Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T19:48:23.625Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Democratization and Discourse

The Public Sphere and Comparative Historical Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Elisabeth S. Clemens
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The relationship between the development of rational public discourse and the expansion of democratic participation provides a focus for the comparative and historical analysis of the public sphere. Major scholars disagree, however, on the character of this linkage. As the contributions to this symposium demonstrate, the resulting debates have generated a rich literature in historical sociology. For Charles Tilly, public discourse and democratic participation proceeded largely in tandem, tracing out one important lineage in the history of democracy. An alternative understanding, informed by the early work of Jürgen Habermas, produces a more conflicted account of the tensions between democratic inclusion and rational deliberation. In their contributions to this symposium, Craig Calhoun and Andrew Abbott reconstruct the shifting and contested public arenas of London and Chicago. In an essay written after the original session for which my comments were crafted, Andreas Koller outlines a substantial agenda for comparative historical research on the public sphere.

Type
Special Section: History and the Social Sciences: Taking Stock and Moving Ahead
Information
Social Science History , Volume 34 , Issue 3: In Honor of Charles Tilly , Fall 2010 , pp. 373 - 381
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2010 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Benedict (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Breen, T. H. (2004) The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Clemens, Elisabeth S. (1997) The People’s Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890–1925. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John (1954 [1927]) The Public and Its Problems. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1991 [1962]) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Haydu, Jeffrey (2008) Citizen Employers: Business Communities and Labor in Cincinnati and San Francisco, 1870–1916. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Carl (1985[1926]) The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, George (2005) “The epistemological unconscious of U.S. sociology and the transition to post-Fordism: The case of historical sociology,” in Adams, Julia, Clemens, Elisabeth S., and Orloff, Ann Shola (eds.) Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press: 109–57.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (1995) Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (2007a) Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (2007b) “Grudging consent.” American Interest, September–October, 17–23.Google Scholar