[pf] Prugh, Costanza and Daly (was: self-excused hypocrite)

Thank you for typing this in, Jill; I haven't read it and will reserve it
from our Public Library later today.  D.

At 08:58 25/8/2001 -0500, Jill wrote {at:
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/2001III/msg01105.html } :-
>Arnie,
    Was reading from the aforementioned _The Local Politics of Global
Sustainability_ (Prugh, Costanza and Daly) last night, and thought of your
CCCafe meeting - and of salons and the revival of coffee houses in this
area.....  from page 74 of the book about a similar time in the past....
  
"Habermas described this flowering of the public sphere ... in the
seventeenth and eithteenth centuries the proliferation of coffeehouses as
meeting and debating places (three thousand of them in London alone by
about 1710) brought together a surprisingly wide variety of people,
especially from the middle class, and encouraged critical discussion of
literature and art and later, economic and political issues.
  Coffeehouses, salons, ... helped "preserve a kind of social intercouse
that....disregarded status" and helped define "the public" more
inclusively, as well as wresting away from church and state authorities
exclusive control of many subjects that were considered to be common
concerns. ... The development of capitalism intertwined with this process,
as local economies expanded to become regional and then national in scope
by means of widened trade.  This created a need for news and information
..."  
  
The authors go on to say that the public sphere was a rather small one -
limited to the bourgeois reading public.  They go on to describe the
development of this public sphere - at its height it was a debate to
develop consensus of what was the common interest ... to a breakdown
replacing ..." shared, critical activity of public discourse by a more
passive consumption on the one hand and an apolitical sociability on the
other".  The common interest was lost. (p.77)
  
The authors also state that since capitalism and democracy had parallel
developments, and even in some cases encouraged the other's development,
that they are often perceived as the same thing in many people's minds.
(Boy, I sure have seen lots of evidence of that view!!!!  In people I know,
dont' know, and in US foreign policy!)
  
The section on politics and capitalism concludes this way:
  
"It is not too many more steps to the current situation: ... substitutes
for true public debate; low and declining voter turnout; and widespread
alienation from the political process.  Especially at the national level,
the public sphere in its classical sense has almost ceased to exist." (page
78) -classical as evidenced by the period of coffeehouses, salons, etc

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edited-down and re-posted by David. Wanted the Subject/title line apropos
David MacClement [davd @ ihug.co.nz] (remove spaces)
http://davd.tripod.com/GrRR-010817_titles.html#top
http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/index.html#top
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