Transnational Public Sphere Research Articles

Violent belongings: partition, gender, and national culture in postcolonial India

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS CHAPTER ONE: Train to Pakistan 2007: Decolonization, Partition and Identity in the Transnational Public Sphere CHAPTER TWO: Re-Gendering the Nation: Masculinity, Romance and Secular Citizenship CHAPTER THREE A Crisis Made Flesh: Women, Honor and National Coupledom CHAPTER FOUR We Were Never Refugees: Migrants and Citizens in the Postcolonial State CHAPTER FIVE War and Peace: Pakistan and Ethnic Citizenship in Bollywood Cinema CHAPTER SIX Provincializing the Nation: State Violence and Transnational Belongings in the Diaspora CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

Database economy and transnational cinema

Digital or electronic cinemas are dependent on a global regime of standards covering such features as aspect ratios, colour gamuts, screen resolution and compression-decompression algorithms. These standards are worked out by a variety of intersecting organizations representing a variety of interests. This article argues that such standardization is isomorphic with the convergence of biopolitical and commodity forms in an emergent political economy that can be described as a database economy. This infrastructure of standards and ordering principles constitutes an actually existing transnational public sphere. The article discusses the possibilities for developing an alter-globalizing public sphere in digital cinemas, testing three possible avenues: cinemas of the silent majority, new modes of distribution and content-driven approaches. It concludes by asking whether vanguard practices of building new forms of cinema apparatus may be essential to the construction of alter-globalizing transnational cinemas.

Ambivalent ambassadors and realistic reporters

The European Union represents an emerging transnational political system for mainstream professional journalism. As a developing and enlarging system of power, expertise and a field of negotiation for compromises it provides a new horizon for journalism and journalists who have been strongly shaped by national discourses about politics, democracy and the public sphere. This article tackles this broad challenge in three steps. First, a synthetic analysis based on interviews with European journalists from 11 countries describes the dominant professional horizons of professional identities and relates them to EU news. Second, an interpretation of the generic forms of journalistic storytelling is suggested by linking the professional identities and trends into an idea about the dynamics of chronotropes of EU-journalism. Finally, a third layer of the discussion is provided by connecting the potentials and pitfalls of professional journalism to theorizations about transnational democracies and public spheres.

Poetry and Polemics: Iranian Literary Expression in the Digital Age

The mass migration of Iranians abroad following the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979 and the mobilization of mass media in the transnational networks established by these flows have challenged traditional approaches to immigration and national identity. In particular, rather than signifying a movement away from the nation, Iranians abroad have been forceful in constructing representations of Iran and Iranian identity through various media including satellite television, film, and most recently, the internet. Iranians in the United States, like many immigrant groups, have been active in using media to create a sense of community, share information, react to events in Iran, and articulate their identities and particular experiences in a new country. Weekly papers and monthly magazines have been commonplace in the Iranian diaspora. In places with large Iranian communities, television programming for this specific group also emerged in the 1980s. Iranians in Los Angeles have been particularly active in this form of media, and, by the mid-1980s, were broadcasting many programs about Iranian news, culture, and entertainment. Many of the youth who grew up in Iran watching these satellite television programs are now active in a medium of their own--the internet. Iranian weblogs and websites are an important development in the relationship between media and Iranian immigration. The history of Iranian Americans' use of media provides an important context within which to understand the novel effects of the internet on the Iranian transnational sphere. This article examines the internet as a source of literary production, and as such, is primarily concerned with the forms of expression fostered through Iranian websites such as Iranian.com and weblogs. Through a discussion of the media specificity of the internet and the personal memoirs, essays, and short stories on these sites, I argue that the internet genre has been critical in promoting forms of self expression, which are increasingly being articulated online. In particular, websites such as Iranian.com have functioned as a kind of virtual community, one that has served the needs of Iranian immigrants dealing with feelings of displacement and longing and, at the same time, allowed for the public expression of feelings that have generally been seen as belonging to the private realm. The internet genre has many features that distinguish it from other forms of publication. A survey of Iranian websites and weblogs makes one acutely aware of the contested nature of this unique terrain, and in particular, the anxieties around the questions of authority and representation. I will examine the expression of these concerns, as seen through letters posted on an Iranian website, and contextualize them within the broader cultural politics of representation in the Iranian transnational public sphere. Iranians in the United States Representations of Iranian culture by Iranians in immigrant settings are not homogenous. The narratives of various groups of Iranian immigrants are related to many factors, including time of migration, socioeconomic class in Iran, political orientation, religion, and experiences in the new country. The identification as exilic among Iranians in Los Angeles, for example, emphasizes political narratives of displacement and suggests an involuntary migration; these individuals thus distinguish themselves from later waves of refugees or immigrants seeking economic opportunities abroad. The time of migration (in relation to the Revolution) also functions as a classifying device; it implies motivations for migration and, by extension, socioeconomic class (or cultural status) in Iran. To understand the unique formation of Iranian communities in the United States that produce these narratives, it is necessary to first consider the historical context of Iranian immigration to the United States. Briefly, three distinct waves of migration characterize Iranian immigration to the United States. …

