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IttrWintraub & Krishan Kumar ONE

editors
The Theory and Politics
tr
of the PubliclPrivate Distinction
IttrWeintraub

PuBLlc AND PntvATE Binary distinctions are an analytic procedure, but their usefulness does
not guarantee that existence divides like that. 'S7'e should look with sus-
IN TTTOUGHT AND PNACTICE picion on anyone who declared that there are two kinds of people, or
two kinds of reality or process.
Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy Douglas, 'Judgemenrs on James Frazier" I
-M"ry
THE DISTINCTIoN BETwEEN "public" and "private" has been a central and
f
characteristic preoccupation of Western thought since classical antiquiry, and
has long served as a point of entry into many of the k.y issues of social
and political analysis, of moral and political debate, and of the ordering of
everyday life. In Norberto Bobbio's useful phrase, the public/private distinc-
tion stands out as one of the "grand dichotomies" ofVestern thought, in the
sense of a binary opposition that is used to subsume a wide range of other
important distinctions and that attempts (rnore or less successfully) to dichoro-
mize the social universe in a comprehensive and sharply demarcated way.2 In
recent decades, different versions of this distinction have attained new or re,
newed prominence in a wide range of disciplines and areas of inquiry, from
"public choice" economics to social history and feminist scholarship.
However, the use of the conceptual vocabulary of "public" and "privare"
often generates as much confusion as illumination, not least because different
sets of people who employ these concepts mean yery different things by

This essay took its first written form as a paper presented at the 1990 annual meeting
of the American Politicd Science Association for a session organized by J.* Cohen, and
its prehistory goes back to an invited lecture for a course offered by Paul Srarr, so I owe
them thanks for helping provoke me to focus my thoughts on this subject. During the
essay's gestation I have benefitted from discussions on relevant issues with more people than
I can acknowledge here, including Philip Kasinitz, ffiI co-editor lfuishan Kumar, and the
other contributors to this volume.
l. Daedalus L07, no.4 (fall 1978): 161. I am indebted for this quotation roJos6 Casa-
nova's Public Religions in the Modcrn World (L994),which in turn draws in valuable ways on
the argument of the present essay: see in particular chapter 2, "Privare and Public Religions."
The U,niversity of Chicago Press 2. Norberto Bobbio, "The Great Dichotomy: Public/Private," in Democrary and Dicta-
Chicago & London torship.

( rrr?)
J err WeTNTRAUB THr Pualrc/Pnlvnrr DrsrtNCTIoN

*1srn-and sometimes, without quite realizing it, mean several things at once. different fields of discoutse to operate in mutual isolation, or to generare con-
The expanditg literature on the problem of "public goods," which takes its fusion (ot absurdiqf) when their categories are casually or unreflectively
lead from neoclassical economics, is addressing quite a different subject from blended. If the phenomena evoked by these different usages, and the issues
the "public sphere" of discussion and polidcal action delineated by Jiirgen they raise, were entirely disconnected, then it might not be terribly difficult
Habermas or Hannah Arendt, not to mention the "public life" of sociabiliry to sort them out; but matters are not as simple as that, either. Rather, these
charted by Philippe Aribs or Richard Sennett. \flhat do the current debates discourses of public and private cover a variery of subjects that are analytically
over "privatization," largely concerning whether governmental functions distinct and, at the same time, subtly-ofren confusingly-overlapping and
should be taken over by corporations, have to do with the world explored by internryined,
Ariis and Duby's multivolume History { Priuate Life3-families, sexualiry, These different publiclprivate distinctions emerge, to put it another way,
modes of intimary and obligation-or with the way that "privacy" has from different (often implicit or only partly conscious) theoretical languages
emerged as a central concept in the controversy over abortion rights? or universes of discourse, each with its own complex historical cargo of as,
Unfortunately, the widespread invocation of "public" and "private" as or- sumptions and connotations. While the analysis of public and private can
ganizing categories is not usually informed by a careful consideration of the usefully be informed by a number of these approaches, the result is mosr likely
meaning and irnplications of the concepts themselves. And, even where there to be fruitful cross-fertilization and reasoned contestation opposed to the
is sensitiviry to these issues, those who draw on one or another version of the prevaili.g conceptual confusion-if we start with a clear grasp of the differ-
public/private distinction are rarely attentive to, or even clearly aware of, the ences benveen them. Not only is this essential to avoid missing the point of
wider range of alternative frameworks within which it is employed. For exam- arguments that employ the categories of public and private; it can also help
ple, many discussions take for granted that distinguishing "public" frorn "pri- us reflect with conceptual self-awareness about how far the concerns of these
vate" is equivalent to establishing *re boundary of the politicala-rhough, different perspectives can or should be synthesized. Some of these differences
even here, it makes a considerable diflbrence whether the political is conceived simply involve variations in terminology, and could be cleared up (or recon-
in terms of the administrative state or of the "public sphere." But the public/ ciled) conceptually without requiring any very agonized choices. But to a con-
private distinction is also used as a conceptual framework for demarcating siderable degree they also reflect deeper differences in both theoretical and
other important boundaries: between the "private" worlds of intimacy and ideological commitments, in sociological assumptions, and/or in sociohistori-
the family and the "public" worlds of sociabiliry or the rnarket economy; cal context. Partly for these reasons, debates about how to cur up rhe social
between the inner priv acy of the individual self and the "interaction order" world between public and private are rarely innocent analytical exercises, since
of Ervitg Goffrnan's Relations in Public; and so on in rich (and overlapping) they often carry powerful normative implications-but quite disparare norma-
profusion. tive implications, depending on context and perspective. In shorr, any discus-
The public/private distinction, in short, is not unitary, but protean. It sion of public and private should begin by recognizing, and trying to clarify,
comprises, not a single paired opposition, but a complex family of them, nei- the multiple and ambiguous character of its subject matter. To bring some
ther mutually reducible nor wholly unrelated. These different usages do not intelligible order into the discussion, its complexity needs to be acknowledged,
simply point to different phenomena; often they rest on differenr underlying and the roots of this complexiqF need to be elucidated.
images of the social world, are driven by different concerns, generate different This essay will undertake an initial venture in clarification by delineating
problematics, and raise very different issues. It is all too common for these what I see as four major organi zing types of public/private distinction that
operate under the surface of current discussion (political as well as scholarly)
3. Philippe fuiEs and Georges Duby et *1., eds., ,4 History of Priaate Life, 5 vols. and by attempting to elucidate the theoretical imageries and presuppositions
(1987 -9 I ). that inform them. This is not the only possible or useful starting point for
4. This assumption is built right into the title of a valuable collecdon edited by Charles
Maier, Changing Boundaries of the Political: Essays on the Euoluing Baknce between tbe State such an exarnination; and, if one wished to minimize the conceptual messiness
and Society,Tubtic and Friuate in Europe (1987); however, a number of the essays in *re of the discussion, good cases could be made for pursuing either a rnore sysrem-
book make it clear, in various ways, that the picture is actually more complicated. aticallv historical analysis or a more purely analytical one. However, I think
Jerr WEtNTRAUB Tnr PueLrc/ PRIvATE D tsrlNcrtoN

