclusively on logical-epistemological issues of general methodology; however, it has actually contributed very little to overcoming the fact that the past is not objectively knowable.
 By introducing the concept of reflexivity into the debate on the analogical character of archaeological thinking, the paper aims to recontextualize the analogy debate which aspires to the positivist ideals of a social science, into a debate on archaeology as a social practice which inevitably and continually draws analogies between the past and the present and thus establishes the meanings of the world we live in. Rethinking archaeological analogies by means of a conceptual apparatus developed in anthropological and sociological debates on reflexivity provides a new research perspective in which the use of analogies moves beyond the sphere of debates on logical consistency and becomes a social practice aware of the semantic and hence also political implications of the knowledge it produces.

Spheres of Argument Concerning Oil Exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: A Crisis of Environmental Rhetoric?

Rhetorical theorists have frequently attacked the rhetoric of science for relying on expertise, perpetuating a gendered bias, and being used to intentionally manipulate the public. Yet while connections between the rise of scientific rhetoric and the erosion of public knowledge may sound reasonable to the casual observer, the approach taken in this manuscript traces the unintended consequences of lay-expertise on environmental activism and public policy. This essay analyzes two different categories of pro-environmental rhetoric used by actors concerned with preventing oil and natural gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). By examining the public controversy over ANWR, this essay asks: how are technical versus public claims in the debate over ANWR formed? What standards of evidence are required? What does this reveal about the rhetorical strategies used by those concerned with protecting the environment, both in ANWR and as a whole? What does it also disclose about the media and nature of modern public discourse? In doing so, the essay focuses on the importance of science and scientific rhetoric in establishing a sound basis for both public activism and environmental journalism.

Diversity and identity in societal context: introductory remarks

This introductory piece highlights key themes raised by Sir Bernard Crick and Professor Tariq Ramadan. Firstly I consider why citizenship is on the agenda and how these discourses are increasingly linked to discourses of diversity and identity. Secondly, I consider understandings of integration, especially with respect to Muslims, and thirdly, multiple identities and the public/private sphere debate. I propose the concept of 'institutional multiculturalism' which entails firstly, a recognition that public institutions are not culture-neutral domains, and secondly, promoting the process of a diverse 'authoring' in public sphere institutions to reflect the UK's diversity today.

Mapping Misconduct: Demarcating Legitimate Science from “Fraud” in the B-06 Lumpectomy Controversy

This essay analyzes how the borders between the technical and the public sphere were argumentatively demarcated in the B-06 lumpectomy controversy. Drawing from Thomas Gieryn's metaphor of “cultural cartographies of science,” it tracks the implications of four discursive maps of scientific practice that circulated in argument spheres as the controversy unfolded. Considered together, these maps preserved institutional jurisdiction over decision making and missed a critical opportunity to address stakeholder concerns about scientific practice more meaningfully. This case study suggests the need to extend our understanding of argument spheres in science-based controversy.

The Jerry Springer Show as an emotional public sphere

The public sphere debate in social theory has been a topic of considerable interest amongst scholars analysing the talk show genre. Habermas attached great importance to the potential of rational critical discussion to create consensus and thereby legitimation in democratic society. He was concerned that the media gave a false impression of engagement in a public sphere while managing rights of access and speech in a manner that was inimical to open public discussion. In contrast, cultural commentators on the talk show genre have been impressed by the richness and spontaneity of interactions on the shows, suggesting that they might have a positive role in public participation despite not meeting Habermas’s criteria for a public sphere. In consequence, the literature is moving away from the public sphere debate and focusing on issues of voice and expression in analyses of talk shows. This article, however, makes the argument that many of Habermas’s concerns are still highly relevant to the genre. This is demonstrated through an analysis of The Jerry Springer Show. On the surface, this show seems to have little to do with rational critical discussion. The analysis reveals a number of parallels between the conception of the rational critical public sphere and The Jerry Springer Show, leading to a revision of the received view of Habermas’s work in the analysis of mediated discussion. A range of implications for the mediation of deliberation, participation and expression are explored.

