The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought) Sixth Printing Edition

by Jürgen Habermas (Author)

15 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0262581080

ISBN-10: 0262581086

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This is Jürgen Habermas's most concrete historical-sociological book and one of the key contributions to political thought in the postwar period. It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests in problems of legitimation and communication foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

The most significant modern work on its subject...Habermas offers perhaps the richest, best developed conceptualization available of the social nature and foundations of public life. As scholars set out to make sense of the growing wealth of empirical research on the topics related to this theme, this book will form an indispensable point of theoretical departure...We should be grateful that it has finally appeared in English.

―Craig J. Calhoun, Contemporary Sociology

Review

Why is this such a vital study? Its significance rests in its analysis of one of the central notions on which both our political life and our political theories rests: 'public opinion.' Presidential candidates worry about it, the press talks about it, political scientists try to measure it, but Habermas is one of the few people to have actually sat down and tried to think about it to ask what it means to have an opinion that is not private, not idiosyncratic, but rather 'public.'

―James Schmidt, Boston University (Endorsement)

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Product details

Paperback: 301 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press; Sixth Printing edition (August 28, 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0262581086
ISBN-13: 978-0262581080
Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 0.6 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 15 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #175,718 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #722 in Books > Textbooks > Social Sciences > Sociology
- #936 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Philosophy
- #3704 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology

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This book is as brilliant as it is exhausting to read

April 8, 2018

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This book is as brilliant as it is exhausting to read. This book will put you to sleep while filling your thoughts with theories, ideas, and fascination with what this book goes over. In short, it is an explanation of what the "public sphere" is, how it has evolved from the Enlightenment to Modern, and how various governments, news organizations and companies create their own publics and exploit them. How advertising, PR and consumerism has created a malleable society designed for exploit by those that create publics within society.

One person found this helpful

Thomas W. Sulcer

Important thinking in political philosophy of democracy

October 12, 2008

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During the Renaissance a wonderful phenomenon happened which was caused, in part, by merchants and traders needing accurate information about distant markets as well as by the growth of democracy and individual liberty and popular sovereignty. This phenomenon is the "public sphere" -- a place between private individuals and government authorities in which people could meet and have rational-critical debates about public matters. It served as a counterweight to political authority. So people could discuss politics, criticize government decisions, inform each other about what was going on. It took place physically in coffee houses and cafes and public squares as well as happened in the media in letters, books, art. It was a positive force which helped keep authorities within bounds, lest their rulings be ridiculed in print or criticized in coffee salons.

Today, in contrast, there is little public debate, no public forums. We have the illusion of a public sphere. It's been transformed. Habermas tries to show how this happened. I think his work is stronger in showing the before and after effects of the transformation. But when he tries to show how this happened, his writing is often confusing, with sentences you can reread several times and still shake your head. Make no mistake: this is a difficult book to read. It's slow going, but worth it.

I think Habermas is right in the overall conclusion about the transformation of the public sphere. For example, real news (ie news we need as free people to stay informed and which helps keep us free) is being elbowed out by advice, entertainment, soft-porn, catchy garbage and celebrity antics. News is being transformed from rational-critical information to a commodity forced to compete in a giant entertainment market. It's a consumer good. It doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong, important or irrelevant. Rather, news must be entertaining. And, we're no longer real citizens but rather consumers, investors, members in a society who participate very little in government.

I highly recommend this book for serious students of politics and democracy. It is difficult reading. For the casual reader, it may be best to read a simpler overview book or treatment first, or to approach this under the guidance of a professor as part of a course, otherwise much of the text may appear incomprehensible. But his conclusions are on target, particularly the before and after comparison.

Thomas W. Sulcer
author of "The Second Constitution of the United States"
(free on web -- google title above + sulcer)

10 people found this helpful

October 28, 2015

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This is an essential social theorist to read for graduate students

2 people found this helpful

December 20, 2013

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This is a very helpful read for students of sociology, media studies, communication and related fields. It is also a good way to get acquainted with the Habermasian style. I found this book quite accessible compared to his later works.

One person found this helpful

April 1, 2015

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Must read book but printing quality is too bad

One person found this helpful

If you like this, you will love root canal work--or Niklas Luhmann

August 17, 2011

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Jurgen Habermas is of course a great philosopher and a vigorous fighter for truth and freedom. When bitter anticommunists were writing Darkness at Noon (Arthur Koestler), Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) and 1984 (George Orwell), Habermas (along with others, such as Karl Popper) was struggling to build a new Enlightment foundation for the notion of Truth, which had been sullied by the propaganda of the Nazis and effectively undermined by the Marxist critique of ideology, which held that the ruling ideas of society were the ideas of the ruling class, quite independent from the truth-value of these ideas, and the dominant philosophy of morality (positivists, natural language school, et al.) was that morality was purely relative and meaningless.

So, I love Habermas. This books is the English translation of his habilitatzionschrift, which made him a full professor in the German system. Now, Germans appear to have the idea that to write clearly betrays a small mind, so Habermas says as far away from clarity as possible. As a result this book is quite unreadable. Or rather, it mostly makes no sense, and when it does make sense, it is mostly wrong or highly contentious, and Habermas sticks to the traditional German philosophical disdain for the facts. While this is a purported historical argument, I have absolutely no faith in its accuracy, mostly because Habermas' arguments are generally interpretive and very difficult to pin down.

Habermas' major thesis is surely wrong. He argues that in the Enlightenment there was a real sphere of public discourse between civil society and the state, and in modern times, this discourse is captured by special interests and turned to the advantage of special interest groups. Where there once was discourse, there is now just spinning the news, with no attempt to seek truth. I think the facts are exactly the opposite. We live in an information age where the fraction of the population that is educated and aware of social issues larger then ever before. We may see in the future a return to totalitarianism, but it will never win out in the arena of popular political opinion.

11 people found this helpful

THE STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE

February 8, 2013

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GREAT REFERENCE WORK. MANY MORE SUCH REFERENCE BOOKS SHOULD BE MADE AVAILABLE FOR HIGH SCHOOL, COLLEGE, AND UNIVERSITY POST GRADUATE STUDENTS.

2 people found this helpful

Most recent customer reviews

A rare book that can change your world view...

A must read for anyone interested in understanding modern Western societies. I read this in the fall of 1993 as a young Ph.D.Read more

Published on May 22, 2016

shipping and handling was on point as expected.

Published on August 26, 2014

The universal category of bourgeois society at the turning point of history.

The structural transformation, at the 50th anniversary of its construction in 1961, is an ever new and being renewed book, with alternative readings through changing social...Read more

Published on October 16, 2011

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

JURGEN HABERMAS. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. MIT Press. 1991. Year. 298 Pages. $26.10 .Read more

Published on December 14, 2008

Indispensable for Understanding Contemporary Culture

Okay, perhaps I've got the social-theory-geek gene, but when I first read this book some fourteen years ago (during grad school), I was able finally to put together a lot of...Read more

Published on August 10, 2007

Filipe Carreira da Silva

One of the most influential studies on the subject

Habermas' work, though written more than four decades ago, still retains most of its original relevance for the study of the public sphere.Read more

Published on November 1, 2004

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