Mapping The Variety of Public Spheres

Communication Theory ISSN 1050-3293
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Mapping the Variety of Public Spheres

Elizabeth Butler Breese
Department of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA
Harnessing public sphere scholarship inspired by Habermas along with civil public spheres
and Arendtian political public spheres, this article proposes that public spheres vary
along two axes, scale and content. Scholarship describing the multiplicity of publics has
significantly advanced our understanding of the public sphere in recent decades, but public
spheres are multiple in patterned ways. They may be face-to-face or symbolic and mediated,
and they may be political or civic in orientation. An examination of the social movement
organizations of the gay community demonstrates how the map of the public sphere
enables social analysts from different traditions as well as social activists utilizing different
approaches to see their projects in relation to or in tension with one another.
doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2011.01379.x
The public sphere is a hard-working signifier, but its definition is far from certain.
To many, the public sphere is a residual category where theorists dump anything that
does not fit into the formal economy, the state, or the family. Normative theorists
who argue that a vibrant public sphere is good for society fill it with as much as
possible, diagnose its decline, or argue that the public sphere is being co-opted by
more powerful spheres. Those who think it is an empty term seek to demonstrate that
anything can fit under its banner. When Habermass The Structural Transformation
of the Public Sphere was translated into English in 1989, more than two decades
after its German publication, it immediately found an audience eager for a thorough
study of the public sphere. In the early 1990s, Habermass work on the public sphere
was more than a mere academic exercise. The dissolution of the Soviet Union
and the consequent formation of new states in Eastern Europe and the opening of
China made the blossoming of new public spheres imminent, and scholars sought to
understand the public spheres that they expected to emerge (Calhoun, 1992).
What do we mean by the public sphere 20 years and myriad geopolitical changes
after the English translation of Habermass landmark study? What are the boundaries
of the concept and what is encompassed within those bounds? The categories of
private and public remain vague in many academic disciplines (Weintraub,
1997). However, when most social, political, and communication theorists employ
Corresponding author: Elizabeth Butler Breese; e-mail: elizabeth.breese@yale.edu

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E. B. Breese
the concept of the public sphere, they do so with the definition Habermas provides
in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in mind ([1989] 1999). In
this foundational text, Habermas traces in historical and sociological detail the rise
and incomplete blossoming of the bourgeois public sphere in Europe. The public
sphere is a separate realm from the state, the formal economy, and the family.
Private interests, such as monetary gain, and state interests in administration and
order, narrowly construed, are not the primary concerns of the public sphere. In the
public sphere, private individuals, rather than agents of the state, come together to
participate as citizens (Habermas, [1989] 1999, pp. 2830). In the bourgeois public
sphere, individuals and groups criticize the state, discuss society, and debate issues
of common concern; Habermass public sphere is characterized by rationalcritical
debate, as opposed to previous forms of publicity based on the hereditary power and
social status.
In the past two decades, one of the most consistent and significant criticisms
of Habermass Structural Transformation is that it addresses only the fatethe
rise and then the fallof the bourgeois public sphere without addressing the
existence or the fortunes of other publics. This stream of scholarship responding
to Habermass narrow conception of the public sphere points out that there are,
and were at the time of the emergence of a bourgeois public sphere, multiple
publics (Eley, 1992; Fraser, 1992; Ikegami, 2000). Upon the translation of The
Structural Transformation, in Habermas and the Public Sphere, Nancy Fraser argues
that feminists and other scholars must move beyond Habermass concept of a unitary
bourgeois public sphere in order to recognize that multiple but unequal publics
participate in public life (1992, p. 128). Fraser and many other theorists in this vein
of scholarship tend to highlight the power disparities and competitive relationship
between multiple, unequal public spheres (Fraser, 1992). Various public spheres
compete for legitimacy and for resourcesboth material and discursivethat will
allow them to organize, appear in the wider public, and make claims of (or resist)
the dominant public and the state. Although he does not emphasize competitive
relationships between multiple publics, Ronald Jacobss study of the coverage of the
Rodney King beating in one African-American and one mainstream newspaper
in Los Angeles demonstrates empirically how these journalistic public spheres
construct[] different but overlapping narratives of the same events (1996, p. 1243).
The concept of counterpublics seeks to name and identify those publics
that exist in a subordinate position to the dominant public. Although one could
imagine identifying myriad smaller publics that are no less powerful than the
dominant public in a meaningful way, this kind of multiplicity of publics is not
what scholars using the term counterpublic seek to highlight. Scholars use the term
counterpublics to examine the organization into publics of individuals and groups
whose identityindividual and collectiverelegates their public appearance and
contributions to an inferior position vis-à-vis the wider and dominant public.
Counterpublics are marginalized, subaltern, and subordinated publics. Frasers
(1992) early statement on counterpublics addresses women and feminist publics.
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Michael Warner (2002) theorizes publics and counterpublics with attention to the
history and scholarship regarding counterpublics organized around sexuality and
gender. Catherine Squires offers an alternative vocabulary for multiple public
spheres and counterpublics using the case of Black publics (2002, p. 446); Squires
proposes that we consider marginalized public spheres as enclaves, counterpublics,
or satellite public spheres based, in part, on whether or not internal discourse is
veiled from the wider public and on whether or not the public seeks to engage with
the wider public.
In her recent work identifying and theorizing transnational publics, Nancy Fraser
spells out the conditions counterpublic spheres must satisfy in order to fulfill their
emancipatory, democratizing function (2009, p. 155). Counterpublic spheres should
be legitimate . . . formed through fair and inclusive processes of communication
and efficacious, meaning capable of influencing the use of public power and
of holding public officials accountable (2009, p. 155). In order to fulfill their
progressive function, according to Fraser, counterpublics should be open to the
participation of all citizens and should orient their interventions toward state
agents and state policy (2009, p. 155). Working from a critical theoretical approach,
Fraser seeks to locate normative standards . . . within the historically unfolding
constellation to reconstruct Habermass concept of the public sphere (Fraser, 2009,
p. 77); she defines publics and counterpublics as spaces of discourse and action
that can, and should, be held to the normative standards of inclusion and efficacy
within the really existing social and political world. This vision of publicswhich
is open to the participation of all and appeals to state policies and state actors for
emancipation and democratizationis one conception of public spheres. Critical
theorists reconstruction of Habermass conception of the bourgeois public sphere
is an influential vision of publics, but it is not the only definition of publics or of
functional publics.
Twenty years after the translation of The Structural Transformation, nearly all
scholars of the public sphere agree that our social world is composed of multiple,
overlapping, and unequal publics. It is more accurate to talk of (and research) publics
and public spheres than to refer to the public sphere. However, scholars have failed
to address the ways in which all publicsdominant publics and counterpublics
alikevary in their logic, mission, organization, participation, and orientation
toward other spheres. In this article, I will offer a framework for understanding this
variation in publics. With this framework, I suggest that the concept of the public
sphere should extend beyond Habermass concept, and the version of the public
sphere reconstructed by critical theorists, to include political publics in Arendts
sense and civic public spheres.
I propose that public spheres differ and vary in ways we can plot along two
continua: scale and content (Figure 1). I use the term continua to convey that
public spheres are of the same typethey are public spheresyet they vary in
terms of scale as well as degree of civic or political orientation. Public spheres range
from face-to-face interaction between individualsconversing and acting together
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The Public Sphere

