Mapping the Variety of Public Spheres

Abstract

Harnessing public sphere scholarship inspired by Habermas along with civil public spheres and Arendtian political public spheres, this article proposes that public spheres vary along two axes, scale and content. Scholarship describing the multiplicity of publics has significantly advanced our understanding of the public sphere in recent decades, but public spheres are multiple in patterned ways. They may be face-to-face or symbolic and mediated, and they may be political or civic in orientation. An examination of the social movement organizations of “the gay community” demonstrates how the map of the public sphere enables social analysts from different traditions as well as social activists utilizing different approaches to see their projects in relation to or in tension with one another.

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