The Concept of the Public Realm

In its political form, the existence of a public realm is the basis of a shared relationship between rulers and ruled which makes politics more than mere power or domination. How to construct and maintain a public realm in the political sphere is, however, a matter of especial dispute at the present day, due partly to the increasing difficulty of making the distinction between public and private spheres which has been the basis of Western liberal democracy; partly to the tendency of public concerns to be identified with economic interests, which transforms citizens into consumers; partly to pressure for the acknowledgement of diversity of every kind, which creates the danger of fragmenting the public realm; and partly to globalization processes which have undermined the traditional identification of the public realm with national political institutions. Globalization has, in addition, raised the question of whether there can be a supra-national public realm and, more generally, of what form it is likely to assume in non-Western cultures. These are amongst the fundamental contemporary issues addressed by contributors to the present volume. This book was published as a special issue of the Critical Review of International, Social and Political Philosophy.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Noel O'Sullivan Part 1 The public, the private and the political in Western political theory 1. Reconsidering the private-public distinction Gurpreet Mahajan 2. The concepts of the public, the private and the political in contemporary Western political theory Noel O’Sullivan 3. Disagreement without reconciliation: Democracy, equality and the public realm Benjamin Arditi 4. Languages of political support: Engaging with the public realm Michael Freeden Part 2 Arendt, Habermas and Schmitt on the nature of the public realm 5. Hannah Arendt: the risks of the public realm Elizabeth Frazer 6. Habermas’ Öffentlichkeit: A reception history Charles Turner 7. Virtual pluralities and polemical opposition: Carl Schmitt and the staging of a people Kam Shapiro Part 3 Contemporary challenges to the concept of the public realm 8. Gender, culture and the politics of identity in the public realm Andrea Baumeister 9. The public realm, trust and the politics of identity Matthew Festenstein 10. Globalization and the public realm Terry Nardin Part 4 The concept of the public realm in non-Western culture: the case of India 11. Private and public spheres in India Bhikhu Parekh

About the Author :
Noel O’Sullivan is Research Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Hull. His most recent book is European Political Thought since 1945 (Palgrave, 2004). Other books include the monographs The Problem of Political Obligation (1987), Conservatism (Everyman, 1976), Fascism (Everyman, 1983), and The Philosophy of Santayana (Claridge Press, 1992). He is editor of the series Oakeshott Studies for the Imprint Academic Press. His work has been translated into Chinese, Italian, Dutch, Czech and Spanish.