this approach has advantages for helping to clarift the ways that people cus- 1. \ilhat is hidden or withdrawn versus what is open, revealed, or accessible.
,o*"ii[y talk pasr each 6*1ss-and confuse themselves-on these issues and 2. tWhat is individual, or pertains only to an individual, versus what is collec-
for bringing on, the potentially useful and problematic elements in each of rive, or affects the interests of a collectiviry of individuals. This individual/
fiese perspectives.s collective distinction can, by extension, take the form of a distinction be-
tween part and whole (of some social collectiviry).6
\ilZe might refer to these two underlying criteria as "visibiliry" (audibility
PuBLtc AND PntvATE: SoME Bestc OnlENTATloNs
'Wp "pri- being one component) and "collectivity." The two may blur into each other
cAN BEGrN By reminding ourselves that any notion of "public" or
in specific cases, and can also be combined in various ways, but the difference
vare" makes sense only as one element in a paired opposition-whether the in principle is clear enough. \fhen an individual is described as pursuing his
conrrasr is being used as an analytical device to address a specific problem or
or her private interest rather than the public interest-or a group is described
being advanced as a comprehensive model of social structure. To understand
as pursuing a "special interest" rather than the public interest-the implica-
*h"i either "public" or "private" means within a given framework, we need
tion is not necessarily that they are doing it in secret. The criterion involved
to know with what it is being contrasted (explicitly or implicitly) and on what is the second one: the private is the particular. One especially pure application
basis the contrast is being drawn.
of this criterion is perhaps the way in which economists use the term "public
One reason the criteria involved are irreducibly heterogeneous is that, at good" ro mean an indivisible collective benefit-that is, one which is essentially
the deepesr and mosr general level, lying behind the different forms of public/
collective; the question of "visibility" is irrelevant here. Likewise, the basis for
private distinction are (at least) two fundamental, and analytically quite dis- using the rerm "public" to describe the actions and agents of the state (to
,irr.r, kinds of imagery in terms of which "private" can be contrasted with that public/private - state/nonstate) lies in the state's claim to be responsible
"public":
for the general interests and affairs of a politically organtzed collectiviry (ot,
at least, the srate's abiliry to monopolize them) as opposed to "privats"-1hx1
is, merely particular-interests. Treating the state as the locus of the "public"
5. It is worth noting another fairly recent effort along these lines, probably the most
ma! be combined with arguments for the openness or "publiciry" of state
sysrematic and comprehensive I know of. The excellent collection edited by S. I. Benn and
G. F. Gaus on Public and Priuate in Social Ltft (1983) is one of the best boola on this actions; but it has been at least equally common to claim that, in order to
topic currenrly available-and one of the surprisingly few that atternPt to elucidate these advance the public interest, rulers must maintain "state secrets" and have re-
concepts in addition to using them. In particular, the editors' rwo introductory essays- course to the arcnna imperii. If market exchange is considered a "private"
"The public and the Privatei Concepts and Action" and "The Liberd Conception of the acr-on the grounds of being, in principle, self-interested, nongov€rnmental,
public and the Priv21s"-add up ro a very useful and intelligent attemPt to "map" the
and unconcerned with collective outcomes-then it does not cease to be pri-
various permutarions of the public/private distinction and to analyze their conceptual un-
derpinnings.
vare when it is carried out "in public." And, correspondingly, voting in an
\fithout entering into an exrensive comparison berween their rypology and mine, I election does not necessarily cease to be a "public" act if it is carried out "in
would like to offer nvo brief remarks. First, although they specift the analytical elements private" by secret ballot.i
involved in more detait and profusion than I will undertake here, in the end the range of
concrere approaches to the public/private distinction that they effectively address is narrower 6. I was reminded of this refinement by Paul Starr. Starr makes use of some of the
than those with which tlis essay will deal. Second, I would say that their analysis is weakened ideas I am presenting here in his perceptive essay on "The Meaning of Privatization," in
by the fact that ,h.y employ rhe category of "liberal" in an unacceptably broad and unselec- the edited volume by Sheila B. Kamerman and Alfred J. Kah n, Priuatization and the Welfare
tive way, so rhat it gradually subsumes (and homogenizes) a whole spectrum of divergent State (1989).
and even conficting tendencies in \Testern social and political thought. In fact, in their 7. It is true that John Stuart Mill, while recognizing the force of arguments in favor
discussion "liberalism" appears to be more or less equivalent to "moderttiry." \flhen
"the of the secret ballot, was uneasy about it because it might encourage the voter to think of his
liberal conceprion of the public and the private" is taken to include Rousseau, Hegel, and or her yote as an expression of purely "privx1s"-that is, individual-interest, preference, or
fuendt-all engaged, in one way or another, in fundamental critiques of liberali5m-*1gn whim (roughly the way it is treated by most social scientific voting studies), divorced from
it strikes rne ,ft1 s6me important distinctions are being blurred. (People who have had any recognition of civic responsibiliry or concern for "the public good" that should inform
occasion to read both rhis essay and the discussion by Benn and Gaus can decide whether participation in the exercise of collective power (see chapter 10 of Mill's Representatiue Gou-
these comments seem fair.) ernment [1861]). But, or the other hand, a key justification for the secret ballot has been
Jrnr WetNTRAUB THr Puelrc/PRrvarr DrsrrNcrroN

