Conceptual History

This section identifies literature discussing the conceptual history of the family of terms relating to the public sphere, including publicity, public opinion, the public and the much older uses of public and private as adjectives.

  • Bobbio, Norberto. 1989. “The Great Dichotomy: Public/Private.” Pp. 1-21 in Democracy and Dictatorship: The Nature and Limits of State Power. Minneapolis (MN): University of Minnesota Press.
  • Calhoun, Craig. 2001. “Civil Society/Public Sphere: History of the Concept(s).” Pp. 1897-1903 in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Habermas, Jürgen. 1989 [1962]. “The Bourgeois Public Sphere: Idea and Ideology.” Pp. 89-140 in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.
  • Hohendahl, Peter Uwe, ed. 2000. Öffentlichkeit: Geschichte eines kritischen Begriffs. Stuttgart: Metzler.
  • Hölscher, Lucian. 1978. “Öffentlichkeit.” Pp. 413-467 in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
  • —. 1979. Öffentlichkeit und Geheimnis: Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Entstehung der Öffentlichkeit in der frühen Neuzeit. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
  • Gunn, J. A. W. 1983. “Public Spirit to Public Opinion.” Pp. 260-316 in Beyond Liberty and Property: The Process of Self-Recognition in Eighteenth-Century Political Thought. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
  • —. 1989. “Public Opinion.” Pp. 247-265 in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, edited by Ball, Terence, Russell L. Hanson, and James Farr. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.
  • Peters, John Durham. 1995. “Historical Tensions in the Concept of Public Opinion.” Pp. 3-32 in Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent, edited by Glasser, Theodore L., and Charles T. Salmon. New York: Guilford.
  • —. 2004. “‘The Marketplace of Ideas’: A History of the Concept.” Pp. 65-82 in Toward a Political Economy of Culture: Capitalism and Communication in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Calabrese, Andrew, and Colin Sparks. Boulder (CO): Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
  • Splichal, Slavko. 2000. “Defining Public Opinion in History.” Pp. 11-48 in Ferdinand Tönnies on Public Opinion: Selections and Analyses, edited by Hardt, Hanno, and Slavko Splichal. Lanham (MD): Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

More To Come