The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

During the Renaissance a wonderful phenomenon happened which was caused, in part, by merchants and traders needing accurate information about distant markets as well as by the growth of democracy and individual liberty and popular sovereignty. This phenomenon is the "public sphere" -- a place between private individuals and government authorities in which people could meet and have rational-critical debates about public matters. It served as a counterweight to political authority. So people could discuss politics, criticize government decisions, inform each other about what was going on. It took place physically in coffee houses and cafes and public squares as well as happened in the media in letters, books, art. It was a positive force which helped keep authorities within bounds, lest their rulings be ridiculed in print or criticized in coffee salons.Today, in contrast, there is little public debate, no public forums. We have the illusion of a public sphere. It's been transformed. Habermas tries to show how this happened. I think his work is stronger in showing the before and after effects of the transformation. But when he tries to show how this happened, his writing is often confusing, with sentences you can reread several times and still shake your head. Make no mistake: this is a difficult book to read. It's slow going, but worth it.I think Habermas is right in the overall conclusion about the transformation of the public sphere. For example, real news (ie news we need as free people to stay informed and which helps keep us free) is being elbowed out by advice, entertainment, soft-porn, catchy garbage and celebrity antics. News is being transformed from rational-critical information to a commodity forced to compete in a giant entertainment market. It's a consumer good. It doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong, important or irrelevant. Rather, news must be entertaining. And, we're no longer real citizens but rather consumers, investors, members in a society who participate very little in government.I highly recommend this book for serious students of politics and democracy. It is difficult reading. For the casual reader, it may be best to read a simpler overview book or treatment first, or to approach this under the guidance of a professor as part of a course, otherwise much of the text may appear incomprehensible. But his conclusions are on target, particularly the before and after comparison.Thomas W. Sulcerauthor of "The Second Constitution of the United States"(free on web -- google title above + sulcer)

Jurgen Habermas is of course a great philosopher and a vigorous fighter for truth and freedom. When bitter anticommunists were writing Darkness at Noon (Arthur Koestler), Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) and 1984 (George Orwell), Habermas (along with others, such as Karl Popper) was struggling to build a new Enlightment foundation for the notion of Truth, which had been sullied by the propaganda of the Nazis and effectively undermined by the Marxist critique of ideology, which held that the ruling ideas of society were the ideas of the ruling class, quite independent from the truth-value of these ideas, and the dominant philosophy of morality (positivists, natural language school, et al.) was that morality was purely relative and meaningless.So, I love Habermas. This books is the English translation of his habilitatzionschrift, which made him a full professor in the German system. Now, Germans appear to have the idea that to write clearly betrays a small mind, so Habermas says as far away from clarity as possible. As a result this book is quite unreadable. Or rather, it mostly makes no sense, and when it does make sense, it is mostly wrong or highly contentious, and Habermas sticks to the traditional German philosophical disdain for the facts. While this is a purported historical argument, I have absolutely no faith in its accuracy, mostly because Habermas' arguments are generally interpretive and very difficult to pin down.Habermas' major thesis is surely wrong. He argues that in the Enlightenment there was a real sphere of public discourse between civil society and the state, and in modern times, this discourse is captured by special interests and turned to the advantage of special interest groups. Where there once was discourse, there is now just spinning the news, with no attempt to seek truth. I think the facts are exactly the opposite. We live in an information age where the fraction of the population that is educated and aware of social issues larger then ever before. We may see in the future a return to totalitarianism, but it will never win out in the arena of popular political opinion.

I though I knew something about Habermas’ Critical Theory and its use in Information Systems and software development, but I came across the public sphere concept in another book about Habermas. As it happens, the concept of the public sphere, in contrast to private and power spheres, as the location of rational discourse, is very useful for the changing context of digitalization. The boundaries shift, we don’t have a good vocabulary for defining them, and yet they can be designed to resolve the challenge between privacy and effective information sharing, at least in systems that cross over between institutions and external social media.

This book is as brilliant as it is exhausting to read. This book will put you to sleep while filling your thoughts with theories, ideas, and fascination with what this book goes over. In short, it is an explanation of what the "public sphere" is, how it has evolved from the Enlightenment to Modern, and how various governments, news organizations and companies create their own publics and exploit them. How advertising, PR and consumerism has created a malleable society designed for exploit by those that create publics within society.

This is a very helpful read for students of sociology, media studies, communication and related fields. It is also a good way to get acquainted with the Habermasian style. I found this book quite accessible compared to his later works.

A groundbreaking study, a bit difficult at times because it is a translation of some complex concepts, but definitely a 'must have' for anyone interested in the theories of how society became politicised, including the role of the press and meeting places..

non si può non avere il lavoro alla base del maggior filosofo-sociologo-pensatore del XX secolo...e visto che è ancora in atività lo proporrei anche per il XXI

It's a world classic in social science.