As for the first criterion, "visibiliry," its basic thrust is too evident to require "that hurnan thought is both social and public," rr he is using the language
much explication. Its specific instances, however, can be sociologic"lly quite of post-Vittgensteinian analytical philosophy to express the idea that thought
subtle and even paradoxical.s The use of the term "privacy" usually signals is essentially intersubjective rather than somethitg that happens entirely in
the invocation of this criterion, since it generally concerns things that we are the individual head, that it relies on collectively elaborated media such as lan-
able and/or entitled to keep hidden, sheltered, or withdrawn from others.e guage and cultural symbolism.l2 This quite significant conception of "public"
(There may also be things that we are required to keep hidden from others, applies to politics no more than to any other human activiry.
such as our "private parts," so that having sex or urinating "in public" is I will not pursue this particular example any further, since in one respect
frowned on in many cultures.ro) it leads away from the main thrust of my discussion. The kind of argument
There are a number of ways in which each of these underlying criteria can being made here by Geertz is that all human action necessarily has an element
be conceived, and a number of ways in which they can be combined, to pro- that is, in a certain sense, "public." More ofren, however, "public" and "pti-
duce the various concrete versions of the public/private distinction. The range vate" are used, descriptively and/ or normatively, to distinguish different
of permutations is sufficiently formidable that I will not attempt even to begin kinds of human action-and, beyond that, the different realms of social life,
to list all the ways in which "public" and "private" are used and contrasted or the different physical and social spaces, in which they occur; and these are
in current discourse. But it may be worth reemphasizing the cautionary point the sorts of arguments on which I want to focus. The following are, I think,
that there is no necessaqy connection benveen the notions of "public" and the four major ways in which these distinctions are currently drawn in social
"political"; while this should be obvious (as I hope the discussion this far has and political analysis (I remind the reader that this list is not meant to be
made clear), it is often overlooked that there are many varieties of publicl exhaustive):
private distinction which have little or nothing to do-directly, at all events- I. The liberal-economistic model, dominant in most "public policy" analy-
with politics. For example: when Clifford Geertz insists, as he does frequently, sis and in a great deal of everyd*y legal and political debate, which sees
the public/private distinction primarily in terms of the distinction be-
rween state administration and the market economy.
precisely thatit enables the voter to perform this "public function" (as Mill terms it) by
protecting him or her.from "private" pressure, intimidation, or retaliation by employers, II. The republican-virtue (and classical) approach, which sees the "public"
landlords, and other powerful individuals or even by neighbors and relatives. realm in terms of political communiry and citizenship, analytically dis-
8. Take, for example, the sociologically fascinating notion of acting "discreetly"-4t", tinct from both the market and the administrative state.
is, acting in a way that is not really hidden but also not faunted, so that it is known but ilI. The approach, exemplified for instance by the work of Arils (and other
not officially "visible"-which every culture develops in its own unique way.
figures in social history and anthropology), which sees the "public" realm
9. Privacy is a rich and complex subject in itself-which, unfortunately, I can address
as a sphere of fluid and polymorphous sociabiliry, and seeks to analyze the
only tangentially in this essay. Several of the other essays in this volume attack various facets
of it in a more sustained way, including those byJean Cohen, Jean Elshtain, Marc Garcelon, cultural and dramatic conventions that make it possible. (This approach
Oleg Kharkhordin, Krishan Kumar, and Alan \7olfe. One excellent collection of essays on might almost be called dramaturgic, if that term were not so ambiguous.)
the subject, deriving mostly-though not quite entirely-from the borderland between IV. A tendency, which has become important in many branches of feminist
(Anglo-Saxon) philosophy and (American) jurisprudence, is Ferdinand David Schoeman's
analysis, to conceive of the distinction between "private" and "public" in
edited collection, Philosophical Dimensions af Priuaty (1984). Barrington Moorc, Priuacy:
terms of the distinction berween the family and the larger economic and
Studies in Social and Cuhural History (1984), provides a somewhat diffuse but important
and often insightful comparative study. political ordel-ryi1h the market economy often becoming the paradig-
10. In the work of Erving Goffman, practically all activity carried out in the presence matic "public" realm.
of others constitutes "behavior in public pl"..r" or "the field of public life"; the domain Now let me elaborate.
of the private is restricted to the "backstage" where we prepare to enact our roles in social
interaction. "Visibiliry"-1n its many degrees and modulations-is the defining criterion 11. "The Impactof the Concept of Culrure on the Concept of Man," in The Interpreta-
here. For some illustrations, see Erving Goffrnann, Behauior in Public Pkces: Notes an the tion of Cuhures (1973), p. 45.
Social Organization of Gatherings (1963), and Rehtions in Public: Micrastudia of the Public 12. Terminology aside, this is of course a crucid Durkheimian insight, partly reinvented
Order (197l). ,) by \Tittgenstein-as Ernest Gellner was fond of pointing out.
Je rr WTTNTRAUB Txe PueLrclP RtvArE DrsrlNcrtoN
l. LIgERALIsM: THr MaRKET AND THE Srnrr ism.15 Locke and Adam Smith on the one hand, Hobbes and Bentham on
THls Is rHE FRAME\r.oRK into which such terms as "public secror" and "pti- the other, might be taken as the most distinguished representatives of the nvo
vate sector" usually fit, and which structures the great bulk of what is called poles within this universe of discourse: the side that leans toward a "narural"
"public policy" debate. The assumptions of neoclassical economics tend ro harmonization of selfish interests, whose grand theoretical achievemenr is the
dominate,t3 which is to say-putting the matter into a grander theorerical theory of the market; and the more technocratic, social-engineering side,
perspeslivs-1hs assumptions of udlitarian liberalism.la They are embodied which posits the need for a coercive agency standing above sociery (epitomized
in a characteristic, if not always explicit, image of social realiry (which, like by Hobbes's Leuiathan) that maintains order by manipulating the sffucrure
most such images, has both descriptive and normative dimensions): that what of rewards and punishments within which individuals pursue their "rarional"
exists in sociery are individuals pursuing their self-interest more or less effi- interests. Given the underlying assumptions, the "invisible hand" of the mar-
ciently (that is, "rationally," in the peculiar sense in which this term is used ket and what Alfred Chandler calls the "visible hand" of administrative regula-
in utilitarian liberalism); volun tary (particularly contractual) relations berween tionr6 recur as the ftvo k.y solutions. The pervasiveness of this dichotomous
individuals; and the state. Thus, in practice the distinction berween public model is brought out by the way it is replicated when the second pole is
and private-berween the "public sector" and the "private sector" usually represented, not by the state, but by the "private government" of the business
means the distinction berween "governmental" and "nongovernmental," with firm; again, the alternatives, as captured in the title of an influential book by
the implication that this distinction should be as clearly and sharply dichoto- Oliver Villiamson, are seen as Markets and Hierarchies.t7
mous as possible. The field of the nongovernmental is conceived essenri"lly This theoretical tendency is of course highly imperialistic, and its infuence
in terms of the market. It is therefore not surprising that the use of the public/ extends well beyond its core stronghold in neoclassical economics. Imporranr
private distinction within this framework has characteristically involved a pre- examples of affempts to generalize this perspective range from Anthony
occuPation with questions ofTurisdiction, and especially with demarcating the Downs's Eca nomic Theory of Democraq/ to the work of Gary Becker and the
sphere of the "public" authoriry of the state frorn the sphere of formally volun- "exchange theory" of Peter Blau; and its inroads throughout the social sciences
tary relations between "private" individuals. These questions of jurisdiction are registered by the alarming vogue of what is currently termed "rarional
tend predominantly to boil down to disputes about whether parricular activi- choice theory.)' 18 (Along the same lines, a good deal of "analytical Marxism"
ties or services should be left to the market or be subject to governmenr "inrer- is essentially a branch of utilitarian liberalism, even where the "Marxisr" parr
vention," usually conceived in terms of administrative regulation backed by of the package has not gradually disintegrated-the intellecrual trajectory of
coercive force Jot Elster being instructive here.) Its limitations are broughr our, from the
To put it another way, this orientation defines public/private issues as hav-
itg to do with striking the balance ben^reen individuals and conrractually cre- 15. I am drawing here on the well-known argument of Elie Haldvy in The Growth of
ated organizations, orr the one hand, and state action, on the other. The fact Philosophic Radicalism [l 928], along lines suggested by Parsons in The Structure of Social
that these disputes may often be quite bitter should nor conceal the fact that Action U9371. Decades of criticism and historiographic revisionism-especially work on the
both sides are operating within a common universe of discourse, drawing dif- Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century-have made clear the need for extensive
refinements in the Hal6vy/Parsons argument; but they have not, I think, refuted this crucial
ferent conclusions from the same premises. They are simply replicating the
insight.
t\lro classic answers to the problem of social order as posed by utilitarian liberal- 16. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Reuolution inAmerican
Business (1977).
13. This fact and some of its implications are brought out well by Robert Bell in The 17. Oliver 'Sfilliamson, Markets and Hierarchies (197r.
Cuhure of Policy Deliberarions (19S5). 18. For examples, see Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957); Peter
14. "Liberalism" is another contested and ambiguous term; any usage is potentially Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Lift (1964); G"ry Becker, The Econornic Approach to
controversial, and r}is is not the place for a lengthy justification of the one employed here. Human Behauior (1976); and, most recently, James Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory
Let me just note that I have specified "utilitarian liberalism" to make it clear th"t I arn nor (1990). For an overview of both the multidisciplir"ry influence of this perspective and some
addressing the Kantian strain in liberalism, whose approach to the public/private distinction important lines of criticism, see the useful collection edited by Jane Mansbridge, Beyond
is somewhat different-in ways that would merit a separate discussiort. Self-Interest (1990).
,,,

