Communications
| Date | 01 September 1997 |
| Published date | 01 September 1997 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00102 |
| Subject Matter | Communications |
Communications
Ricardo Blaug, `Between Fear and Disappointment: Critical, Empirical and
Political Uses of Habermas', Political Studies (1997), XLV, 100± 117.
Concerned as it is with the inter-penetration of theory and practice, Ricardo
Blaug's review of the diering uses of Habermas is less comprehensive than it
appears. Dilemmas of selection are always unavoidable, but in this case the
imposed restrictions caused the omission of a number of important contribu-
tions from the ®eld of social and political history. Ironically, those studies which
do exhibit a more balanced mix of theoretical and empirical material were
nowhere to be seen.
Habermas charted the development of particular forms of communication,
providing a dynamic perspective which indicates how the structures which
facilitate public discourse changed over time.1Yet Blaug's speci®c focus on
practicality de®ned as `armative use' leads him to neglect recent empirical
studies of the public sphere which develop this central theme. Historians have
attempted to understand and interpret the possibilities and constraints pro-
duced by speci®c forms of communication during the history of Europe and the
United States.2
Two examples illustrate the importance of this work for those seeking to
forge an agenda for empirical research. In calling for a new `cultural history of
politics', in which print, symbolic, and ritualized forms of communication are
given equal attention, James Vernon uses the concept of the public sphere in a
distinctive sense ± as popular, collective, and rich with symbolic character-
istics.3Vernon argues that in the mid-nineteenth century informal popular
involvement in politics was extremely high: politics as spectacle was equal in
importance to politics as rational discussion. The `public sphere', as he de®nes
#Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 CowleyRoad, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
1J. Habermas, The Structural Transformationof the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of
Bourgeois Society (London, MIT Press, 1989).
2On Europe see Geo Eley, `Edward Thompson, Social History and Political Culture: the
Making of a Working-Class Public, 1780±1850', in H. J. Kaye and K. McLelland (eds), E. P.
Thompson: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge, Polity, 1990); Geo Eley, `Nations, Publics and
Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century', Keith Michael Baker, `De®ning
the Public Sphere in Eighteenth Century France: Variations on a Theme by Habermas' and
D. Zaret, `Religion, Science and Printing in the Public Spheres in Seventeenth Century England',
all in C. Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1992);
J. Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, 1815±1867 (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1993); D. Zaret, `Petitions and the ``invention'' of public opinion in
the English revolution', American Journal of Sociology, 101 (1996). On the United States see
M. P. Ryan, `Gender and Public Access: Women's Politics in Nineteenth Century America' and
M. Schudson, `Was There Ever a Public Sphere? If So, When? Re¯ectionson the American Case',
both in Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere; M. Schudson, `Historical Approaches to
Communications Studies', in K. B. Jensen and N. Jankowski (eds), A Handbook for Qualitative
Methodologies for Mass Communications Research(London, Routledge, 1991); S. Herbst, Politics at
the Margin: Historical Studies of Public Expression Outside the Mainstream (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1994).
3Vernon, Politics and the People.
Political Studies (1997), XLV, 661±662
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