Face-to-Face
Arendt (1958)
Zerilli (2005)
Putnam (2000)
Fine and Harrington (2004)
tiny publics
Polletta (2002)
<------------------------------
-------------------------haiku poetry circles

Ikegami and Hut (2008)
Religious Coalitions for

the Freedom to Marry
PFLAG
Second Life
Ikegami and Hut (2008)
Civic
(vs. isolation)
Political
(vs. inaction)
this way to the state
this way to the private sphere
African-American newspapers
Jacobs (1996)
Habermas
GLAAD
HRC
CNN
The View
The Oprah Winfrey Show
Alexander and Smith (1993)
The Discourse of American
Civil Society
Symbolic/ Mediated
Figure 1 Representation of the two primary continua, scale and content, using a twodimensional coordinate system. x axis represents content or orientation and y axis represents
scale or form.
in real timeto symbolic or mediated public spheres usually facilitated by mass

media. And publics range from political public spheres to civic public spheres.
Understanding the full terrain of public spheres requires a model that captures
movement in a way that categories or ideal types cannot. As I will explore in greater
detail, groups, organizations, and cultural productionsin short, publicsmay
begin as civic in orientation and transition to more political in orientation and vice
versa. Constructing a typology may clarify how scholarly traditions conceptualize the
public sphere (see Benhabib, 1992; Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht, 2002), but
it helps little with understanding public spheres and their many incarnations in the
contemporary social world. Specifying the continua along which public spheres vary
indicates the interconnectedness, and the relevant divergences, of what have been
considered distinct objects of study and forms of social interaction and action.
Furthermore, by plotting publics along the continua of scale and content we can
see that although the preponderance of scholarship on the public sphere continues to
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use Habermass definition as its reference point, there are several theoretical traditions
and research programs that address publics. By keeping the term the public sphere
synonymous with Habermass work and scholarship responding to it, studies of
the public sphere have neglectedand have therefore failed to benefit fromthe
perspectives of research programs addressing different kinds of publics. There is an
intellectual tradition that stands parallel to scholarship on the Habermasian notion of
the public sphere that addresses civil or civic public spheres. This parallel tradition has
been advanced by scholars such as Putnam, Fine, and Ikegami. In addition, Hannah
Arendts concept of political public spheres is largely neglected by scholars engaged
with the Habermasian tradition. Arendts public sphere, in contrast to Habermass, is
characterized by the plurality, rather than unity, of participants and their convictions
and an emphasis on action over discourse (Canovan, 1983). Furthermore, in contrast
to Habermass thesis in The Structural Transformation that the public sphere is in
decline, Arendt appreciates the possibility of reinvigorating political public spheres
in the contemporary world (see Zerilli, 2005). By plotting the two continua along
which publics vary, we can understand that these scholars address differing yet
complementary forms of public spheres.
Mapping public spheres
I plot a range of theorists and empirical examples to demonstrate the two axes
along which public spheres vary; together, these axes form a map of public
spheres (Figure 1). Brouwer and Asen (2010, pp. 217) examine the ways in which
the many metaphors of publicsmetaphors of spheres, networks/webs, publicity,
screens, and cultureilluminate public life and entail blind spots. In her recent
work, Fraser invokes a cartographic image (2009, pp. 25) to examine the scale of
publics, from the local to the transnational. I employ a cartographic image to indicate
the location of publics in terms of their content or orientation and their scale and,
importantly, to highlight how publics may travel from one position to another.
Surely, this image of the public sphere as mappable by content and scale also contains
its blind spots, but if the image highlights the relations and tensions between various
publics and scholarly traditions of studying publics and the ways in which publics
can move, it will serve its purpose.
I refer to public spheres rather than the public sphere to reflect the multiplicity
of publics and to reflect the range of institutions, groups, and media that form public
spheres of discourse, action, representation, and criticism. Most of the empirical
examples I plot along the axes, including my analysis of social movement organizations
of the gay community, are drawn from the United States; one example is drawn
from Japan. In her recent work on transnational publics, Fraser (2009) argues that
previous work on the public sphere, including her own, has implicitly assumed the
Westphalian nation-state as the addressee of publics and that publics are constituted
of conationals. Fraser argues that scholars theorized from the crest of the wave, when
the Westphalian frame of reference made so much sense as to be unspoken, yet
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epochal historical developments would, when the wave crashed, soon render that
frame outdated (2009, p. 85). Drawing out this implicit orientation in the literature
on the public sphere and questioning its current applicability is a significant and
constructive contribution, yet I will explicitly focus on the case of the United States. In
the publics that I plot along the axes, citizens and neighbors produce public opinion,
camaraderie, discourse, and action directed at communities, other social actors, and
changing policy at the local, state, and national level. I use the public sphere to
refer to the collective range of public spheres in the United States, from face-to-face
to mediated and from civic to political public spheres.
I represent the two primary continua along which public spheres range using
a two-dimensional coordinate system with x and y axes (Figure 1). The coordinate
plane represents the public sphere as a whole. The x axis represents the continuum
between civic public spheres and political public spheres and the y axis represents
the continuum between face-to-face publics and mediated and symbolic publics or
representation of publics. In other words, the x axis represents the orientation of the
content of the public spheres and the y axis represents their scale or form. I have
placed theorists of publics, social movement organizations, and cultural productions
on the plane to indicate their position vis-à-vis the four poles (Figure 1). I use axes as
continua to indicate movement; the positions of organizations, cultural productions,
and academic works are not fixed at their coordinate points, but I place them in
order to show their most frequent location or the location indicated by their logic or
mission.
The upper extreme of the plane connotes a group of people who are familiar
to one another, perhaps sitting around a table; the lower extreme represents our
symbolic vocabulary of public-ness disseminated through mass media. At the
upper extreme of the y axis, individuals become a public through copresence, and at
the bottom, individuals become a public primarily through interaction with symbolic
representations of publics through the mass media; they are addressed, in Michael
Warners sense, as a mediated, physically dispersed public (2002, pp. 6873). The y
axis extends at the mediated end of the continuum as the possibility for symbolic and
mediated publics expands along with the reach of television, the Internet, and social
networking technology. Habermas describes in sociological and historical detail that
the earliest forms of publicity were shared in physical copresence. In fact, change in
scale is part of the transformation of the public sphere Habermas traces. The public
sphere progressed from the salon to discourse in print (Habermas, [1989] 1999) and
then to electronic media. Some scholars argue or imply that as media technology
advances, face-to-face publics decrease in incidence and in importance, diminishing
the health of democracy. New forms of visibility and mediated quasi-interaction
supplant previous forms of face-to-face interaction (Thompson, 2005, pp. 3335).
Technological advances, others argue, have the potential to add face-to-face
public spheres. For example, the virtual world of Second Life provides a platform for
individuals to interact via avatars in a virtual face-to-face public (Ikegami & Hut,
2008). Although there may be differences between physical copresence and virtual
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copresence, the give-and-take conversational format makes Second Life more like a
face-to-face realm than a mediated one, suggesting digital media does not necessarily
diminish real-time interactions (Figure 1). Even absent the possibility of gathering
in virtual copresence, Fine and Harrington argue that face-to-face publics continue
to be an important site of interaction and action in the contemporary moment (Fine
& Harrington, 2004). In opposition to literature arguingthrough variations on
the decline-of-community thesisthat face-to-face interaction has diminished,
such as in Putnams (2000) Bowling Alone, Fine and Harrington insist there is a
proliferation of tiny publics in contemporary society.