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inside, by mo currently influential writers: the first does it unintentionally, In a sense, "public"
means "politi cal" in both perspecrives I and II. But
the other quite self-consciously. these are very different meanings of "political." For I, "political" or "public"
The first is Mancur Olson, whose core argument was set out in The Logic authority means the administrative state. For II, "polidcs" means a world
af Collectiue Action.le Olson argues that "rational" actors will never engage of discussion, debate, deliberation, collective decision making, and acdon in
in collective z6dsn-due to the "free-rider" problem-unless subjected ro concert. This understanding of the political is captured, for example, in Han-
o'selective
coercion and incentives." Vorkers, for example, submit to coercion nah Arendt's powerful conception of "public space" (or the "public realm":
by unions for the sarne reason that Hobbes's individuals in the state of narure ffintliche Raum) as a distinctive field of action that can emerge whenever
submit to the sovereign: it is the only way they can pursue or prorecr their human beings act and deliberate in concer t.22 In this contexr, it makes sense
egoistic interests, which they are incapable of pursuing cooperativ.ly.Actually, to speak, not only of "public" jurisdiction and "public interest," bur also of
what Olson shows is that these premises render many forms of collective ac- "public life."
lisn-and particularly collective self-determination-incomprehensible. The These two notions of "public" as "politi cal" become clearer if we grasp
premises are too narrow, and the dichotomous framework is too restricted.2o their historical roots and the social contexts from which they emerge d.23 Both
A writer who starts within this framework and deliberately works through derive originally frorn classical antiquiry. The words "public" and "privare"
to its limits is Albert Hirschman, particularly in Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.zt are originally Roman, the concepts Greco-Roman. Their dual register srems
"Exit"-which exercises an indirect pressure on the operation of "firms, orga- in part from the fateful circumstance that the Roman empire took over much
nizations, and states"-is the only option of the "rational" individual of liberal of the political language of the Roman republic (including such rerms as "pub-
theory. But that is inadequate as a mechanism to keep the world going. There lic" and even "citizen") but shaded their meanings rarher differendy. A great
is also a role for "voice," which means participation in making (ot, ar leasr, deal of the conceptual vocabul^ry of \Testern social, political, and moral dis-
influencing) decisions about matters of common concern. And for "voice" to course has thus been shaped by rwo interconnected but distinctive legacies,
work requires some degree of "loyalry." Vithin the framework from which those of ancient republicanism and of the Roman empire-the latter being
Hirschman begins, "voice" is an imported category, and "loyalry" an essen- conveyed, above all, by the massive influence of Roman law, nor only on
tially residual one; thus, both are only thinly feshed out. But they point the jurisprudence but on the categories of more than a thousand years of \Wesrern
way to the problematic of the next perspective, which focuses on the problern social and political philosophy.
of citrzenship. The result is that there are two basic models of the "public" realm drawn
from antiquiry:
I l. C rr )zENsHlp: F nom rHE Polls 1. The self-governing polis or republic (res publica, literally "public thing"),
To THE .. PUBLIc SpgERE'' from which we inherit a notion of politics as citizenship, in which individu-
HpnE THE "puBLIC" REALv is the realm of political comrnunity based on als, in their capacity as citizens, participate in an ongoing process of con-
citizenship: at the heart of "public" life is a process of active participation in scious collective self-determination.
collective decision making, carried out within a framework of fundamental 2" The Roman empire, from which we get the notion of souereignty: of a
solidarity and equaliry, The k.y point is that this whole realm of activiry, and central tzed, unified, and omnipotent apparatus of rule which stands above
the problernatic it generates, are essentially invisible within the framework of the soci.ty and governs it through the enactment and administration of
the first perspective. laws" The "public" power of the sovereign rules over, and in principle on
behalf of, a society of "private" and politically passive individuals who are
19. Mancur Olson, The Logic 0f Collectiue Action (1971; lst ed., 1965). bearers of rights granted to them and guaranteed by the sovereign. This
20. For an instructive concrete illustration of this point, see Robert D. Putnam, Making
Democracy Work: Ciuic Trad.itions in Modern hob (1993), especially chapter 6. 22. Her most systematic discussion of these concepts is in The Human Condition
21. See Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalry: Responses to Decline in Firms, ( 1 e58)
Organizations, and States (1970); some of the issues raised by this andysis are explored 23. I have developed the argument which follows more fully rn Freedom and Commu-
firrther, with rnore explicit reference to the terminology of public and private, in Hirsch- nity: The Republican Virtue Tradition and the Sociologt af Liberty (fonhcoming), particularly
man's Shtfring Inuoluements: Priuate Interest and Public Action (1982) chapter 3.

t0 tl
Jerr WeINTRAUB Tur Pusr-rc/ PnrvnrE DrsrrNcrtoN
conception of the public/private distinction permeates, for example, Ro- counterposed nowadays to an undifferentiated "communitarianism," it is also
man (imperial) law.ta important to emphasize that membership in community does not necessarily
Many of the ambiguities in our thinking about politics stem from the fact constitute citizenship. Citizenship entails participation in a particular kind of
that both of these underlying images have a significant presence in modern communiry (which I have elsewhere called "willed communiqy" zs): one
thought. As compared to the main patterns of political thought developed in marked by, among other things, fundamental equaliry and the consideration
other civilizations, both are distinctive in the sharpness of the line they draw and resolution of public issues through conscious collective decision making.
between "public" and "private." fn many other respects, however, their pre- Both the notion of citizenship and the notion of sovereignry went into
suppositions and implications are profoundly different. eclipse in the Middle Ages, for reasons which are understandable. For one
If we examine the origins of systematic political reflection in other civiliza- thing, neither of them is compatible with the feudal system of rule, based on
tions, and in other periods of '$Testern history as well, the mosr common a web of personal dependent ties and the absence of any significant distinction
pattern is for political thought to take one or another form of monarchy as berween "public" and "private" authority. The same can be said of the cus-
its main point of reference; and the notion of politics centered on the model tomary communities of medieval gemeinschaft. As has frequently been
of sovereignqy accords with this general tendency. In such a conrexr, the key stressed, a soci.ry of this sort really does not have a differentiated public or
issues for discourse and sophlsticated theorizing about politics center on rhe private realm, in either of the senses I have been discussirg. In such a conrexr,
problem of rulership or, to use the more Roman term, domination-i15 nx- the distinction does not make sense.
ture, its modes, its justifications, its limits. This kind of theo rizing takes for A significant elernent in the shaping of moderniry has involved the gradual
granted, in its underlying premises, the separation benveen rulers and ruled rediscovery of these notions and the aftempt to realtze and institutionalize
(whether it takes the side of the rulers or of the ruled). Classical moral and them-and sometimes, in a move that might have puzzled the ancienrs, ro
political philosophy, however, was profoundly marked by the fact that it took combine them. Behind this process lie three grand historical transformarions,
as its point of departure a fundamentally different, and considerably rnore whose complex interconnections need not trouble us here:
exceptional, model of politics, one based on a process of collective decision 1. The development of modern civil society, which is the seedbed of liberal-
making by a body of citizens united in a community (albeit, of course, a ism. "Civil sociery" is, of course, another historically complex and multiva-
restricted and exclusive communiry). Thus, the central image of "political" lent term; but I do not want to enter into the relevant controversies at this
action as we find it in Aristotle is not domination and compliance (or resis- point, so I will simply state my own position. Following Hegel's guide, I
tance) but participation in collective self-determination; Aristotle's classic will use "civil society" to refer to the social world of self-interested individu-
definition of the citizen is one who is capable both of ruling and of being alism, competition, impersonaliqy, and contractual relationships-centered
ruled. The appropriate sphere for domination is within the private realm of on the market-which, as thinkers in the early modern Vest slowly came
the household, which is structured by relationships of "narural" inequaliry: to reco gnize, seemed somehow able to run itself. Liberalism is the philoso-
between master and slave, parent and child, husband and wife. phy of civil sociery and, frequently, its apology. Its tendency is to reduce
'S7hat
separates the problematic of citizenship, in any strong sense of the sociery to civil sociery (in the case of "rational choice theory," for example,
term, from the conceptual framework of liberal social theory is that the pracice to collapse both politics and communiry into the market).
of citizenship is inseparable frorn active participation-direc or mediated- 2. The recovery of the notion of sovereignry, to complement the norion of the
in a decision-maki ng community maintained by solidariry and the exercise of atomistic liberal individual. The rediscovery of sovereignty was obviously
(what used to be called) republican virtue. But, since liberalism is roo often connected in its initial stages with the gradud reassertion of royal power,
with the multifaceted "recovery" of Roman law which often accompanied
24. It is distilled in a crucial formulation which appears, identically worded, in the first
it, and partieularly with the era of absolutism.26 To restate a point empha-
chapter of each of the two sections of the Corpus Juris Ciailis, dre great compilation of
Roman law issued in the name of the Emperor Justinian in 533-34: "Public law is that 25. See Freedom and Communiry,particularly chapters I and 2.
which regards the condition of the Roman commonwealth, private, thar which pertains to 26. On this subject, see, for example, Gianfranco Poggi, The Deuelopment of the Modern
the interests of single individuals." ("Publicum jus est, quod ad statum rei Romanae spectat, State (1978), and Joseph R. Strayer, On the Medieual Origins of the Modern State (1970).
priuatum, quod ad singulorum utilitatem pertinet": my translation.) On the "recovery" or "reception" of Roman law and its significance, the commanding