Zähmt zivilgesellschaftliche Partizipation die internationale Politik?

This contribution investigates the empirical foundation of the claim that civil society participation mitigates the democratic deficit of international governance. In a first step, two potentially democratizing functions of organized civil society are identified: direct channelling of citizens’ interest into international negotiations and a contribution to the emergence of a transnational public sphere. While the creation of public visibility is rather unproblematic direct input into negotiation processes is often hampered by the conditions of executive multilateralism. Moreover, we need to acknowledge trade-offs between constructive collaboration with international organizations and public opposition against their policies.

The Porous Public and the Transnational Dialectic

This article uses the twin concepts of the porous public and the transnational dialectic to analyse the recent Muhammed cartoons conflict. The porous public concept points to the way national public spheres are increasingly penetrated by inbound and outbound influences. The transnational dialectic concept suggests that globalization is a learning process in which globalization is simultaneously outcome and cause of social and political activities. During the cartoons conflict, the porosity of the Danish public was evident in (1) the transnational activities of national media, in (2) the role played by transnational news channels, in (3) the transnational activities of Muslims living in Denmark, and in (4) the role played by 9/11 as a transnationally shared event. Based on these findings, the concept of the transnational dialectic is employed to show how the Muhammed cartoons conflict constituted a learning process for Danish society, a process which has resulted in an increased level of global consciousness and an altered self-conception of Denmark's place and role in the world. Following the analysis of the Muhammed cartoons, the article discusses how the concept of the porous public relates to that of the transnational public sphere.

Transcending Borders? Reassessing Public Spheres in a Networked World

The public sphere is a pivotal concept in democratic theory. Conventionally, it is framed in a local/national context. In the classic Habermasian formulation, the public sphere is predicated on national media, a sovereign state, and participatory citizenry. However, under conditions of globalisation, the nation-state paradigm is subject to increasingly significant challenges. The advent of the network society is also destabilising the institutional foundations of the national public. These developments necessitate a reassessment of the public sphere as a territorially delimited realm. A reconstruction of Habermasian theory reveals how global interconnections may be providing the structural preconditions for the emergence of transnational public spheres. The categories of flows are threefold: communicative networks, governance networks, and activist networks. In certain issue-areas, all three preconditions may coalesce to produce an environment suitable for the emergence of transnational public spheres. However, the potential for the realisation of ‘borderless’ public spheres is circumscribed by key factors. Global communication is systematically distorted, global governance is democratically deficient, and the norms of critical publicity are difficult to sustain amongst highly differentiated virtual audiences. Unless these issues are addressed, the early promise of transnational networks as an emancipatory force will be neutralised. La esfera pública es un concepto esencial en la teoría democrática. Convencionalmente, se ha conceptualizado tanto en un contexto local como nacional. En la clásica formulación habermasiana, la esfera pública se predica a través de los medios nacionales, un estado soberano y una ciudadanía participante. Sin embargo, bajo las condiciones de la globalización, el paradigma de nación-estado está sometido a retos significativos que van en aumento. La entrada de la sociedad en red está desestabilizando también las bases institucionales del público nacional. Estos desarrollos necesitan un replanteamiento de la esfera pública como un dominio territorialmente delimitado. Una reconstrucción de la teoría habermasiana revela cómo las interconexiones globales pueden proveer las precondiciones estructurales para el surgimiento de esferas públicas transnacionales. Las categorías de las corrientes se dividen en tres: redes comunicativas, redes gubernamentales y redes de activistas. En ciertas áreas con problemas, todas las tres precondiciones tienen que fundirse para producir un ambiente adecuado para el establecimiento de las esferas públicas transnacionales. Sin embargo, el potencial para la realización de las esferas públicas ‘sin fronteras’ se circunscribe por factores claves. La comunicación global es distorsionada sistemáticamente, la autoridad global es democráticamente deficiente y las normas de la publicidad crítica son difíciles de sostener entre audiencias virtuales altamente diferenciadas. A menos que se resuelvan estos problemas, la promesa inicial de las redes globales como una fuerza liberalizadora, será neutralizada.