Orthogonal to the continuum of scale is the continuum between civic and political
public spheres. The state stands beyond the Political Public Spheres extreme of
the x axis, while the private sphere and the family lie beyond the opposite extreme
of Civic Public Spheres. Individuals engaged in political public spheres organize
themselves and their goals vis-à-vis the state, while individuals engaged in civic public
spheres emerge from and orient themselves toward the private sphere, encompassing
the home, family and friend relationships, and social attitudes regarding solidarity
and status. The existence of political public spheres opposes inaction and uncritical
subjectivity, while the existence of civic public spheres opposes social isolation.1 In
general, participants experience affiliation in political public spheres as solidarity,
while participants experience affiliation in civic public spheres as camaraderie.
Although Habermas is the most prominent theorist of political public spheres,
Tocqueville is the grand theorist of civic public spheres. To describe political and civil
public spheres, I must seek recourse in characteristics of their ideal types, but placing
them along a continuum seeks, like the network/web metaphor (Brouwer & Asen,
2010, pp. 68), to expose the relationality and connections between them.
Political public spheres include social movements, media that monitor and
criticize the state, and groups that take political action.2 The binary code we use
to denote friends or enemies of democracy and civil or anticivil action in mediated
political public spheres is Alexander and Smiths (1993) Discourse of American Civil
Society. Civic public spheres include civic associations, voluntary organizations, and
social clubs; they are cliques, clubs, congregations, or teams (Fine & Harrington,
2004, p. 353). At the civic and face-to-face ends of the continuum, Putnam, Fine,
and Harrington and Ikegami and Hut theorize the formation and maintenanceor
decay and disappearanceof civic engagement through associations, clubs, and
small groups whose members gather in copresence. Mediated civic public spheres
draw from and comment on social life in the media.
Habermas, Arendt, and political public spheres
For Habermas, Arendt, and critical theorists like Fraser, however, cliques, clubs
and people who meet regularly as a group to socialize, practice a hobby, or discuss
keeping the grounds of their homeowners association do not qualify as public
spheres. According to their visions and definitions, the Rotary and Kiwanis service
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clubs would not be considered public spheres. For Fine, Ikegami, and Putnam, these
are important forms of shared public life, and further, they are, indeed, publics. For
Habermas, Arendt, and critical theorists, gathering as a group does not, in itself,
constitute a public sphere. These theorists set out requirements regarding content and
participation for publicitypublic discourse, interaction, and actionto quality
as a public sphere. Participants in the public sphere, according to this group of
scholars, orient themselves toward changing state policy and reining in state power.
And, above all, the public sphere must, at least in principle, be open to all who can
contribute to it, regardless of social status or identity. Eleys (1992, p. 321) and other
scholars criticism of the social closure of the European bourgeois public sphere in
The Structural Transformation notwithstanding, Habermas conceptualized the public
sphere as a forum for rationalcritical discourse that, equally as important, should
be assessed according to the quantity of, or openness to, popular participation
(Calhoun, 1992, p. 4). Participation regardless of social status or social identity is an
even more prominent theme in Arendts The Human Condition ([1958] 1998).
In The Human Condition, Arendt defines her public sphere of speech and action
against the private sphere and, more pressingly, against the expanding sphere of
sociability. Arendt worries that self-interest and consumption, more appropriate
to the private sphere, have become public matters, displacing and subordinating
genuinely collective concerns. When concerns of sociability dominate, lifestyle,
manners, and tasterather than quality of contributiondetermine who may
legitimately speak publicly and participate in collective life (Benhabib [2000] 2003,
p. 28). Arendts public sphere signifies a political sphere while the social signifies
civic and associational society (Benhabib, [2000] 2003, p. 28), such as Fine and
Harringtons tiny publics or Putnams lamented disappearing bowling leagues. A
prime concern for Arendt is that the parvenu, one who ignores or denies his or her
marginal or outsider status, dominates the realm of sociability while the pariah,
one who claims or cannot deny his or her marginal or outsider status, fails to be a
persuasive speaker when judged by the standards of the social (or the civic) realm
(Benhabib, [2000] 2003, pp. 2829). Arendts attempt to define and champion the
public sphere and the proper separation between the private, the public, and the
social is an effort to provide a space for pariahs to appear and negotiate their status
through speech and action (Ring, 1991). Free of the concerns of social acceptance, the
insider and the outsider alike have the ability to appear and speak for themselves
in political public spheres.
Although both Arendt and Habermas champion a public sphere open to all who
will participate regardless of social status and identity, Arendts concept of the public
sphere in The Human Condition differs from Habermass concept of the public sphere
in several key respects. Habermas (1994) acknowledges his debt to Arendts concept
of the public sphere for his own work, and many scholars assume that, when it comes
to the public sphere, Arendt is a direct predecessor to Habermas. Yet, as Margaret
Canovan argues, Habermas did not borrow Arendts public sphere as an intact
concept, but instead substituted talking for acting, consensus for disagreement,
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and unity for plurality in politics (1983, p. 108). In Habermass public sphere,
rational and sincere participants in the public sphere will pursue and converge upon
consensus through rationalcritical discourse. Arendt has a substantially different
vision of political public spheres.
In The Human Condition, Arendt meditates on human activity and the shared
world in which humans act in an attempt to provide a philosophical and theoretical
basis to think what we are doing in the modern world ([1958] 1998, p. 5). Arendt
hoped to establish, thereby, a theoretical foundation from which true public, collective
life could develop. In addition to drawing the distinction between private and public
spheres in the face of the rise of the social, Arendt demarcates the boundaries
between labor, work, and action. Disaggregating Marxs unitary concept of labor,
Arendt identifies labor as the never-ending cycle of production and consumption of
perishables, such as food and a clean living environment, in contrast to work that
produces durable goods to be used rather than consumed. Labor and work can be
undertaken in the private sphere of the household, whereas action cannot even be
imagined outside the society of men (Arendt, [1958] 1998, p. 22). Arendts main
interest is to develop the concept of action in relation to the distinction between public
and private spheres. Action is an inherently public endeavor, undertaken through
speech and acting in concert with others in the public sphere. As in Francesca
Pollettas (2002) study of participatory democracy and grassroots social movements,
action requires, and may create, political public spheres.
According to Arendt, the public sphere enables expression of two crucial elements
of the human condition: natality and the human plurality. It is in the human
condition of natality, the fact that new persons are continually born into the world
with the potential to introduce new ideas, that the faculty of action is ontologically
rooted (Arendt, [1958] 1998, p. 247). The human capability for new action implies
that each individual is distinct. The fact that the world is populated by distinct
individuals forms the condition of human plurality. Natalitys potential, the potential
for individuals to contribute new and unique action in the world, can only be realized
in the public sphere, where an individual appears and reveals himself to others
as a member of the human plurality. An individual is born with the capacity to act,
but his or her capacity is only realized within a community of other unique actors.
Arendts political public sphere is meant to support communication between people
who, as individuals, hold different perspectives, so that they may act in concert based
on the outcomes of their deliberations.
Arendt constructs her public sphere to support individual autonomy from
incursions from other individuals, the demands of the social realm, and the state.
To understand Arendts idea of the proper relationship between individuals in their
shared world, it is worth quoting The Human Condition at length:
What makes mass society so difficult to bear is not the number of people
involved, or at least not primarily, but the fact that the world between them has
lost its power to gather them together, to relate them and to separate them. The
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weirdness of this situation resembles a spiritualistic seance where a number of

