Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

JS-50

Re-Imagining Gendered & Raced Representations in the Public Sphere

RC25 Language and Society (host committee)
RC32 Women in Society

Language: English

Looking at public spheres across the globe, whether in North America, Europe, Africa, Latin America, Australia, or Asia, we see public spheres that have developed in traditional or non-traditional capitalist economies. Some mirror the path Jurgen Habermas envisioned – clogged entities that leave no room for independent speech or thought due to the collusion between private capital and the state. That is the traditional, western capitalist path. 
But, what of societies that experienced non-traditional capitalist development? What has been their trajectory for development of their public spheres? In economies that were marginalized in the international economic system, were their public spheres structured differently from the dominant economies where “commodity exchange burst out of the confines of the household economy [and] the sphere of the conjugal family became differentiated from the sphere of social reproduction” (Habermas, 1991)? 
What spaces/structures allowed for the expression of the interests of those whose humanity was defined in contradistinction to those of “white males” whose roles as head of family and owner of property was conflated to signify “human being”? What were the spaces/structures, socio-political moments, and technical/economic developments that allowed women and people of color (those who did not share the distinction of being elevated to the status of “human being”) to articulate themselves into humanity?
We welcome research from across the globe examining all emergent cultural spaces and/or representations that indicate social, economic, and/or political articulations of the subordinated to reinforce their humanity in the public sphere. Posters: