Foundations of Social and Behavioral Sciences Theory

Cultural Geographies of the Modern World

Private and Public Places

The Public-Private Binary

• “Binary distinctions are an analytic procedure, but their usefulness does not guarantee that existence divides like that. We should look with suspicion on anyone who declared that there are two kinds of people, or two kinds of reality or processes.” - Mary Douglas (anthropologist) “Judgments on James Frazier”

• Public/private binary has been asserted long before modernity. It is a “grand dichotomy” of Western thought

• Not only across eras but within eras, public/private have been thought of in very different ways

The Public-Private Binary

• Public: From Latin publicus (the people or pertaining to the people or community)

• Private: From Latin privatus (set apart, belonging to oneself), from Old Latin privus (one’s own)

The Public-Private Binary

• Most modern definitions refer to one of two kinds of imagery:

A) What is hidden or withdrawn versus what is open, revealed, or accessible

B) What is individual, or pertains to an individual, versus what is collective, or affects the interests of a collectivity of individuals. This individual/collective distinction can, by extension, take the form of a distinction between part and whole (of some social collectivity)

Weintraub, p. 15

The Public-Private Binary

• What different kinds of modern human action are implied in these dichotomies?

1. Nation-state administration vs. market economy (liberal-economistic model)

2. Political community vs. market and state (republican-virtue model)

3. Sociability vs. individual and familial privacy (dramaturgic model)

4. Market and state vs. family (feminist model)

Each model has its own political and social philosophies and its own image of public and

private space

Liberal-Economistic Model

• Neo-classical economic thought divides the social world into “public sector” and “private sector”

• The private sector is the economic relations of free individuals and the public sector is composed of the organizations that regulate individuals

• Key questions revolve around the balance between free individuals and coercive- collective organizations

John Locke

John Stuart Mill

Liberal-Economistic Model

• Public space = areas controlled by the administrative state

- Government buildings

- Public schools

- Public roads

- Public sidewalks

- Public parks

- Government owned land

Liberal-Economistic Model

• Private space = areas owned and controlled by non- governmental entities (individuals and corporations)

- Residential homes

- Individual human bodies

- Shopping malls

- Automobiles

- Workplaces

Liberal-Economistic Model

• Key controversies:

- Symbolic: what kind of symbolic gestures can be made in collectively owned (public) space?

- Religious symbolism (Salazar v. Buono, McCreary County v. ACLU)

Cross commemorating WWI veterans on public land, Mojave National Preserve

Stephen Colbert: Symbol Minded

Liberal-Economistic Model

• Key controversies:

- Economic: What effect does public administration have on privately owned space? What effect does publicly owned space have on privately owned space?

Liberal-Economistic Model

• Key controversies:

- Economic: What effect does public administration have on privately owned space? What effect does publicly owned space have on privately owned space?

Republican-Virtue Model

• Res = Thing(s); Publicus = The People, what is common to all in a community

• Small-r republican political philosophy separates the social world into a collective-civic- public sphere on one hand

• And an individual, self- interested, private sphere on the other

Jean-Jacque Rousseau

Republican-Virtue Model

• Democratic communities are maintained by solidarity and republican virtue

- Solidarity: A tight emotional bond between individuals who share a common interest

- Republican virtue: personal characteristics necessary for citizens to rule themselves

• This civic type of public action goes unacknowledged in the liberal-economistic view

Montesquieu

Republican-Virtue Model

• Jurgen Habermas: the Public Sphere is an arena in which citizens can

- learn about democracy and citizenship

- deliberate on public matters

- see the public good more clearly

• Spaces of the public sphere:

- British Coffee Houses

- French Salons

- German Tischgesellschaften

Republican-Virtue Model

Montesquieu

• Public space = areas in which a politically connected citizenry gathers, deliberates, and expresses itself

- Public hearings

- Political debates

- Monumental spaces (Washington Mall)

- Coffee shops, book clubs, social organizations

Republican-Virtue Model • Private space = areas that do

not pertain to the common good/collective interest

- Home?

- Individual human bodies?

Dramaturgic Model • Human world separated into

a public sociability and individual privacy

Ideal Public Sociability

Public Sociability Face-to-face interaction Diversity and Difference

Life lived in public

Privacy Intimate Family Life

Individuality

Notice the difference from solidarity and

virtue

The Loss of Public Sociability

Public Sociability Face-to-face interaction Diversity and Difference

Life lived in public

Privacy Intimate Family Life

Individuality

The Loss of Public Sociability

Public Sociability Face-to-face interaction Diversity and Difference

Life lived in public

Privacy Intimate Family Life

Individuality

The Loss of Public Sociability

Public Sociability Face-to-face interaction Diversity and Difference

Life lived in public

Privacy Intimate Family Life

Individuality

Gesellschaft Market and State

The Loss of Public Sociability

No larger cultural community (sacred

canopy). Ariès: "unbearable moral

solitude"

Public Sociability Face-to-face interaction

Intermingling Life lived in public

Privacy Intimate Family Life

Individuality

Gesellschaft Market and State

Instrumental Relations

Dramaturgic Model

• Public space = areas in which embodied individuals intermingle, see each other, recognize each other, communicate, live

• Walkable streets

• Neighborhood cafes

• Neighborhood parks

• Public transportation

James H. Kunstler: Public Spaces Should Be Inspired Centers of Civic Life

Feminist Model The Gendered Nature of Public/Private

Dominant Conceptions of the Public/Private

Public Sociability Face-to-face interaction Diversity and Difference

Life lived in public

Privacy Intimate Family Life

Individuality

Man’s Sphere

Woman’s Sphere

1. The private sphere/space was simply a residual category in most political theory

2. The private sphere/space was devalued and dismissed

The Feminist Case Against Public/Private

The Feminist Case Against Public/Private

3. Public-private distinctions have often served to “naturalize” women’s subordination and disenfranchisement

4. The concept of the private sphere and privacy has been used to hide abuse and neglect from legal redress