people gathered around a table might suddenly, through some magic trick, see
the table vanish from their midst, so that two persons sitting opposite each other
were no longer separated but also would be entirely unrelated to each other by
anything tangible. ([1958] 1998, pp. 52, 53)
Arendt imagines that her public sphere will properly relate and separate individuals. For Arendt, the social realm relates people through hollow connections of
self-interest, lifestyle, and tastes. The public realm, when properly functioning, brings
people together to deliberate over issues of political, collective concern. However,
this relation must not result in the collapse of space between people; there must be
proper separation between individuals in order to recognize that individuals have
different perspectives in the human plurality (Canovan, 1992).
In her discussion of Habermass distorted reading of Arendts work on the
public sphere, Canovan (1983) points out that while Habermass theory of an ideal
speech situation emphasizes that discourse should move toward a rational conclusion
and unified action, Arendt is primarily concerned that the public sphere support a
plurality of convictions as well as a plurality of actions. Both Habermas and Arendt
describe political public spheres. Yet, reconsidering Arendts concept of the public
sphere on its own terms, rather than through Habermass reading of it, illuminates
the different normative and analytical emphases that are possible within political
public spheres; the Habermasian tradition is not the only option for conceptualizing
political public spheres. Mapping the continua of public spheres illuminates internal
debates having to do with the constitution of publicsas between Habermas and
Arendt, or between Putnam (who argues civic public spheres are declining in number)
and Fine and Harrington and Ikegami (who see their proliferation)argues against
seeing these as separate scholarly questions and research projects.
Another reason to rescue Arendts neglected model of political public spheres from
obscurity is that she argues that face-to-face political public spheres continue to be
vital incubators for political speech and action in the contemporary world, whereas
Habermas sees a historical trend proceeding from physical publicity to mediated
publicity and from a vibrant rationalcritical bourgeois public sphere to the public
sphere colonized by mass culture and consumption (Calhoun, 1992). Arendt also
worries about the rise of mass culture and the dominance of consumptionand
calls it the realm of sociabilitybut she posits speech and action undertaken
by individuals gathered in physical copresence as a modern antidote to the rise of
sociability. In The Human Condition, Arendt has a theory of symbolization and
actions broadcast across space and time. One who acts in the public sphere, she
advises, is the author of his or her actions but not their consequences. Ones actions
take on a life of their own as they ripple outward and down the continuum toward
mediated public spheres through stories that will be told about the actor and the
action (Arendt, [1958] 1998). Nevertheless, meeting in physical copresence is crucial
for Arendts political public spheres. Arendt refers extensively to the Greek polis as an
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exemplar of a realm of deliberation, participation, and action. Gathered in the polis,