Transnationalizing the Public Sphere

Contributors Introduction 1. Nancy Fraser - Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: on the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World 2. Kate Nash - Towards Transnational Democratization? 3. Kimberley Hutchings - Time, Politics and Critique: rethinking the when question 4. Nick Couldry - What and Where is the Transnationalized Public Sphere? 5. Fuyuki Kurasawa - Putting the Social Back into the Transnational Public Sphere 6. David Owen - Dilemmas of Inclusion: the all-affected principle, the all-subjected principle and transnational public spheres 7. Nancy Fraser - Publicity, Subjection, Critique: A Reply to My Critics

Transnationalizing the Public Sphere

As a critical concept, the public sphere has always been premised on two idealizing assumptions: in principle, public opinion should be normatively legitimate and politically efficacious. Yet these assumptions are hard to associate with the discursive arenas we today call ‘transnational public spheres’, which neither stage communication among equal citizens nor address it to sovereign states. In this context, public sphere theory is in danger of losing its critical thrust and political point. Aiming to recover its critical potential, this article revisits the ideals of legitimacy and efficacy in three steps. First, I explicate the implicit Westphalian presuppositions of Habermas’s original formulation and show that these have persisted in its major feminist, anti-racist and multicultural critiques, including my own. Second, I identify several distinct facets of transnationality that problematize the understandings of legitimacy and efficacy that informed both the original theory and its critical counter-theorizations. Finally, I suggest a strategy for reconstructing the ideal of legitimate and efficacious public opinion for a post-Westphalian world.

Special Section: Transnational Public Sphere: The Potential of an `Unfolding Constellation': Imagining Fraser's Transnational Public Sphere

Special Section: Transnational Public Sphere: The Potential of an `Unfolding Constellation': Imagining Fraser's Transnational Public Sphere

Special Section: Transnational Public Sphere: Transnationalizing the Public Sphere

Special Section: Transnational Public Sphere: Transnationalizing the Public Sphere

The European Union in Cyberspace

This article analyses the European Union’s Futurum discussion forum. The EU hoped that Futurum would help close the acknowledged gap between institutions and citizens by facilitating a virtual, multilingual, transnational public sphere. Futurum was both an interesting example of how the EU’s language policies shape the structure of deliberative experiments and of a public debate about their relative value. We combine various quantitative measures of the discussions with a critical discourse analysis of a thread which focused on language policies. We found that although the debates were predominantly in English, where a thread started in a language other than English, linguistic diversity was more prominent. The discourse analysis showed that multilingual interaction was fostered, and that the debate about language policies is politically and ideologically charged.

Diaspora, cyberspace and political imagination: the Eritrean diaspora online

Abstract In this article I analyse the Eritrean diaspora and its use of cyberspace to theorize the ways transnationalism and new media are associated with the rise of new forms of community, public spheres and sites of cultural production. The struggle for national independence coincided with the rise of the Internet and the Eritrean diaspora has been actively involved in the new state. Eritreans abroad use the Internet as a transnational public sphere where they produce and debate narratives of history, culture, democracy and identity. Through the web the diaspora has mobilized demonstrators, amassed funds for war, debated the formulation of the constitution, and influenced the government of Eritrea. Through their web postings, ‘Internet intellectuals’ interpret national crises, rearticulate values and construct community. Thus, the Internet is not simply about information but is also an emotion‐laden and creative space. More than simply refugees or struggling workers, diasporas online may invent new forms of citizenship, community and political practices.

Women's Activism and the Public Sphere: Introduction and Overview

Women’s Activism and the Public Sphere:Introduction and Overview Valentine M. Moghadam (bio) and Fatima Sadiqi (bio) The articles in this special issue were among those presented at a workshop we organized for the Sixth Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, which took place from 16—20 March 2005, in Montecatini, Italy. The purpose of the workshop was to examine the proposition that the public sphere in a number of MENA countries is changing and civil society becoming "feminized" due to women's greater social participation, the proliferation of women's organizations, their involvement in or initiation of public debates and national dialogues, and their access to various forms of media. Twelve papers were submitted and presented at the workshop, leading to a very lively discussion, but only a few could be included in this special issue. The papers lay out the complexity of various versions of women's activism, their intricate relations with public space, and how that plays out in contemporary political and legal debates.In what remains, we provide a brief introduction to the guiding ideas and an overview of the papers' arguments and findings. In Habermas' conceptualization, the "public sphere" is a modern institution and a set of values that brings private persons together in public to engage in a context of reasoned debates (Habermas 1989). Civil society—the non-state realm of associational life, civility in public discourse, and state-society relations—constitutes an important part of the [End Page 1] public sphere of media and other forums of public opinion. As feminist scholars have pointed out (Fraser 1996; Lister 1997), civil society and the public sphere historically were cast as male, although women's suffrage and the women's movement expanded, democratized, and feminized these spheres in the course of the twentieth century. The public sphere has been conceptualized largely in connection with the single society and the nation-state, but processes of globalization suggest the emergence of a "global space" within which reasoned debates, associational activities, and collective action take place. This is the impetus for the new literature on "global civil society" (Florini 2000), the "transnational public sphere" (Guidry, Kennedy, and Zald 1999), "transnational social movements" (Smith, Chatfield, and Pagnucco 1997), "transnational advocacy networks" (Keck and Sikkink 1998), and "transnational feminist networks" (Moghadam 2005). A burgeoning literature on civil society, citizenship, and democratization has emerged in the context of Middle East Studies, in tandem with a body of work by feminist scholars (Brynen, Korany, and Noble 1995, 1998; El-Sayyid 1994; Norton 1995; Arat 1994; Brand 1998; Botman 1999; Joseph 2000; Moghadam 2003; Sadiqi 2003). As an earlier generation of feminist scholars noted for the West, the public sphere of politics in MENA has been cast as male and distinguished from the private sphere of women-and-the-family. Moreover, the state and the market have been long regarded as masculine domains. Rights of the citizen—limited for all in the authoritarian and neopatriarchal states of MENA—have been differentiated by gender (and religion). It is this state of affairs that is being contested by an emerging social and political constituency—women—who are motivated by aspirations for equality and enhanced rights and who also draw on international standards, conventions, and networks in support of their claims. As a social movement, women's activism in the public sphere uses strategies that do not reproduce Western frameworks but that feed into global synergy with their guiding cultural worldviews. It is only through understandings of intercultural worldviews and various meanings of "pragmatism" that MENA women's rights tactics can be appreciated globally (Sadiqi forthcoming). The papers in this special issue explore the changing nature of the public sphere in MENA and women's contributions to it, as well as women's involvement in the transnational public sphere, through an [End Page 2] examination of countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Jordan, where these changes have been observed. An examination of political developments over the past decade in MENA countries leads to the formulation of the following propositions. Proposition 1. The public sphere in a number of MENA countries is being engendered and feminized because of the emergence of women as political actors...

GLOBAL SOLIDARITY AS GLOBAL CONSTITUTIONALISM

Solidarity on the level of world society may appear as an intractable ideal. Nevertheless, the globalization of law and human rights can be perceived as an emerging form of global constitutionalism contributing to the integration of world society. This interview with one of Germany's leading sociologists, Hauke Brunkhorst, revolves around this evolution. Brunkhorst argues that solidarity is internal to democratic self-determination. Insofar as citizens are increasingly subject to global laws they constitute a global people in embryonic form. This is evident through the gradual constitution of a transnational public sphere and global protest movements invoking the ‘language of human rights’. Still, the legal integration of world society is ridden by democratic deficiencies, and to some extent politics after 9/11 has questioned the move toward a global constitutionalism. The interview is inspired by Brunkhorst's recent book, Solidarity.

