Social Science Research Council

This essay forum strives to build an integrative discussion for what is a fragmented interdisciplinary field of study on the public sphere. It is meant to accompany a mapping project we are calling the Public Sphere Guide and is co-sponsored by NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge. The forum provides a platform for discussions around current or emerging projects in this area and serves as a gateway to ongoing conversations around sub-themes that have resulted in other stand-alone forums or blogs at the SSRC.

Latest Essays

• Rogers M. Smith: The Public Responsibilities of Political Science
• Herbert J. Gans: America’s Lobby Democracy and the Need for Citizen Lobbies
• Lauren Berlant: Affect, Noise, Silence, Protest: Ambient Citizenship

Special Feature: 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall

• Overview
• Julia Hell: Dissolution / Revolution: Uwe Tellkamp’s post-89 Novel Der Turm and the Peculiar Configuration of the Public Sphere in the Late GDR
• Jack Goldstone: Why no Green Revolution in Iran? 1989 vs. 2009
• Andrew Arato: From Revolutionaries to External Vanguards
• Mark R. Beissinger: How the Impossible Becomes Inevitable: The Public Sphere and the Collapse of Soviet Communism
• Hauke Brunkhorst: After 1989 and Beyond: Three Theses
• Jeffrey Goldfarb: The Not So Lost Treasure of the Revolutionary Tradition: 1989 and the Politics of Small Things
• Konrad H. Jarausch: People Power? Explaining 1989
• Michael D. Kennedy: Public Spheres, Private Lives, and Roundtable Negotiations in 1989 and 2009
• Elzbieta Matynia: 1989 and the Theater of Politics
• Steven Pfaff: From Revolution to Reunification: The East German Wende Two Decades Later

Other Recent Essays

• Craig Calhoun: Social Science for Public Knowledge
  
• Herbert J. Gans: A Sociology for Public Sociology
• Michael Schudson: A Family of Public Spheres
• Shanto Iyengar and James Curran: Media Systems, News Delivery and Citizens’ Knowledge of Current Affairs
• Michael X. Delli Carpini: The Inherent Arbitrariness of the ‘News’ versus ‘Entertainment’ Distinction
• Craig Calhoun: Remaking America: Public Institutions and the Public Good

Stand-alone Blogs/Forums on Sub-Themes
Religion and the Public Sphere:
The Immanent Frame
Academia and Public Policy:
The Minerva Controversy
Media Reform:
Making Communications Research Matter
The Public Good:
The Privatization of Risk
Understanding Katrina