Keeping Company in Controversy: Education Reform, Spheres of Argument, and Ethical Criticism

Because many public controversies like education reform are highly divisive, complex, and intertwined with deeply rooted cultural, moral, and political issues, they evoke a need for a critical framework capable of addressing moral and political difference at an experiential and descriptive level. This study explicates one inventional framework for such an inquiry drawing upon both the “spheres of argument” approach and Wayne Booth's “ethical criticism.” The paper argues that the latter approach complements the former by enriching its topical framework.

Public and Technical Interdependence: Regulatory Controversy, Out-Law Discourse, and the Messy Case of Olestra

This essay characterizes regulatory controversy through communicative practices that bridge the technical and public spheres of argument. The case of Procter & Gamble's efforts to gain approval and consumers for the fat substitute olestra, opposed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, serves as a vehicle for exploring the nature of regulatory controversy and the interdependence of public and technical argument. Out-law discourse, a discourse of dissent, ignores conventional standards of argument and is invited in regulatory controversy when extant arenas for argument are not flexible enough to accommodate dissent. This out-law discourse is explored through the tactics of objection and counteranalysis, and the essay concludes that regulatory controversy actually places a greater burden on corporate actors than on their out-law opponents.

Separate family and community realities? An urban-rural comparison of the association between family life satisfaction and community satisfaction

Classical and contemporary statements about family and community suggest mutually reinforcing connections between these two life domains. However, in their search for greater niche building, scholars have largely overlooked such links because of their adherence to specific traditions. This article considers the public-private sphere debate, a tradition associated primarily with family studies. This tradition holds that individuals experience life as discrete social spheres. Using this tradition as a framework for critique, this study examines individuals' association with family and community via an empirical test of family life satisfaction and community satisfaction. Particular attention is also given to urban and rural differences and similarities in family life and community. Data were drawn from a nationally representative sample of adults from the USA. The multivariate analysis revealed a reciprocal relationship between family life satisfaction and community satisfaction. Findings are discussed in light of the public-private sphere debate and urban and rural realities. Les énoncés classiques et contemporaines sur la famille et la communauté suggèrent des rapports qui se renforcent mutuellement entre ces deux domaines de la vie. Pourtant, dans leur recherche de se faire une place dans le monde universitaire, les spécialistes ont en grande partie ignoré de telles liaisons à cause de leur adhésion aux traditions spécifiques. Cet article considère le débat entre les sphères publiques et privées, une tradition associée principalement aux études de familles. Cette tradition soutient que les individus font l'expérience de la vie comme sphères sociales discrètes. En employant cette tradition comme structure pour la critique, cette étude examine l'association des individus avec la famille et la communauté par une épreuve empirique de la satisfaction de la vie familiale et de la satisfaction de vie communitaire. Cette recherche tient compte aussi des différences et des ressemblances urbaines et rurales dans la vie familiale et communautaire, et elle se base sur des données d'un échantillon nationalement représentatif d'adultes des Etats-Unis. L'analyse multivariate a révélé un rapport réciproque entre la satisfaction de la vie familiale et la satisfaction de la vie communautaire. Les découvertes se présentent à la lumière du débat des sphères publiques-privées et des réalités urbaines et rurales.

Coverage of the European Parliament Elections of 1999: National Public Spheres and European Debates

This article is based on the results of an eight-country study on national media coverage of European political and cultural affairs, which included the final week of the European Parliament election campaigns. The research was carried out during two monitoring periods in 1999 with the co-operation of partner institutes in France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Coverage of the campaigns in each country provided an opportunity to examine media debates during a political event at a level above the nation-state. The coding of news items and articles allowed for a quantitative assessment of news coverage and frequency of reference to particular topics, while a qualitative overview of coverage by national experts facilitated the comparison of national debates. While the elections represent a process of political participation outside the national sphere, there is no corresponding common sphere of debate, which can be examined in relation to this exercise of citizenship. Comparing the activity in the various national spheres highlighted some of the distinct national ideas and debates about European Union membership while also bringing to the fore some common concerns and debates which reflect growing political and economic integration.