the central concern of all citizens was to talk with each other in order to determine
a course of collective action ([1958] 1998, p. 27).
Arendts choice of the polis as the exemplar of a political public sphere has
provoked a great deal of criticism: It is only thanks to the labor of slaves, women,
and noncitizen men that members of the polis could speak and act together as
equals. Despite the merits of these criticisms, the polis provides Arendt a model
of embodied interaction regarding questions of common concern. Seyla Benhabib
writes: In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt resuscitates everyday-being-inthe-world with others as the basic condition of being human ([2000] 2003, p. 107).
What Habermas left conceptually in the age of the bourgeois salon, Arendt seeks
to bring into the contemporary moment with action, rather than rationalcritical
discourse, as its main objective. Drawing on Arendts concept of the public sphere
nearly 50 years after the publication of The Human Condition, Linda Zerilli proposes
shifting feminism from the social question of identity and the paralyzing category of
women debates regarding whether or not (or how) feminists can speak for women
as a collective subject to Arendts conception of politics and action. Zerilli reminds
her readers that Arendts notion of a political actor (here, one acting on behalf of
women as a political group, rather than as a social category) involves a disclosure
. . . not of what one is, but who one is as an actor in the public sphere (Zerilli,
2005, p. 180). Offering Arendtian political public spheres as a generative alternative
to feminist debates on the theoretical plane, Zerilli also grounds the possibility for
feminist political action and freedom, as opposed to identity-based rights claims, in
the Milan Womens Bookstore Collective, a group of women who coauthored a book
articulating an approach to feminism oriented toward political speech and action in
the name of freedom, rather than in the name of social equality. This Milan Womens
Bookstore Collective and the political speech and action it called for are, according
to the map of the public sphere, a face-to-face political public sphere. Political public
spheres of face-to-face interactions require that peers, defined by a common problem
and not by the standards of sociability, come together in face-to-face political public
spheres to communicate and, through discourse, arrive at a decision to act collectively
(Arendt, 1979, pp. 309, 310). The face-to-face interaction of Arendts political public
sphere is different from the interaction one might experience at a neighborhood social
club, yet they are both varieties of public spheres. They vary in their orientations
toward political and civic life.
The variety of publics
It is not accurate or useful to think of Habermas and Arendt as describing the

only variety of publicity that should be recognized as a public sphere; instead, we
should understand Habermas and Arendt, as well as critical theorists who came
after them, as suggesting similar, but not identical, conceptions of political public
spheres. Civic associations and clubs are not failed public spheres; they are publics that
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follow a different logic and orient themselves toward different questions, missions,
problems, and forms of interaction. Conceptual parsimony would not, on the face of
it, recommend this expanded analytic framework for the public sphere. In effect, it
is an argument for a big umbrella, a widening of the concept of the public sphere
from the Habermasian tradition alone to include the parallel tradition of civic publics
and the neglected tradition of Arendtian political public spheres. However, hiving off
parts of the public sphere and claiming that it represents the whole does not satisfy
parsimony; theorists of the public sphere have been talking past one another rather
than recognizing the complementarities of their objects of study and the relevant
divergences.
Mapping the full terrain of the public sphere allows scholars, activists, and all
manner of individual and collective actors to talk to one another, to see their projects
in relation to or in tension with one another. On the basis of their normative
commitments, critical theorists would have us judge the success of political public
spheres based on how inclusive they are of all potential participants, especially
individuals disadvantaged in terms of material resources, social affiliation, and social
identity (such as gender, religion, race, or sexuality). Civic public spheres, in contrast,
have greater latitude to open or restrict entrance and participation based on the
social traits. In most cases, we would do right to assert a moral claim to open and
equal participation in civic public spheres, especially if the mission of the group,
as is the case with Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG),
has to do with social inclusion and social progress. Using the continua of public
spheres as a tool, we can assess in what circumstances groups based on the social
status and identityrather than an issue-based political solidarityare appropriate
and effective publics. Once the map of the public sphere allows us to identify a
public as a political public sphere, we can ask whether it is, or should be, a forum
of rationalcritical discourse described by Habermas or a collective oriented toward
supporting a plurality of actors, speech, and acting in concert according to Arendts
vision of the public sphere.
Public spheres can move along the continua of scale and content
Mapping the ways in which public spheres vary along the continua of scale and
content also allows us to see how publics may move along these axes. Public spheres
that begin as civic public spheres may become political. And political public spheres
may become more civic in their practice and orientation. Ikegami demonstrates in her
work on the Tokugawa period in Japan that civic associations can provide the basis
for the formation of new-political publics. In haiku poetry circles, the rigid status
hierarchies of the state and family were actively held at bay through social leveling
practices such as taking on artist names. Ikegami argues that the civic, horizontal ties
forged through this common aesthetic practice served as a foundation for political
modernity in Japan (Ikegami & Hut, 2008, pp. 37). That is, haiku poetry circles
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E. B. Breese
and their participants moved from the civic end toward the political end of the
continuum (Figure 1).
Fine and Harringtons small publics are located near the middle of the continuum
between the political pole and the civic pole because of the potential of their
small groups to become political. Fine and Harrington argue that small groups
can mobilize individuals to define problems collectively and that they can be
incubators for actions addressing common issues. Through mobilization around
issues, small groups have the potential to create citizens (Fine & Harrington, 2004,
p. 344). Groups that start out as cliques and clubs may transition to engagement
in political action by creating the grassroots networks underlying social movements
(Fine & Harrington, 2004, pp. 344351). However, small groups need not act
politically: While some groups are tied explicitly to political, national, and civic
issues, this need not be the case for the group to have impact on civic life (Fine
& Harrington, 2004, p. 353). The gathering of individuals into a social community
creates civic public spheres. Small groups of the civic public sphere, represented
by the upper right quadrant of Figure 1, may become a political public sphere, but
this requires mobilization, movement toward political public spheres. When small
groups mobilize around common concerns, they enter the domain of face-to-face
political public spheres described by Arendt. Yet, Fine and Harrington (2004) do not
significantly engage Arendts work on the public sphere. The authors cite Arendts
work only once in their article on tiny publics, and her major work on the public
sphere, The Human Condition, is absent entirely. This omission is not unique to Fine
and Harrington; as I discussed previously, Arendts work on the public sphere has not
been sufficiently considered and developed by social, political, and communication
theorists. Plotting public spheres on a continuum between political and civic in
orientation provides social and political theorists such as Fine and Harrington as
well as social actors on the ground with a vocabulary for describing the political
mobilization of civic publics. Seeing civic and political publics, as well as face-to-face
and mediated publics, as at once different and related is a potentially potent tool for
social analysts and social activists alike.
Organizing as the gay community: An illustrative case
In this section, I examine social movement organizations of a particular counterpublic,

