Abstract
Nancy Fraser’s path-breaking “Rethinking the Public Sphere” brought the term “subaltern counterpublics” into critical theoretical discourse. Four innovative directions developed in that essay have now become established in the discourse of deliberative democracy: (1) a focus on inequalities in deliberation; (2) a move, in understanding the public sphere, from Habermas’s unitary conception to Fraser’s plurality of contesting publics; (3) a move to include self-interest in deliberation, when self-interest is constrained by fairness and rights; (4) a move away from a sharp separation between civil society and state to considering these spheres interpenetrating and both subject to democratic norms. Fraser’s early insights continue to illuminate each development.
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Notes
- 1.
A study of five Deliberative Polls (Siu 2009; using Fraser 1990 as a reference for the theory) shows that although participants with higher education talked more, their pre-deliberative opinions had no greater influence on the group’s post-deliberative opinion changes. A study of the EuroPolis Deliberative Poll (Gerber et al. 2016) shows that although participants who did not self-identify as “working class” had higher scores on an index of “deliberative quality” (including giving reasoned justifications), their pre-deliberative opinions also did not have greater influence on the group (see also Fishkin et al. 2014, p. 13). A similar lack of unequal influence appeared in China (Fishkin et al. 2012, p. 441). Gender also did not have the predicted effect on the outcomes in any of these Deliberative Polls. Deliberative Polls are not entirely randomly based. They begin with a random sample and produce incentives for citizens to participate, but even so they experience differential self-selection and so must fill in important missing demographics by drawing deeper from the random pool. The eventual group is thus never perfectly representative, although this process produces a more representative group than any other process based on random selection of which I am aware (Mansbridge 2010).
- 2.
Empirical scholars often count numbers of words or time speaking as the measure of discursive equality. So too in radical politics. In the late 1960s, to approximate discursive equality, the New York Radical Feminists briefly instituted a “disc system,” in which each person in a meeting was given a limited number of discs, having to spend one each time she spoke (Morgan 1970, p. xxvii). The German Green Party has required that men and women alternate speaking in party meetings (www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/feminist-governance-feminism/germanys-quota-politicians/).
- 3.
On threshold presence, see Pitkin (1972 [1967], p. 84), Kymlicka (1993, pp. 77–78), Phillips (1995, p. 47, 67ff).
- 4.
For the criterion of historical vote denial, see Mansbridge (1999a).
- 5.
Google Scholar reports 3860 cites for the phrase “subaltern counterpublic” as of September 2016. “Rethinking the Public Sphere” has been cited 7320 times.
- 6.
In the late 1980s and the 1990s, Fraser and I shared many thoughts and ideals as colleagues, friends, and political allies at Northwestern University.
- 7.
In the early 1970s, Pamela Allen reported from the early experience of the second wave on the importance of “free space” – a “place in which to think,” share experiences and probe their meaning, eventually analyzing them, abstracting from them, and “developing an ideology” (1970, pp. 6–7). She concluded that “the small group is especially suited to freeing women to affirm their view of reality and to learn to think independently of male supremacist values. It is a space where women can come to understand not only the ways this society works to keep women oppressed but also ways to overcome that oppression psychologically and socially” (1970, p. 8). Subsequently Evans and Boyte (1992 [1986]) and many other empirical scholars reported favorably on the uses of such spaces in social movements. The current discussion of “safe spaces” on campus, however, differs from this literature in many ways, particularly on Fraser’s point that to serve as “counterpublics,” such spaces must play some public-facing role.
- 8.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2015) defines “enclave” as “A portion of territory entirely surrounded by foreign dominions,” with a 1993 “draft addition” of “A group of people who are culturally, intellectually, or socially distinct from the majority of the population.”
- 9.
For a critique of this argument, see Owen and Smith (2015).
- 10.
Joshua Cohen dissented from this conclusion in directions indicated in p. 73, note 26 and p. 75, note 30. This article was the first in a series of “deliberative co-authorships.”
- 11.
In his reference to the plural “subcultural publics” and in his next sentence to “different publics that develop informally inside associations,” Habermas attempts to incorporate Fraser’s point about subaltern counterpublics without relinquishing his own earlier concept of a single overarching public sphere.
- 12.
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Mansbridge, J. (2017). The Long Life of Nancy Fraser’s “Rethinking the Public Sphere”. In: Bargu, B., Bottici, C. (eds) Feminism, Capitalism, and Critique. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52386-6_6
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