t2 t3
Je rr WTTNTRAUB THe Puelrc/ PRrvnrr D rsrrNCTroN

sized earlier, the liberal conception of the public lprivate disdncrion rurns some of the more significant efforts to characterrze and theorize this sphere
fundarnentally on the separation berween the administrative srare and civil of social life.28 Without minim rzing the significant differences berween their
sociery-one dichotomy being mapped onto the other. It has difficulry analyses, it is worth emphasizing one larger implication that emerges from all
dealing with other aspecs of social life. three: attempts to use the public/private distinction as a dichotomous model
3. The recove ry of the notion of citizenship. This followed a differenr roure to capture the overall paffern of social life in a sociery opposed to using
frorn the rediscovery of sovereignty, beginning with the reemergence of one or another version for specific and carefully defined purposes-are always
the self-governing ciry in the later Middle Ages and the rebirth of civic likely to be inherently misleading, because the procrustean dualism of their
consciousness which this made possible. From this perspecrive, rhe "pub- categories will tend to blank out important phenomena. Thus, just as the
lic" redm is above all a realm of participatory self-determination, delibera- "public" realm (and politics) cannot be reduced to the state, the realm of
tion, and conscious cooperation among equals, the logic of which is distinct social life outside the state (and its control) cannot simply be identified as
from those of both civil socieqy and the administrarive srare. "privat e." 2e The conceptual limitations of the public/private dichotomy in
The distinctive character of the "public" or "political" realrn, understood this connection are emphasized by Habermas's deliberately paradoxical formu-
in this way as the terrain of active citizenship, is captured especially sharply lation that "the bourgeois public sphere rnay be conceived above all as the
in a passage from The Old Regime and the French Reuolutionwhere Tocqueville sphere of private people [who have] come together as a public" (outside
suggests why Roman law was useful for the centralizing projects of early mod- and even against the state) to discuss and debate mafiers of common
ern absolutist monarchies: concern.30 Similarly, the fact that "political society," though it coexists
with both civil sociery and the state, is not reducible to either lies behind an
The Roman [imperial] law carried. civil sociery to perfection, but it
J

invariably degraded political sociery, because it was the work of a 28. For the arguments behind these remarks, see my discussions in "Democracy and
highly civilized and thoroughly enslaved people. Kings narurally em- the Market: A Marriage of Inconvenience," in Margaret Nugent's From Leninism to Freedom:
braced it with enthusiasm, and established it wherever they could The Challenges of Deruocratization (1992), and chapters 7 and B of Freedom and Communiry.
throughout Eu rope.z7 In particular, I spe[[ out why I find the usual statelcivil sociery division-in which "civil
sociery" tends to serye as an undifferentiated residual category-*1s61etically inadequate,
Tocqueville's conception of "political socieqy," Arendt's conception of the and why a step in the right direction is the tripartite disdnction which Tocqueville (I argue)
"public realrn," and Habermas's conception of the "public sphere" represenr draws bennreen the state, civil sociery, and political sociery. (The next step required is to
distinguish more carefully and systematically than Tocqueville does berween civil sociery
and the ruly "private" realm of the family and intimate relationships. More on this below.)
treatment is still to be found in the work of Ono Gierke; see, for example, the portion of 29. The need to move beyond such dichotomous models of modern societies is also a
Das Deutsche Genossenschafisrecht [1881] translated by F. \7. Maitland as Political Theories central theme of Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato's ambitious exploration of Ciuil Society
of the Middle Agt. and Political Theory 0992). (While their conceptual specification of both "civil sociery"
To avoid *y ambiguiry on this point: fie word "sovereign" does nor come ro us from and "political sociery" differs in various ways from the approach I have sketched out here,
antiquiry. It is of later origin, and its different varianl5-*1s Old French souuerein, the I would say that there is considerable accord on the substantive implications.) A recognition
Spanish soberano, and so on-appear to be derived from the medieval Latin superanus (at of the inadequacy of a dichotomous public/private perspective has also-explicitly or im-
least, this is the tentative suggestion of the Oxford English Dictionary), But rhe concept is plicitly-informed arguments by neoconseryatives (among others) emphasizingthe impor-
characteristically Roman, and the increasing importance of this rerminology, from the later tance of "mediating structures": one instructive example is Peter Berger and Richard Neu-
Middle Ages onward, is part of the process which Gierke describes as "rhe resuscitation apd haus, To Empou)er People: The Role of Mediating Stractures in Public Policy (1977).
further development of the classical idea of Sovereignry" (Political Theories of the Middk 30. Jiirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry
Ag4 P.92). To employ one of Gierke's favorite formulations, sovereignry is a quintessentially into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989) , p.26.(This was
"ancient-modern" concept, as opposed to a "properly mediaeval" one.
originally published tn L962 as Strukturwand.et drr }ffentlichkeit, but only recently translated
27- See Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Reuohrtion t1S56l, end- into English. A condensed version of the argument can be found in Habermas's 1 964 ency-
note 1, p. 223. Tocqueville's most extensive analyses of the dynamics of polirical socieqy clopedia article on "The Public Sphere," reprinted in New German Critique 1, no. 3 [f"ll
and their significance for the vitaliry of political liberry (or "public liberry") are of course 19741: 49-55).Habermas's approach here is infuenced by Arendt's explicidy tripartite
developed throughout Democracy in America [1835, 1840]. model of modern sociery, which I will discuss below.

t4 t5
Jerr WeTNTRAUB
THE PuBLrc/PnrvArE DtsrtNCTroN
equally paradoxical observation of Tocqueville's which is really central ro done there, since it is predictable that the general will won't prevail,
his argument in The OId Regime.: that, precisely as the ..rriral ized, and and so finally domestic concerns absorb everythi^g.
bureau cratized French state achieved its apotheosis, politicat life was smorh- The Social Contract3z
-Rousseau.
ered and suppressed.3r
In short, these f\4/o notions of the "public"-and the two versions of the u
public/private distinction in which they are embedded-resr on crucially dif- The tolerance, the room for great differences among neighbors-differ-
ferent images of politics and society, and a good deal of modern thought ences that often go far deeper than differences in color-which are
reflects the tension benveen them. However, they far from exhaust the ,ignifi- possible and normal in intensely urban life, but which are so foreign
cant discussion of public and private. For example, although they intersect to suburbs and pseudosuburbs, are possible and normal only when
with it intermittently, they largely bypass the enormous fielJ explored, from streets of great cities have built-in equipment allowing strangers to
different directions, by cultural anthropology and by the sociology of Erving dwell in peace together on civilized but essentially dignified and re-
served terms. Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear,
Goffman: the symbolic demarcation of interactional space as a k"ylorstitutive
sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a ciry's wealth of
feature of social realiry. And, mgre specific ally, neither of them caprures the
public life rnay grow.
alternative vision of public life that links it, neither to the srare nor to citizen-
Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Citief3
ship, but to sociabiliry. -Jane
BorH oF THEsr, striking passages are quoted often, but rarely, I think, in
the same places. This is a piry, because when taken in juxtaposition they have
II l. t'PuBLlc" LtFE As SoctABlLlry the advantage of capruring nvo powerful, influential, yet curiously disparate
Fon A PRELIMINARY sense of the contrasts involved, consider the messages con- images of "public life" and of the public space in which it can thrive. Rous-
veyed by these r$/o declarations: seau's is a characteristically extreme formulation of the conception that ties
"public" life to the practice of citizenship. The citizens who "rush" to the
The bemer constituted the state, the more public affairs ourweigh pri- public space of the assembly do so to engage in self-conscious collective action,
vate ones in the minds of citizens. . In a well-conducted ciry, ..,r.ry-
deliberation, and decision concerning common-that is, "public"-aflairs.
one rushes to the assemblies. Under a bad government, no one cares '$7hen
we venture into Jane Jacobs's public space, on the other hand, w€ enter
to take even a steP to attend them: no one takes an interest in what is
what Roger Scruton has aptly termed "a sphere of broad and largely unplanned
encounter," 34 of fluid sociabiliry among strangers and near-strangers. The
31. This theme is pervasive in Tocqueville's work, but one especially compact formula- "wealth" of the "public life" to which it contributes lies, not in self-determina-
tion appears in the concluding chapter of The Otd Regime, on pp. 204-5. Tocqueville's
insight is.further confirmed by the historical experience of ,r"r.-rocialist regimes, tion or collective action, but in the multistranded liveliness and spontaneiry
where the
hypertrophy oi the state (based on "public" control of the econo-y) *", -"..ompanied arising from the ongoing intercourse of heterogeneous individuals and groups
by
the atrophyof public life in the sense of citizenship and participatiorrl. Irorrically, that can maintain a civilized coexistence. Its function is not so much to express
theJacobin
apProach to citizenship, carried on and intensified by Leninism, which aims
at having the or generate solidariry as, ideally, to "make diversiqy agreeable" 35-or, at least,
public entirely submerge the private through the continuous mobilization of civic virtue,
ultimately yields the same privatizing result (as Tocqueville also understood).
Maoism at-
tempted the most hyper-Jacobin intensification of participation and public virtu€:2nd
wbund up, perh"pr, *ost thoroughly burning them out. In general, the attempr by
32. Jean-Jacllues Rousseau, On the Social Contract 11762l (New York St. Marrin's,
these 1978), book 3, chapter 5, p. 102 (translation slightly emended).
regimes to "poli ticize" everyriing in sociery has led, in the long or shorr
run, to massive 33. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), p.72.
depoliticization and a retreat to the privacy of personal relations
i*h.n these are nor them- 34. Roger Scruton, "Public Space and the Classical Vernacular," in Nathan Glazer and
selves under direct assault, as in periods of "high" toralitarianism like
the 1930s in the Mark Lilla's edited volume, The Public Face ofArchitecture: Ciuic Culture and Public Spaces
Soviet L)nion, the Cultural Revolution in China, or Cambodia under the Khmer
Rouge). (t987), p. 13.
(At the sarne dme, the forms of "privatization" characteristic of state-socialist
societies have 3r. To borrow another phrase, slightly out of context, from Scruton, "Public Space,"
been both complex and distinctive: for explorations of this phenomenon, see
the essays by p. 23.A remark by Philippe Arils (in his introduction to volume 3 of A History of Priuate
Marc Garcelon and oleg Kharkhordin in this volume.)
Life) brings out the same implication of this particular meaning of "public": "l am here

