Public sphere
Outline the key features of Habermas’ public sphere. Discuss how healthy the public sphere is today, with reference to the forces of commerce and politics.
The focus point of this paper is to outline the key features of Jurgen Habermas’ public sphere while discussing how healthy the public sphere is today, with reference to the forces of commerce and politics. Jurgen Habermas’ concept of a public sphere is an area within social life that allows for a public opinion to be formed. First introduced in Habermas’ historical-sociological book that looks at the ‘emergence, transformation and disintegration of the bourgeois public sphere‘1, ‘Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit’ which was translated twenty-seven years later to ‘The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society’ To analyses the concept of the public sphere accurately, an understanding of the transgression of the concept from bourgeois public sphere to the modern day public sphere is imperative. During the eighteen hundreds, the idea of a public sphere was the utilization of public locations. Places such as coffee houses and salons where the bourgeois of society would discuss relevant social topics, that were normally highlighted in newspaper and journals such as The Tatler and The Spectator.
The criteria to be involved in the discussions resulted in inclusivity issues, as early on the only participates were composed of particular segments of the European population normally educated, literate and propertied men. This bourgeois public sphere excluded most of the working class, women and illiterate. Despite the difficulties of accurately researching historic literacy rates, it is thought that during the early years of the public sphere in the 17th century the literacy rate for males in the United Kingdom was roughly thirty percent, and it was much lower for women.2 The majority of the population did not participate in the public sphere until almost two centuries
The focus point of this paper is to outline the key features of Jurgen Habermas’ public sphere while discussing how healthy the public sphere is today, with reference to the forces of commerce and politics. Jurgen Habermas’ concept of a public sphere is an area within social life that allows for a public opinion to be formed. First introduced in Habermas’ historical-sociological book that looks at the ‘emergence, transformation and disintegration of the bourgeois public sphere‘1, ‘Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit’ which was translated twenty-seven years later to ‘The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society’ To analyses the concept of the public sphere accurately, an understanding of the transgression of the concept from bourgeois public sphere to the modern day public sphere is imperative. During the eighteen hundreds, the idea of a public sphere was the utilization of public locations. Places such as coffee houses and salons where the bourgeois of society would discuss relevant social topics, that were normally highlighted in newspaper and journals such as The Tatler and The Spectator.
The criteria to be involved in the discussions resulted in inclusivity issues, as early on the only participates were composed of particular segments of the European population normally educated, literate and propertied men. This bourgeois public sphere excluded most of the working class, women and illiterate. Despite the difficulties of accurately researching historic literacy rates, it is thought that during the early years of the public sphere in the 17th century the literacy rate for males in the United Kingdom was roughly thirty percent, and it was much lower for women.2 The majority of the population did not participate in the public sphere until almost two centuries