Some Meanings of ‘the Private’ in Sociological Thought

Abstract

The public/private distinction has been an important, generative but relatively unexplicated and unstable background assumption in sociological thinking. This paper describes some of the significances of this dualism in the context of a contemporary anxiety about the public sphere and a turn to the private, the subjective and the individual, not least for sociology. Popular and materialistic meanings of ‘the private’ are distinguished from possible sociological analytical uses. The increasing sociological interest in various forms of subjectivity is taken to be one characteristic version of the private within the current public/private dualism. A range of well-known formative sociological theorising is described, which provides implicit versions of the relation between the private and the public. These are a resource for rethinking what the private might now refer to in sociology. Three dimensions of the sociological private are proposed – intimate relationships, the self and the unconscious – as marking the sociological terrain of the private now and as directions for research. It is sugguested that the hitherto secondary quality of the private within a sociology which has traditionally privileged the public realm may now be changing and that discourses of the private are affecting the public agenda.