l6
l7
J rrr W eTNTRAUB THr Puelrc/Pnlvnrr DtsrtNcrtoN

manageable. It may be that both these forms, or aspects, of public life are should nore, a realm of isolated individuals-nor of individualisffi, in most
valuable and ought to be encouraged; and some might argue that, in the right senses of that slippery term. On the contrary, the family is (to a greater or
circurnstances, they can even be complemenary. But it is clear that they differ lesser exrent) a collective unit, constituted by particularistic ties of attachment,
in their defining characteristics, requirements, and implications. affection, and obligation; and the modern family has characteristic"lly been
The second nodon of "public" is the one we have in mind if we speak of understood-and idealized-precisely as a refuge against the self-interested
Mediterranean (but not usually American) cities having a rich public life. It individualism and impersonaliry of civil society.
is what Philippe AriEs means when he says that, in the sociery of the old This norion of the "public" realm, then, sees it as a realm of sociabiliry,
regime, "life was lived in public," and the intense privatizatron of the mediated by conventions that allow diversiry and social distance to be main-
family and intimate relations, with their sharp separation from an impersonal tained despite physical proximiqF. \7hat emerges from Arils's historical recon-
"public" realm, had not yet occurred. The essential point is that "public" in srrucrion is a picture of a world more disorderly and yet in some ways more
this sense has nothing to do, necessarily, with collective decision making (let stable, less intimate but also less impersonal, than our own (if we happen to
alone the state). The k.y to it is not solidarity or obligation, but sociabiliry. be middle-class North Americans and Northwest Europeans). Huizinga is try-
The work of Arils, beginning with Centuries of Childhood,s6 forms an our- ing to caprure some of the same phenomena, but striking a more somber note,
standing starting point for the exploration of this world. The significance of when he observes in The Waning of the Middle Ages that "all things in life
38
AriAs's analysis in this respect is often missed because of the misimpression were of a proud and cruel publicity." The great and the small, the rich and
that he is recounting simply an isolated history of the family. Instead, he is the poor, were jumbled together more casually and promiscuously than today;
developing-admittedly in a discursive and far from analyrically rigorous both osrenration and wretchedness were less embarrassed. Arils's brilliant,
way-a sweeping interpretation of the transformations in the texrure of Vest- though unsysrematic, depiction of this world is probably aided by the fact
ern society from the old regime to the modern era. In this connecrion, the that he was something of a conservative with a real sympathy for the soci.ry
emergence of the modern family can be understood only in the conrexr of of the old regime. But the insights to be derived from this conceptual frame-
the changing relationship benveen the family and the broader web of commu- work do not depend on ideological attitude. For example, Lawrence Stone's
nal ties and sociabiliry" The heart of the story, therefore, really lies in AriEs's book on The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England., I 5A0- 1800 draws very
reconstruction of the public life of the soci.ry of the old regime and its gradual powerfully on Aribs despite the fact that Stone, unlike Aribs, believes in "ptog-
decay. The decay of the older public world and the emergence of the modern ress" (a little excessively for my taste) and is firmly convinced of the relative
family (along with other relationships committed to creating islands of priv acy wretchedness of the past.3e
and intense intimacy) form a mutually reinforcing process. The result is a I have chosen fuils as a touchstone for identi$ting this version of the
drastic transformation of the relationship berween the "public" and "privare" public/private distinction,4O but the project of delineating the "public" world
realms, and of dre character of each. For Arils (to put words in his mouth),
modern civil sociery represents not the "private" realm but the new "public" 38. Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ago ll924l (Garden Ciry, NY: Double-
realm; the "private" realm is the realm of personal life, above all of domesriciry. d"y, 1954), p. 9 (" een pronkende en gruwelijhe..openbaarheid," or, in the very close German
"The progress of the concept of the family followed the progress of private translation, " einer prunkenden und grausdmen Offentlichkeif': translation here slightly altered
to make it more literal).
life, of domesticiry." 37 And this "privare" realm of domesticiry is nor, one
39. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (1979); see
also Barbara Laslett, "The Family as a Public and Private Institution: An Historical Perspec-
using the word 'public' as it is used in 'public park' or 'public place,' ro denote a place tive," Journal of Marriage and the Famib 35, no. 3 (1973): 480-92.
where people who do not know each other can meet and enjoy each orher's company" 4A. Quite late in his life, in his introduction to volume 3 of A History of Priuate Life,
(p, e). Ariis obseryed with charming nonchalance that, until he entered on that collaborative proj-
35. A slightly misleading translation of his title, which is more literally "The Child and ect and discovered with surprise that his colleagues all associated the distinction public/
Family Life in the Old R6gime": Philippe Ariis , Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of private with the distinction state/nonstate, the idea had barely occurred to him-not for
Family Life, first published in 1960 as L'Enfant et k uie familiale sous lAncien Rigime. The any deeply considered reasons, but because he was profoundly uninterested in "political
quotation in t}e previous paragraph is from p. 405. history" (p. 9). This was one of those fruitful oversights that sometimes help a scholar
37. Centuries of Chitdhood, p. 375. develop a distinctive vision. (fuils concedes that his colleagues helped him "to realize that

