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

Jurgen Habermas

ISBN 10: 0262081806 / ISBN 13: 9780262081801

Published by Mit Pr, 1989

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)
• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262081806
• ISBN 13: 9780262081801
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

This is Jurgen Habermas's most concrete historical-sociological book and one of the key contributions to political thought in the postwar period. It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests - in problems of legitimation, of rationalization, and of communicative action foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.

Among the topics discussed are the origins of the category of "publicity" in the 18th-century, the rise of social institutions like newspapers, coffeehouses, and reading societies that provided for the formation and articulation of public opinion, and the way in which public opinion came to be assigned specific political responsibilities within liberal democracies.

Habermas's concern is with the rise of a politically active and informed public in England, France, and Germany, and the declining role of that public with the emergence of modern social welfare states. His ultimate subject, and the focus of his later work is the possibility of democracy under the radically changed socioeconomic, political, and cultural conditions of present day society.

Jurgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought edited by Thomas McCarthy.

Review

′Why is this such a vital study? Its significance rests in its analysis of one of the central notions on which both our political life and our political theories rest: ′public opinion′. Presidential candidates worry about it, the press talks about it, political scientists try to measure it, but Habermas is one of the few people to have actually sat down and tried to think about it, to ask what it means to have an ′opinion′ that is not private, not idiosyncratic, but rather ′public′.′
James Schmidt, Boston University