On the Public

Abstract

Transforming the Private Sphere Eight Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index This book began life in a comfortable easy chair in the sitting room of a peaceful home loaned by a friend in California. As I began taking notes, I watched US tanks speeding invincibly towards Baghdad, cheered on by patriotic journalists. For the chair, the home and the peace I thank Marianne McDonald, as also for kindly sending me a book that did much to speed me on my own way. Andrew Feenberg I thank for sharing his wide knowledge of communications literature, and some thoughts on pianos, even before I began; Marit Bakke for a valuable tip on literature; and Brit Berggreen for more of the same and for many an idea. I owe to Arne Johan Vetlesen's acute observations on an early draft a sharpened sense that not all will agree with me. To all of these I can express my appreciation without implicating them in anything they might take exception to in the result. Not so with three anonymous reviewers. Their discerning comments have been quite indispensable in producing the final draft. If mistakes and obscurity remain, blame me. I owe to my publisher, Tony Bruce, special thanks for heading me in the required direction and for valuable criticism, advice and support throughout. xiii Acknowledgements The Public THINKING IN ACTION-order more now

“Wikivism”: From Communicative Capitalism to Organized Networks

“…Of course, it goes without saying that people becoming better informed about politics as it affects them in their daily life is a good thing, for them, their local communities, their country's systems of governance, and beyond. Similarly, the demand for greater and more effective political participation and contribution is a debate that requires our consideration (Gibson et al 2004;Hannay 2005). But this argument is premised on the question of politics having been settled in advance, and thus that the role of ICTs in political life is merely to facilitate this "spread of politics," some of which "may become appropriated into the mainstream," but will nonetheless continue to give shape and voice to creative social relations and forms of democratic possibility (Kahn and Kellner 2005: 94).…”

Insider Perspectives on Influence and Decision Making in the Australian Political Sphere: A Case Study of National Quality Policy in ECEC 2006–09

“…Therefore, the child is positioned as an investment or commodity, rather than as a participating, embodied human being that has an investment in their world (Hannay, 2005). As ECQ participant Freya articulated, the Rudd Government agenda for ECEC was 'underpinned by this notion of "we need the best for children" because that's going to give us better outcomes for the nation' (ECQ3 Freya, interview transcript).…”

Mothers who Make Things Public

“…Interest in the public – be that public space, the public as audience or witness, the public sphere, or public opinion – moves from John Dewey's discussions of the state and its public in The Public and Its Problems in which the public arises as a demand by ‘a group distinctive enough to require recognition and a name’ (Dewey, 1954: 35), through to a much more ambivalent contemporary notion of the public in which it no longer pursues politics but private interests (Hannay, 2005). No longer a ‘distinctive grouping’ as Dewey would have it, the public is now almost the opposite: ‘an assemblage of unintegrated publics-as-audiences, so that society is split into established executive authority on the one side and interested spectators on the other’ (Hannay, 2005: 32).…”

“…Interest in the public – be that public space, the public as audience or witness, the public sphere, or public opinion – moves from John Dewey's discussions of the state and its public in The Public and Its Problems in which the public arises as a demand by ‘a group distinctive enough to require recognition and a name’ (Dewey, 1954: 35), through to a much more ambivalent contemporary notion of the public in which it no longer pursues politics but private interests (Hannay, 2005). No longer a ‘distinctive grouping’ as Dewey would have it, the public is now almost the opposite: ‘an assemblage of unintegrated publics-as-audiences, so that society is split into established executive authority on the one side and interested spectators on the other’ (Hannay, 2005: 32). Simon Bayly (2009) traces the ambivalence around notions of the public through a strand of writing that recommences, after Dewey's famous work, with Jean Luc-Nancy's The Inoperative Community and Maurice Blanchot's The Unavowable Community , both of which display a profound suspicion of the collective, the community, or any other notions of the public that seek to displace the primacy of the self-emancipated individual subject.…”