t8 t9
Jrrr WeTNTRAUB Tue Puelrcl Pnrvnrr D rsTtNcrtoN

of sociabiliry and tracing its transformations is nor, of course, peculiar ro Arils. srrumental domain of the market and formal institutions is in fact widely
It now informs an enormous range of scholarship in the social history and experienced-one need only think about the evidence of popular culture-
historical sociology of the family-some of it inspired by Arils, some of it as one of the great divides of modern life.az But historically these rwo poles
running parallel to, or intersecting with, his work. And many of the issues he is emerge rogether, to a great extent in dialectical tension with each other; and
dealing with would be immediately recognizable to readers of anthropological the sharpness of the split benrreen them is one of the defining characteristics
investigations in many non-\Testern (or even Mediterranean) cultures. Thus, of moderniry. This perspective can help us to make sense of the emergence
it is not surprising that, if one looks for them, one finds many of the same of a whole range of different forms of "private" relationship that are distinctive
themes in the work of the befter social historians influenced by interpretive ro modern sociery and that are simultaneously defined in opposition to the
anthropology-the treatment of everyday ritual and popular culture by Nata- logic of gesellschaft: for example, the modern notion of anti-instrumental
lie Davis and Robert Darnton are good examples-as well as those Annales friendship based exclusively on sympathy and affection; or the ideal of roman-
historians who have returned to the reconsrruction of mentalitis, tic marriage and the emotionally bonded child-centered family with its cult
43
However, it has to be said that people not concerned with these parricular of the economically useless but emotionally "priceless child." Aribs sums up
lines of historiographic investigation, even if they are aware of these bodies his view of this process with this striking remark: "It is not individualism
of work, have often failed to address the more general theoretical challenges which has triumphed, but the family. But this family has advanced in propor-
they raise for social and political analysis. It might help to point our-.t l."rt, tion as sociabiliry has retreated. It is as if the modern family had sought to
this is what I would argus-*lnt Arils, Norbert Elias, and Foucault were all, take the place of the old social relationships (as these gradually defaulted) in
44
in different ways, exploring the same broad historico-theoretical terrain: the order ro preserve mankind from an unbearable moral solitud e." A similar
triumph of privacy and discipline in the modern West. The composite picture vision is expressed, in more general terms, in these formulations by Peter
of the historical transformation of Western societies that has emerged from Berger and his coauthors in The Homeless Mind:a'
these different lines of research emphasizes, albeit in very differenr ways, the
All the major public institutions of modern soci.ry have become
breakdown of the older "public" realm of polymorphous sociabiliry and, with
"absrrac" tp. 183]. . There are also discontents specifically de-
it, the sharpening polarization of social life berween an increasingly impersonal
rived from the pluralization of social life-worlds. Generally, these
"public" realm (of the market, the modern state, and bureaucratic otgan1za-
discontents can be subsumed under the heading of "homelessness"
tion) and a "private" realm of increasingly intense intim acy and emotitnaliqy tp. 1 84]. . Modern sociery's "solution" to these discontents has
(the modern family, romantic love, and so forth). As Elias puts it: "In other been, as we have seen, the creation of the private sphere as a distinctive
words, with the advance of civilization the lives of human beings are increas- and largely segregated sector of socid life, along with the dichotomiza-
ingly split between an intimate and a public sphere, benveen secret and public tion of the individual's societal involvements between the private and
behavior- And this split is taken so much for granred, becomes so .o*p,rlsive the public spheres. The private sphere has served as a kind of balancing
a habit, that it is hardly perceived in consciousness." 4r mechanism providing meanings and meaningful activities to compen-
In short, one of the most salient forms (or versions, or variants) of the bv the rarge structures of mod-
public/private distinction in modern culture (in both thought and practice) :Xf 3:,:$ i;;:l,te;:'#?,"th'about
is that which demarcates the "private" realm of "personal life;' from the "p,rb-
42. I have borrowed the last phrase from Allan Silver's useful and insightful essay,
lic" realm of gesellschafr (as we have come to call it since Tonnies), epitomized " 'Two Different Sorts of Com6s16s'-Friendship and Strangership in Civil Society," in
by the market and bureaucratically administered formal organization. The this volume.
contrast bernreen the "personal," emotionally intense, and intimate domain 43. To borrow the expression of Viviana Zelizer in Pricing the Priceless Child (1985).
' '44. Centuries of Chitdhood, p. 406.
of family, friendship, and the primary group and the impersonal, severely in-
45. Peter Berger, Brigine Berger, and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind: Modern-
,h. P-bl.* -"*tot asmonolithic as I had imagined," and his discussion in the introduction ization and Consciousness (I97 4) .
makes a stab at integrating the nvo approaches; but it would be more accurare ro say that 46. To be precise, among the perspectives that explore this distinctively modern polar-
he shuttles back and forth between them.) ization of "privare" and "public" life along personal/impersonal lines, there are really twl
4l- Norbert Elias, The ciuilizing Process lrg3gl l:190. broad theoretical currents. One, which might be termed a more "eighteenth-century" ap-

20 7l
J err W ErNrRAu B Tur Pust-lc/ Pntvnrr DtsrlNcrloN

This is not necessarily a happy or secure solution. One implication of this ciqF life; and, brought home powerfully in her account of the
as Jane Jacobs
process-and here Arils's reflections converge in an interesting way with the "inrricate baller" of the streers, this form of public life has its own distinctive
concerns of Philip Slater, the brilliant outlaw Parsonian sociologisl+z-i5 d1s conditions of vitaliry and fragiliry. Of the types we have examined so far, it
possibility that the emotional "overloading" of the domain of intimate rela- is probably the most closely and essentialty tied to the spatial arganlaation of
tions will develop in tandem with the increasitg emotional ernptiness and ,o.i"l life. Its domain lies, afrer all, in the public sPace of street, park, and
isolation of an inhospitable "public" domain. Not that many of us would want plaza-_but also of neighborhood, bar, and caf6. Its character and possibilities
to abandon the satisfactions of intimate life or the advantages of impersonal are infuenced by the ways that the configurations of physical space facilitate,
institutions: they are, at least potentially, among the benefits of moderniry. channel, and block the flow of everyday movement and activiry. This aspect
But if they confront us as sharply dichotomized and exclusive alternatives, of Jacobs's legacy is especially well represented by William H- V/hyte's long-
they add up ro an unsatisfact ory prospect. Once again, part of the solution, term project io irr,r.stigare the ways that the shape of urban space can enhance
both theoretical and practical, may lie in complexification-a k.y element of the vitaliry of public life.ae On the other hand, it is also clear that the require-
which would be the existence and vitaliry of a sphere of public life, in the ments of successful public space are never only physical. Two of the most
sense of sociabiliqy, that can mediate berween the particularistic intimacies of influential and evocative ethnographic accounts of urban sociabiliry, \flilliam
"privare" lifc and the extreme impersonaliry and instrumentalism of gesell- Foote Whyte's Steet Corner Society and Herbert Gans's The Urban Villagers,
schaft. dealt with ethnic enclaves whose sense of "neighborhood" was culturally as
It has often been claimed that this "wealth of public life" is one of the well as physic"lly based. The context of ethnic communiry helped to main-
characteristic achievements, at its best, of the successful cosmopolitan .iry.nt lain-though by itself it can never guarantee-the background conditions of
The analysis of sociabiliry thus ought to be a central concern in thinking about basic trusr, securiry, predictabiliry, and a sense of shared conventions against
which the spontaneiry of public life can develop-
proach (drawing especially on the Scottish Enlightenment and Georg Simmel), emphasizes
These background conditions are even more important if public space is
the ways in which the impersonal structures of gesellschaft, paradoxically, create a space for
and enable the emergence of this new realm of anti-instrumental "private" life (for example, to do its rnore ambitious work of allowing more diverse individuals and grouPs
by reducing the need to seek vital resources and physical protection through one's personal "ro dwell in peace togerher on civilized but essentially dignified and reserved
ties). This is the position sympathetically reconstructed by Silver in his essay for this volume. terms." The characteristic virtue of this form of public space, which it both
Then there is a more "nineteenth-century" approach that emphasizes the ways in which requires and reinforces, is civiliryto-which is a matter of codes and conven-
these new forms of personal relations emerge, at least in part, in reaction againrlthe world of
rions, no less important for being largely implicit. Once established as a paffern
gesellschaft. This perspective has taken on a range of forms ("Ieft" and "right," conservative,
(and it comes in a variery of sociohistorical forms) civiliqy can be resilient; but
marxisant, romanric, and so forth); contemporary examples would include not only Aribs
and Peter Berger but also Christopher Lasch, Richard Sennem, Philip Slater, and Eli Zarer.- it can also begin ro unravel if pur under excessive strain. Or, if different grouPs
sky. (For Zaretsky, see Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Lift 11976, 1986]; fot Lasch, srarr our *ith enough mutual fear, hostiliry, or incomprehension, it is unlikely
see Hauen in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged 11979).) Though the spirit and implica- ro emerge in the first place.tl And this leaves out of account the fact that
tions of the rwo approaches are in many ways quite different, they are probably more com- successful public space relies on a range of political and economic resources-
plementary than incompatible.
includirrg such mundane mamers as policing, trash collection, and street clean-
47. See especially The Glory of Hera: Greek Mytholog and the Greek Family (1968), and
The Pursuit af Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point (1970). Slater synthesized ing-*hich it does nor itself provide. Even in its most physically situated
Parsons with Freud (a Freud closer to the version of the British "object-relations" psychoana- foi*, the public space of sociabiliry emerges from a complex interplay of spa-
lysts than the one Parsons had already ingested) to produce a radical critique of modern tial and social arrangements.
sociery. He is a powerful infuence behind the work of Nancy Chodorow and-I assume
independently-behind Hannah Pitkin's feminist reading of Machiavelli in Fortune Is a 4g. See,The Social Life of Smatl (Jrban Spaces (1980), and City: Rediscoueringthe Center
Voman (19S4), so he can s€rve to illusffate some of the bridges which connect the concerns (1e88).
of Aribs and Elias with those of feminist scholars I will discuss in the next section. 50. Not that far removed, either etymologically or conceptually, from urbanity.
48. For a range of historical and contemporary explorations of this theme, including 51 For a powerful and sobering analysis of the ways that a viable public life can fail
.
my own essay on "Varieties and Vicissitudes of Public Space," see Philip Kasinitz's edited to establish itself-or can disinregrare-under these conditions, see Elijah Anderso n's Street'
collection, Metropolis: Center and Symbol of Our Times (1995). wise: Race, Class, and Change in an [Jrban Community (1990)'