Modernization Theory, Public Sphere Debate and Western Dilemma in Studying China

(2000). Modernization Theory, Public Sphere Debate and Western Dilemma in Studying China. Chinese Historians: Vol. 10, No. 1-2, pp. 19-35.

Public/Private Service

This article discusses service journalism — the way the news media provide their audiences with information, advice and help about the problems of everyday life — in light of the theory of the public sphere and the growth of subpolitics fostered by reflexive modernization. Service journalism addresses two main types of everyday problem — grievances and risks — but it tends to subsume the former under the latter due to the effects of promotionalism as an increasingly dominant logic shaping the popularization of media formats and content. Apropos the public sphere debate, we argue that service journalism addresses a hybrid social subject — part citizen, part consumer and part client. Moreover, despite the fact that service journalism tends to individualize problems, it is amenable to politicization inasmuch as it shares common ground — the problems of everyday life — with the social movements and advocacy/activism groups that are the collective, motive force of subpolitics. Subpolitics politicizes the problems of everyday life in the way that it tends to subsume risk under grievance and break with the exclusionary, binary logic of mediational politics. This allows plural identities, individualistic and collectivistic, to coexist in an ambivalent and fluid way.

Criticism, Valuation, and Useful Purpose

Defining, and attempting answer, question of embraced by the larger problem of criticism's definition; and many critics have cast their views on valuation, or evaluation (a term sometimes used interchangeably with it),! in a general statement on the nature and function of criticism. Criticism, writes I. A. Richards, is the endeavour discriminate between experiences and evaluate them.2 For F. R. Leavis (one of the single most controversial critics operating within the sphere of debate about criticism and value), 'You can't discuss 'valuation' intelligently except in a general account of the nature of criticism.3 Other major critics in the past have seen the various operations contained in the valuing or evaluation of literature as an unavoidable concomitant of criticism's essential nature: Judgement forced upon us by experience. He that reads many books must compare one opinion or one style with another; and when he compares, must necessarily distinguish, reject, and prefer.4 Such views are sup ported by the analyses of modern aestheticians such as E. D. Hirsch, who writes in post-Kantian terms of the necessity of valuation in literary judgments and that value judgments are . . . inherent in literary description.5 Terry Eagleton meanwhile has pointed the respect in which all statements, even those that seem convey simple matters of fact, can be construed as value^judgements:6 it sometimes said that the critic cannot but evaluate,7 or even that to exist evaluate.8 Proscribing valuation?in the sense of banning the right prefer?may in its turn be portrayed as simply stupid or dull, as Robert Graves famously relates: understand, Mr Graves, that the essays which you write for your English tutor are, shall I say, a trifle temperamental. It appears, indeed, that you prefer some authors others.9 It in the nature of the situation of criticism that we should not

Sex Control Technology and Reproductive "Choice": The Conflation of Technical and Political Argument in the New Science of Human Reproduction

This essay analyzes the discourse surrounding one of the new reproductive technologies, sex “choice,” which allows prospective parents to control for male offspring through sperm separation technology. Topical analysis is used to make the case that the deployment of political claims within technical argument serves only to mystify audiences and obscure ideological motives. This analysis reveals the standards of appropriateness suited to judging both technical and public claims. Feminist critiques of reproductive technologies provide emancipatory criteria for judging new technologies. Both standards, those of appropriateness to a specific realm and those of emancipation, are necessary to judge the selection of “choice” as the descriptor of technologies that will most likely narrow women's choices as individuils and a group. The essay takes the position that making distinctions between the different spheres of argument is necessary for judging the appropriateness of standards proffered within each sphere. Neither standards appropriate to any individual sphere nor “yusion discourse,” which bridges spheres, should be confused with idealized and transcendent emancipatory criteria.

The Enthymeme as Postmodern Argument Form: Condensed, Mediated Argument then and now

When Stephen Toulmin wrote Uses of Argument in 1958, the modern age was in full bloom and television was in its infancy. Today, however, most scholars argue that we now live in a postmodern age, thanks in great part to the emergence of television as the primary communication medium in developed nations. Argumentation scholars have responded to these developments in a number of ways. Goodnight, for instance, posits that our more complex contemporary world has spawned three spheres of argument: the personal, the technical, and the public. erosion of public argument, he claims, is due to the privileging of the technical and personal that occurs in a world fragmented with specialties. Willard (Argumentation; Theory), meanwhile, suggests that argumentation scholars should explore the multiple interpretations of argument possible by the existence of multiple frames of reference in a postmodern age. These and other responses, however, do not explore directly how public officials argue through the media to postmodern audiences. Jamieson (Eloquence) examines how the rhetorical style of public officials has changed in an electronic age, but she does not delve into the changes in argumentative style wrought by the new age. Her thesis, though, that whether it be through brief campaign commercials, decreasingly brief sound bites on the evening news, or appearances on talk shows in which topics change every few minutes, public figures' pronouncements are transmitted to audiences through media and in condensed forms, equally applies to the arguments found in those pronouncements. Understanding how these arguments are structured is an important step toward revising a conception of public argument that has evolved much more slowly than has public discourse itself. Such an exploration, which I initiate here, must begin with an understanding of how audiences in postmodern societies process condensed, mediated arguments. Ironically, today's postmodern audiences process arguments in a manner eerily similar to the classical audiences of ancient Greece. implications of this notion on public argument raise some troublesome issues, only a few of which I can attempt to answer here. To develop these issues in further detail, I first compare the processing of postmodern and classical audiences. Next, I illustrate these theoretical similarities with a brief analysis of the rhetoric of David Duke. Then, I conclude with a discussion of the implications of this theoretical outlook. Convergence of Postmodern and Classical Theories postmodern condition, claims Collins, features a plethora of signs and symbols that circulate within a culture. One of the key preconditions of the postmodern condition is the proliferation of signs and their endless circulation, generated by the technological developments associated with the information explosion (cable television, VCRs, digital recording, computers, etcetera) (Collins 331). McGee calls these floating symbols fragments, and argues that contemporary audiences primarily process new combinations of these previously articulated fragments. The apparently finished discourse is in fact a dense reconstruction of all the bits of other discourses from which it was made (McGee, 279). Similarly, Collins calls this process the comprehension of the already said in new forms. What is postmodern in all of this is the simultaneity of these competing forms of rearticulation - the 'already said' is being constantly recirculated, but from very different perspectives ranging from nostalgic reverence to vehement attack or a mixture of these strategies (Collins 333). Postmodernism appears on television in a variety of forms, from self-reflexive prime-time programming (S. Olson) to network news reporters dishing up stories about how politicians attempt to manipulate those stories. Television, as a less-than-linear medium, is an ideal vehicle for postmodern communication. …

The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate

The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate

The relationship between the public and the technical spheres of argument: A case study of the challenger seven disaster

A number of authors have argued that public argument is being eroded by increased reliance on experts. In order to test this thesis, the arguments that dominated the decision‐making before and after the Challenger accident are examined. The ultimate conclusion is that the relationship between the public and technical spheres is more complicated than has been realized previously.

The Personal, Technical, and Public Spheres of Argument: A Speculative Inquiry into the Art of Public Deliberation

The Personal, Technical, and Public Spheres of Argument: A Speculative Inquiry into the Art of Public Deliberation

Archaeological Remains of the Osage

Since 1939 the writers have attempted, from time to time, to locate village sites of the Osage Indians, in the hope of determining the type of culture that was associated with that important tribe. The Oneota aspect of the Upper phase of the Mississippi pattern has been assigned to the Chiwere branch of the Sioux with considerable assurance, but identification of the culture of the Dhegiha branch has remained largely in the sphere of debate and speculation. It is not, however, entirely a matter of speculation, for some evidence has begun to come in. The problem is by no means settled, but in view of the times, it seemed wise to present such data as we have been able to gather.The Osage have been known to the whites since the time of Marquette, but the first visit of which we have record was that of Du Tisné in 1719.