The Rise of Alevism as a Public Religion

The article explores why and how Alevism, a religious creed and tradition that had been kept esoteric and transmitted only orally at secret rituals, has emerged in public spheres within Turkey and the European diaspora since the late 1980s. It draws attention to two major actors, transnational Alevi networks and the state actively inducing and shaping the transformation of Alevism from secret to public culture in national and transnational public spheres. Networks, social and political opportunity structures, and communicative praxis are used to analyse this process. By taking transnational networks into account this article goes beyond traditional network analysis.Networks are articulators of new spaces to host culture and identity formation processes. Social actions are not just about networks and opportunity structures but also about the construction of meaning. The article investigates the communicative praxes of dissenting and consenting actors shaping Alevism in the arena of national and transnational publics.

The Porto Alegre Consensus: Theorizing the forum movement

The World Social Forums and corresponding Forum movement marks a shift in transnational social movement methodology and solidarity. The Forums work to thicken linkages between global civil society actors, liberate communicative action, and horizontally integrate the struggle for global social justice. This article outlines a theoretical dialogue linking the concepts of transnational public spheres, political opportunity structures and cosmopolitan democracies to the Forums' process. The article also discusses the idea of a Porto Alegre Consensus evolving to challenge the economic logic of the Washington Consensus. This Consensus coalesces around agreed-upon methodologies guiding the Forums' development partly laid out in its Charter of Principles, but, more importantly, interpreted and re-negotiated by participants engaged in the Forums' many diverse manifestations. I contend that this reflexive process between Forum incarnations and the participatory assessment and corresponding revisions of Forum methodology is at the heart of the movement's success.

Online Political Debate, Unbounded Citizenship, and the Problematic Nature of a Transnational Public Sphere

Citizenship has always been a dynamic notion, subject to change and permanent struggle over its precise content and meaning. Recent technological, economic, and political transformations have led to the development of alternative notions of citizenship that go beyond the classic understanding of its relationship to nation states and rights. Civil society actors play an important role in this process by organizing themselves at a transnational level, engaging with issues that transcend the boundaries of the nation state and questioning the democratic legitimacy of other transnational actors such as international and corporate organizations. They also allow citizens to engage with “unbounded” issues and to construct a transnational public sphere where such issues can be debated. It is often assumed that the Internet plays a crucial role in enabling this transnational public sphere to take shape. Empirical analysis of discussion forums and mailing lists developed by transnational civil society actors shows, however, that the construction of such a transnational public sphere is paved with constraints. To speak of a unified transnational public sphere is therefore deemed to be problematic. It cannot be seen or construed without taking into account the local, the national, and enforceable rights in order to materialize the ideas and hopes being voiced through civil society.

7 National and transnational public spheres: the case of the EU

While many important social processes cut across national borders and have transnational institutions to regulate them, democratic participation still occurs almost exclusively within individual nation states. Public information and debate are essential ingredients of democracy, and their confinement to the individual national public sphere threatens the democratic aspirations and legitimacy of transnational institutions. Therefore, it is often argued that the European Union can only achieve greater legitimacy if there is a Europeanization of national public spheres. Has public discourse in fact Europeanized in the last decades? Here we present results from a study of major national newspapers from five European countries. Europeanization is defined in three dimensions: Europeanization of contents, Europeanization of public identities, and Europeanization of communication flows. Our results show that national public spheres are, in fact, quite resilient and that change is slow or halting. We discuss several possible explanations for this resilience, and go on to question the assumption that the legitimacy of European institutions depends on Europeanization of public discourse.

Global Governance, Participation and the Public Sphere

AbstractWe argue that the democratization of global governance will ultimately depend upon the creation of an appropriate public sphere that connects decision-making processes with transnational constituency. The emergence of such a public sphere would require more transparency in international organizations as well as institutional settings in which policy-makers respond to stakeholders’ concerns. Organized civil society plays a key role by exposing global rule-making to public scrutiny and bringing citizens’ concerns onto the agenda. We illustrate the prospects and difficulties of building a transnational public sphere with the example of the WTO.