Page 166 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

Public 149

The public sphere can be described as

a mode of interaction in which mutually dependent private individuals
seek to build enabling interpretations of their shared circumstances
and call for a general response to collectively significant needs and
dissatisfactions…It designates a political process in which common cause
is built through the search for solutions to problems initially encountered
as private concerns.
(Johnson 2006: 1)

In other words, the public sphere exists within the rules of engagement
allowing individuals to find solidarity.

Monica is a Seventh Day Adventist, so only decaffeinated no-fat latte for
her.

Before enjoying her coffee, she asks for the key to the toilet. Though
FirstMate is open to the public, only paying customers can use the washroom,
and there is an often-unnoticed sign warning that there is to be no soliciting
and that FirstMate’s management can ask people to leave.
Worth noting is that though the public sphere is potentially open to
everyone, in practice there are restrictions. FirstMate is happy to offer itself
as a place to meet (and even relieve oneself) but only for a price.
In eighteenth-century Europe, Monica might not have passed through the
coffee house door, not because of her religion’s avoidance of caffeine (the
first Seventh Day conference took place only in 1861) but more probably
because of her gender. The private home would have been the “habitat” of
a young woman, and a salon would have been Monica’s space in which to
interact. Indeed, women hosted many of the most popular salons. Definition
of the public sphere was one of the first debated by feminists of the late 1960s
and 1970s, many of whom asserted that “the personal is the political.”
Though the place of meeting is important, so too is the host medium,
particularly as communities grow and diversify and the physical bricks and
mortar of the meeting place become virtual. In discussing the American case,
Martin Marty notes that

The the public in the writings of John Dewey and Walter Lippmann…gave
voice to and found expression in premier agencies of publicness as it was
then conceived and experienced. These include national newsmagazines
and other popular journals, metropolitan newspapers, mainstream church
body leadership, network radio and early network television.
(Marty 1999: 9)