Public, Private and the Idea of the ‘Public Sphere’ in Early–modern England

Condren, Conal

doi:10.1080/17496970902722866

Cited by 18 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Condren has two principal arguments: one general, and the other specific. His general contention is that conceptual modelling in historiography is dangerous since ‘awkward evidence is massaged into an accommodating shape, and any model applied to the past becomes immune from critique or qualification’ (‘Public, Private’ 28) . More specifically, Condren criticizes the use of the Habermasian conception of the public sphere in historical accounts of Renaissance England, arguing that it has obscured early modern notions of public and private.…”

Section: Privacy and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nonetheless, Condren's argument is not unproblematic; although he cites numerous examples of how the terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ are used in the period, they are sometimes presented without context. For instance, he observes that some Renaissance political theorists thought that, ‘in the very act of confronting a tyrant a private man becomes a public officer’ (‘Public, Private’ 23). The point is a sound one: a number of radical arguments in favour of tyrannicide were advanced during the Renaissance (Skinner 2:302–38).…”

Section: Privacy and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Politics of Privacy and the Renaissance Public Stage

Price

2015

Literature Compass

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This article examines the politics of privacy and the public drama of the English Renaissance commercial stage. It surveys some recent critical approaches towards the study of privacy and politics including analyses of a supposed early modern public sphere. The article then attends to studies focusing on Renaissance drama and urges that the study of political privacy be extended beyond domesticity. The essay contends that a wider examination of the corpus of public drama in the English Renaissance is necessary. Shakespeare's plays often take centre stage in critical discussions, but complex concepts like privacy and publicity ought to be explored in reference to the diverse range of plays written for the Renaissance theatres. To illustrate the benefits of exploring the wider Renaissance corpus, the article ends by discussing politics and privacy in the neglected tragedy Soliman and Perseda.

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Section: Privacy and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Privacy and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of Privacy and the Renaissance Public Stage

Price

2015

Literature Compass

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“…For instance, in suggesting that the emergence of the politico‐legal understanding of the public sphere in some European countries to some extent reflected the separation of activities of rule from activities of religion, I am glossing over some important distinctions between the different countries and over some important distinctions concerning what the term ‘public sphere’ meant in the period in question (on this last matter, see esp. Condren 2009). For a fuller understanding of all the distinctions not dealt with thoroughly here, I urge the reader to turn to the work of the historians I cite or to that of other relevant historians.…”

Section: A Sketch Of the Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sociology, the public sphere, and modern government: a challenge to the dominance of Habermas

Wickham

2010

British Journal of Sociology

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There is an unfortunate tendency within some branches of sociology - particularly those usually called 'critical', that is, those associated with 'critical social theory'- to treat with disdain the understanding of the public sphere that many modern governments use daily in making and implementing public policy. The majority of sociologists in those branches seem to prefer, as part and parcel of their normative commitments, Jürgen Habermas's Kantian understanding of the public sphere, which focuses primarily on reason and morality and insists that these two forces are of a higher order than politics and law. This paper offers a set of criticisms of the Habermas-Kant understanding, arguing that its focus on reason and morality, were it to become more widespread, would steer sociology into public policy irrelevance. The paper goes on to describe a very different understanding of the public sphere, a politico-legal or civil-peace understanding which operates as the public policy focus of those governments that have relegated questions of salvation (whether religious or ideological) to the private sphere. This understanding emerged from early modern attempts to carve out a domain of relative freedom and security against the deadly violence of religious disputation sweeping across Europe. The paper readily acknowledges that some 'non-critical' branches of sociology already employ a version of this understanding.

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“…22 Entrepreneurship or trade were not the determining factors for making a particular activity or social role characteristically private. 23 Seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Britons were aware that certain actions and social roles were public -other directed and aimed at a general good -but that these same actions and roles were quite often temporary, contingent and did not in and of themselves constitute spheres of existence that were necessarily the antonym of 'the' private. 24 In other words, when we are evaluating the interactions between early modern governments and their suppliers during a war, or otherwise, we need to keep in mind that public or state service, as distinct from private enterprise, was not only based on an actor's or an institution's source of revenue (taxes versus trade, extraction versus entrepreneurship) and authority, but was also about the ultimate purpose of his or its particular suite of regulated activities.…”

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confidence: 99%

Neither private contractors nor productive partners: The English fiscal-naval state and London hospitals, 1660–1715

Neufeld

2016

International Journal of Maritime History

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Relations between the Royal Navy and London's great hospitals during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries concerning the care of sick and injured sailors were complicated, fraught and at times riven with conflict. This article surveys the relationship during the late Stuart era between the fiscal-naval state and the hospitals-semi-private institutions with a public mission-and attempts to re-evaluate the usefulness of the concept of partnership for understanding public and private interactions during wartime. The article contends that the state and the hospitals did not form a productive partnership because London's hospitals were obliged to work for the navy in ways that compromised the hospitals' ability to serve their core public.

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Public, Private and the Idea of the ‘Public Sphere’ in Early–modern England

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

The Politics of Privacy and the Renaissance Public Stage

The Politics of Privacy and the Renaissance Public Stage

Sociology, the public sphere, and modern government: a challenge to the dominance of Habermas

Neither private contractors nor productive partners: The English fiscal-naval state and London hospitals, 1660–1715

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