the gay community, and position the organizations on the axes of scale and content
based on their logic, mission, and style of organization. Although it is commonly
used, the phrase the gay community does not, of course, refer to a stable and
clear-cut group of social actors. I use the gay community as a linguistic shorthand,
and because it is often invoked in mainstream discourse about gay, lesbian, and
bisexual individuals as a social category and as a group affected in similar ways
by social attitudes and by corporate-, state-, and national-level policies. Gay and
bisexual individuals and their allies do not form one homogenous community; gay,
bisexual, and allied individuals have many civic, political, and aesthetic orientations.
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E. B. Breese
It is this variety and plurality that is best captured by the two-dimensional coordinate
map of the public sphere, rather than collapsing the variety conceptually into one
counterpublic.
Nancy Fraser would consider the gay community in the United States an example
of subaltern counterpublics, which she defines as the kinds of publics that stand
in a contestatory relationship to dominant publics (1992, p. 128). Michael Warner
defines counterpublics as those publics that are defined by their tension with a
larger public (2002, p. 56). Warner disagrees with the additional attribution of the
adjective subaltern to counterpublics because, as he writes, it is not clear that
all counterpublics are composed of people otherwise dominated as subalterns. He
continues:
At any rate, even as a subaltern counterpublic, this subordinate status does not
simply reflect identities formed elsewhere; participation in such a public is one of
the ways by which its members identities are formed and transformed. (2002,
p. 57)
Warner urges theorists to consider how a given (counter)public is addressed and
convened, rather than gleaning the position of the grouprelative dominance or
subordinationfrom the social identity of the participants (see also Asen, 2000).
The power and position of individuals must be distinguished from the power and
position of publics. However, the gay community in the United States is indeed
a counterpublic by any definition; both gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals and
the gay communityas really existing political and civic collectives and as a
community in the dominant public imaginationare marginalized and denied
equal rights and access to benefits from the state. Although prevailing social attitudes
have changed considerably, organizing around diverse sexualities continues to mark
groups as marginal to the wider public.
By plotting social movement organizations along the continua of scale and
content, I demonstrate that even counterpublics are not unitary countervailing
forces to the dominant public sphere. Fraser, Warner, and others have advanced
scholarship on public spheres significantly by pointing out multiplicity of publics and
counterpublics, but I suggest they did not go far enough. Publics and counterpublics
are not only multiple and unequal; publics and counterpublics vary in their scale and
in their orientation to the state and political change or to civic life and social change.
Religious Coalitions for the Freedom to Marry
In several states, religious clergy and individuals of various faiths meet in groups
called Religious Coalitions for the Freedom to Marry to discuss and articulate a
collective position on same-sex marriage.3 Participants in these coalitions tend to
meet regularly. These groups produce statements on same-sex marriage and they
may take other actions, such as organizing or participating in public demonstrations
to promote the right to same-sex marriage and publishing letters in local newspapers.
Religious Coalitions for the Freedom to Marry are face-to-face organizations in which
143
E. B. Breese
individuals gather to make political statements and to take actions aimed at changing
state policy. As such, they are located in the upper left quadrant of the coordinate
plane representing the public sphere (Figure 1).
The Freedom to Marry Coalition in Maine describes its history as beginning
through informal conversations among clergy. By their description, the members of the group met regularly to discuss their convictions and stances regarding
homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Through speaking with one another, prayerful discernment, and communicating with individuals in the gay community, they
decided to take action toward the goal of opening up the legal institution of marriage
to same-sex couples and their families who were being denied its legal protections
and benefits. We could read the statement from the coalition in Maine skeptically;
perhaps those who joined the group already supported same-sex marriage, and their
political action arose out of that already-shared common conviction. It is likely that
this is at least partially the case. However, I propose that the organization of Religious
Coalitions for the Freedom to Marry and the actions they take are best described not
by Habermass model of the public sphere based on the rationalcritical debate, nor
do they operate as a civic association; Religious Coalitions for the Freedom to Marry
operate as Arendtian face-to-face political public spheres.
The Religious Coalition in Maine, like several others, publicly articulates a stance
in favor of and takes action to achieve civil or legal marriage. Clergy from diverse
faiths (albeit mostly from liberal traditions) formulate a collective stance toward gay
couples right to legal marriage from a plurality of religious convictions. The sanctity
of family, respect for individuals, a sense of justice, and a variety of other convictions
specific to each religion motivate the clergy to formulate a joint statement. However,
that collective statement need not, and, importantly, does not collapse their beliefs
into a unitary belief. The plurality that is so central to Arendts political public spheres
is maintained and affirmed even as the clergy meet to discuss their beliefs and engage
in collective, politically oriented action. The Religious Coalition for the Freedom to
Marry in Maine states that its members and their congregations support the right to
legal marriage. Each clergy members congregation may, or may not, perform religious
marriages of same-sex couples. The coalition acts collectively toward achieving the
political end of legal marriage, but at the same time the plurality of convictions and
actions of the members is affirmed, in this instance by leaving aside the issue of the
religious marriage of same-sex couples.
If same-sex marriage rights were achieved in Maine, the Religious Coalition
there could disband; their mission would have been achieved. Or, participants may
lend their expertise in political organizing to other state initiatives or a national
initiative for legal marriage. Speaking and acting with other, more geographically
distant groups may require greater degrees of symbolization and media technology to
organize around equal access to legal marriage, moving the Maine group down the y
axis away from face-to-face interactions and toward more mediated interaction and
action. The Religious Coalition in Maine could also remain active as a group to work
toward the social acceptance of gay individuals and same-sex couples in religious
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E. B. Breese
communities in Maine; in this circumstance, the Religious Coalition would move on

the x axis toward face-to-face civic public spheres.
Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
PFLAG is an organization of individuals with gay friends and relatives who wish
to create a more inclusive and compassionate society through their visible support
of their loved ones.4 Although PFLAG engages in political advocacy, it primarily
works on a support-group model focused on changing peoples hearts and minds.
Individuals join or become involved in local chapters of the organization to meet
with others, to talk about the experience of having a gay or lesbian family member or
friend, and to discuss strategies for advancing the social status of gays and lesbians.
PFLAGs mission is primarily to enlighten an ill-informed public, rather than, as
would be the case for political public spheres, to change the states policies or stance
vis-à-vis gays and lesbians.
As a Fine and Harrington small group, a PFLAG chapter could mobilize to
political action if, say, same-sex marriage appears on the ballot or in front of the
legislature of its home state. As an established group of individuals concerned with
the status of gay individuals, there is a potential for the group to organize politically.
Even still, shifting from a civic to a political public sphere would require a shift in
mission, in this case from social acceptance to political equality. In general, the intent
of PFLAG is social rather than political. PFLAG is a civic association that gathers
individuals as friends, family, and neighbors and orients itself toward changing social
attitudes and the social atmosphere. To the extent a given local chapter or the overall
organization cultivates social acceptance for the purpose of eventually changing state
policy, it may be placed toward the political end of the x axis, but because the
organization primarily uses face-to-face meetings to cultivate social acceptance for
its own sake, PFLAG is located in the upper right quadrant of the map of the public
sphere (Figure 1).
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) works to promote
positive images of gays and lesbians in the media.5 Sharing PFLAGs orientation
toward changing peoples attitudes, GLAADs mission statement states: At GLAAD,
we are in the business of changing peoples hearts and minds through what they see
in the media. Although PFLAG uses meetings and social events to bring individuals
together to promote acceptance of gay people in their families, social networks,
and hometowns, GLAAD promotes social acceptance of gay and lesbian individuals
through accurate and positive portrayals of them in the mass media. For PFLAG,
personal networks and face-to-face connections represent the primary avenue by
which to change individuals attitudes; for GLAAD, words and images projected
in the media matter for the same goal.6 Because images in the media may either
entrench stereotypes about gay individuals or foster awareness, understanding,
and respect, GLAADs mission is to scrutinize the media in order to condemn
145
E. B. Breese
insulting and stereotypical representations and to promote positive images of gay,

lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) individuals. GLAAD is characterized by
the mediated and civic ends of the continua (Figure 1).
Human Rights Campaign
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is the largest gay rights organization in the
United States.7 The HRC is devoted to equal rights and benefits for gay and lesbian
individuals and couples, especially regarding work policies and same-sex marriage. A
significant part of HRCs mission is to supply the media with information regarding
the policies HRC supports and with individuals who appear on news shows in order
to speak on those issues. Although GLAAD focuses on changing attitudes through the
media, HRC focuses on changing policies at the state and national levels by educating
the public about the effects of existing policies on the personal and professional
lives of gays and lesbians. The HRC mobilizes grassroots supporters, but this
mobilization is not for the sake of discourse at the face-to-face level. Instead, this
mobilization cultivates citizens support so that they will lobby their elected officials
to vote in favor of equal rights for gays and lesbians. As the reader might predict, the
HRC falls in the quadrant defined by the mediated and political ends of the continua
of the public sphere (Figure 1).
Conclusion
Mapping the full terrain of the public sphereencompassing the scholarship

