Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Theory, Culture & Society
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Ugarteche, O.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Transnationalizing the Public Sphere

A Critique of Fraser

Oscar Ugarteche

Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas, UNAM, Mexico

As a critical concept, the public sphere has always been premised on two idealizing assumptions: in principle, public opinion should be normatively legitimate and politically efficacious. Yet these assumptions are hard to associate with the discursive arenas we today call ‘transnational public spheres’, which neither stage communication among equal citizens nor address it to sovereign states. In this context, public sphere theory is in danger of losing its critical thrust and political point. Aiming to recover its critical potential, this article revisits the ideals of legitimacy and efficacy in three steps. First, I explicate the implicit Westphalian presuppositions of Habermas’s original formulation and show that these have persisted in its major feminist, anti-racist and multicultural critiques, including my own. Second, I identify several distinct facets of transnationality that problematize the understandings of legitimacy and efficacy that informed both the original theory and its critical counter-theorizations. Finally, I suggest a strategy for reconstructing the ideal of legitimate and efficacious public opinion for a post-Westphalian world.

Key Words: cosmopolitanism • critical theory • democracy • globalization • Habermas

Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 24, No. 4, 65-69 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0263276407080095
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?