inspired by Habermas as well as civic public spheres and Arendtian political public
spheresreveals that the gay community, in the popular idiom, which represents
a counterpublic in the lingo of theorists, is constituted by a variety of social
movement organizations and publics. And we can now specify that these publics vary
along two axes: scale and content. Public spheres, neither unitary nor haphazardly
multiple, are more or less face-to-face or mediated and they are more or less oriented
toward the state, politics, and political change or toward the civic realm of community
and social affinities and attitudes. Examining social movement organizations in this
fashion raises a provocative question for further research: Do wide-ranging changes
in state policy and social attitudes, the goal of many social movements, require
publics in every quadrant of the scalecontent axes?
Understanding that public spheres vary in patterned waysby scale or level and
by orientation or missionenables theorists and activists to reflect on and evaluate
publics in new ways. Individual and collective public actors and scholars may ask
whether or not a public oriented toward the civic sphere, toward social groups and
social attitudes, is best equipped to handle a certain mission or set of questions, or
whether they would be better met with discourse and action arising out of a political
public sphere. Is changing state policy the goal of the group? Is the mission of the
public actors, as Zerilli puts forward for feminist politics, freedom and recognition
as political agents, and not only subjects? Political public spheres are equipped to
146
E. B. Breese
handle these missions. On the other hand, if individuals wish to meet as an ethnic
group to participate in cultural traditions and to volunteer for public service projects
in their city, they will convene a face-to-face civic public sphere.
By refusing to establish one conception of the public sphere as the correct one, this
model of the public spherewhich establishes that publics vary along the continua
of scale and content and have the potential to move along these axesoffers clarity
to individual and collective public actors and to scholars studying existing and
potential publics or the public sphere as a concept on a theoretical plane. The public
sphere consists of manypotentially infinitepublics that vary in their scale and
orientation. These various forms of contemporary publicity will best be understood
and harnessed for social change and action by understanding their interconnectedness
and by specifying the ways in which they vary.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the many supportivecum critical readers of this article, which had
a relatively long life as a work-in-progress. I wish to thank, especially, Julia Adams,
Alison Gerber, Tim Liao, Deborah Davis, Gary Alan Fine, Philip Smith, Andrew
Junker, the participants of the Comparative Research Workshop at Yale University,
and the anonymous reviewers.
Notes
1 Groups in the public sphere need not, by the logic of the concept, be progressive or
solidaristic (see Fine & Harrington, 2004, p. 352). They may, in fact, organize around
bigotry, exclusion, and violence.
2 One significant and powerful trend in feminist scholarship and activism has been to claim
that what has been understood and coded as private (most specifically, women as social
actors and womens issues) should be understood as public. The personal is political
has been the call to radically reimagine and reorder private and public life. However, as
Michael Warner so lucidly argues, what is meant by the political has never been clear or
uniformly agreed upon by the scholars and activists who use the slogan (2002,
pp. 3439). By labeling only some publics as political public spheres I do not mean to
restrict the political where feminists have, for decades, tried to enlarge it. In fact, I
contend that understanding public spheres as ranging from civic to political in
orientation allows for more publics of all kinds to be considered under the conceptual
umbrella of the public sphere. This will not hinder womens participation in publics,
whether traditional, radical/progressive, or somewhere in between; in fact, it may
help it by enabling scholars and activists to see the relations and divergences between
different types of publicity with different social and political aims.
3 All quotations in the section on Religious Coalitions for the Freedom to Marry come
from the Web site of the group in Maine. The state of Maine legalized same-sex marriage
in May 2009, during the drafting of this article.
4 All quotations in the section on PFLAG come from the organizations Web site.
5 All quotations in the section on GLAAD come from the organizations Web site.
147
E. B. Breese
6 Words and Images Matter is a subheading in GLAADs mission statement.

7 All quotes and information about the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) come from the
organizations Web site.
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149
Une cartographie de la varit des sphres publiques

Sappuyant sur la littrature sur la sphre publique inspire dHabermas ainsi que sur celle sur
les sphres publiques civiles et les sphres publiques politiques de Arendt, cet article propose
que les sphres publiques varient selon deux axes, ceux de lchelle et du contenu. La littrature
qui dcrit la multiplicit des publics a considrablement fait avancer notre comprhension de la
sphre publique dans les dernires dcennies, mais la multiplicit des sphres publiques suit
certaines tendances. Elles peuvent tre en face face ou symboliques et mdies, et elles peuvent
tre dorientation politique ou civique. Un examen des organisations de mouvement social de
la communaut gaie dmontre comment la carte des sphres publiques permet aux analystes
sociaux de diffrentes traditions ainsi quaux activistes sociaux utilisant diffrentes approches de
voir leurs projets en relation ou en tension les uns avec les autres.

DieVielfaltderffentlichkeiten
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brgerlichenffentlichkeitenebensowiedenpolitischenffentlichkeitenvonArendt,folgenwirin
diesemArtikelderAnnahme,dassffentlichkeitenentlangzweierAchsenvariieren,nmlichAusma
undInhalt.WissenschaftlicheArbeiten,diedieVielfaltvonPublikabeschreiben,habenunser
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ffentlichkeitenaufihreArtvielfltig.Sieknnenfacetofaceodersymbolischundmediatisiertsein,
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Mapeando la Variedad de los Espacios Pblicos

Resumen
Utilizando los estudios de la esfera pblica inspirada por Habermas junto a las esferas
civiles pblicas y las esferas polticas pblicas de Arendt, este manuscrito propone que
las esferas pblicas varan a travs de dos ejes, aquellos de escala y contenido. Los
estudios describiendo la multiplicidad de pblicos han avanzado significativamente
nuestro entendimiento de las esferas pblicas en dcadas recientes, pero las esferas
pblicas son mltiples en formas pautadas. Ellas pueden ser cara a cara o simblicas y
mediadas, y pueden ser polticas o civiles en orientacin. Una examinacin de las
organizaciones de movimientos sociales de "la comunidad homosexual" demuestra
cmo el mapa de las esferas pblicas permite a los analistas sociales de tradiciones
diferentes as como a activistas sociales utilizando distintos enfoques, ver sus
proyectos en relacin o en tensin uno con el otro.
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Corresponding author: Elizabeth Butler Breese; e-mail: elizabeth.breese@yale.edu

Communication Theory 21 (2011) 130149 2011 International Communication Association