22 23
InE PuBLrc/ PnlvArr DtsrtNcrloN
Jrrr WeTNTRAUB

All point to a larger reservation. The face-to-face inter-


these qualifications ultimately unworkable. Here is the way that Ariis sums up some of the k.y
action of the neighborhood-where Jacobs's vision is at its strongesr and mosr themes we have been considering:53
illuminating-is not sufficient by itself to tie a ciry together, ro manage the
relations berween its different groups and interests, and to make it work. But ." #;:,:i liH: Jil HTJi:"jffi:,f: ff: :f :# ffiil
Jacobs and much of the work she has inspired have found it difficult to deal expanded like a hypertrophied cell 1p.227]. . . . Thus, the separation
with the processes that connect the world of neighborhood sociabiliry to these of space into work areas and living areas corresponds to the division
larger arenas-which have profound effects on the character and viabiliry of of life into a public sector and private sector. The family falls within
the small-scale arenas themselves. Nor is this only a question of scale. The the private sector. [p. 2301
success or failure of cities-and societies-requires a range of decisions, ac- [The family and the caf6] were the only rwo exceptions to the
tions, and policies that cannot emerge from the flow of every d^y sociabiliry modern system of surveillance and order which came to include all
alone. Their terrain is a different sort of public space, that of the political. If social behavior. [p. 232)
this public space cannot generate and maintain a political communiry capable
In the so-called post-industrid age of the mid rwentieth centuv,
the public secror of the nineteenth century collapsed and people
of collective decision and collective action, then the crucial tasks will have ro
thought they could fill the void by extending the private, family, sec-
be addressed by authoriry and administration frorn above-or they may not
ror. They thus demanded that the family see to all their needs.
get done at all. An analysis of public life that cannot effectively deal with the Although people today often claim that the family is undergoing a
political is necessarily truncated. crisis, this is not, properly speaking, an accurate description of what
Nevertheless, Jacobs's work helps to make it clear why a notion of the is happening. Rather, we are witnessing the inabiliry of the family to
"public" sphere of sociabiliqF, conceived broadly along the lines developed by fulfill all the many functions with which it has been invested, no doubt
Arids and Elias, is not only of historical interest, but ought to be employed temporarily, during the past half-century. [pp. 234-35]
in the analysis of contempo rary societies. Doing so would require that this
If, Aribs suggests, the realm of "personal life" cannot fully bear this weight
as
conception of the "public" sphere be more explicitly elaborated and theoreti-
cally refined so as to increase its analytical flexibiliry, and so that its interplay of emotional expectation, then at least part of the answer must lie in a revital-
with other forms of public life can be systematic"lly explored. Probably the ization of the public world-including the complex and subtly textured world
most ambitious and comprehensive effort along these lines has been that of of sociabiliw.
Richard Sennett, most notably in The Fall of Public Man.52 Sennett insists
The Two Cities
(though not in precisely this terminolory) on the need ro link the study of
the great cosmopolitan ciry to a theoretically informed analysis of sociability- BEporu, LEAVTNG THE problem of sociabiliry and its sociohistorical transfor-
one that addresses the interplay berween the spatial organization of cities and mations, I would like to dwell for a moment on its larger theoretical signifi-
long-term sociohistorical processes-and further attemprs ro link the analysis cance. As I
emphasized earlier, one important feature of this version of the
of sociabiliry to a vision of the political. Whether or not the success of Sennerr's public/private distinction is that it entails a very different conception of "pub-
project has fully matched its ambition, it underlines the need for further efforts lic space " from that of the civic perspective (II). (The rwo ma! be combinable,
to theorize this notion of public space more fully, and ro integrate it rnore both in pracrice and in theory, but they are analytically distinct.) This is a

systematigally into the comprehensive analysis of modern societies. space of heterogeneous coexistence, not of inclusive solidariry or of conscious

Sennett, like Arits, sees in the decay of sociabiliry a threatening dialectic collective action; a space of symbolic display, of the complex blending of prac-
berween "dead public space" and a pathological overinvesrment in intimate tical morives with interaction ritual and personal ties, of physical proximiry
life-with the additional side effect that comrnunity comes to be disastrously coexistirg with social distance-and nnt aspace (to use a Habermasian formu-
misconceived as intimacy writ large, which renders it both exclusivistic and lation) of discourse oriented to achieving rational consensus by communicative

52. The Falt of Public Man: On the Social Psychologr of Capitalism (1978);these themes
are elaborated somewhat unsystematically in Richard Sennett , The Conscience of the E1,e: 53. From "The Family and the Ciry," in the edited volume by Alice S. Rossi et al.,

The Design and Social Life of Cities (1990). The Famih t1977).

25
24
Jerr WeTNTRAUB Tns Puelrc/PRtvATE DrsrrNCTroN

means to address common concerns. It is worth noting some implications of cosmopolis? Perhaps, but the route to answering that question must lie
these differences, which go well beyond issues of face-to -face interaction. through developing ways to understand both of the rypes of "public space"
One of the slippery features of discussing the public space of cities, as I they represent.
have done in this section, is that the city is both an object of theoretical analysis
and, simultaneously, the metaphorical source of many of the key concepts of lV. FrmrNrsm: PnrvATElPuBLrc
\Testern social and political theory. So let me turn this difficulry to advantage As FaMTLY/Crvrr- SoclETY
by drawi^g on the dual character of the ciry as both social fact and evocarive
The dichotomy benveen the private and the public is central to alrnost
symbol- If we compare the notions of "the public" of, for example, Hannah
rwo centuries of feminist writing and political struggle; it is, ulti-
Arendt in The Human Condition and Philippe AriAs in the passages just
matelv. what the feminist movement is about.
quoted, I think one could say that a certain image of the ciqy lies in the back-
J'

Pateman, "Feminist Critiques


ground of each. But they are velF different cities. Arendt's ciry is, of course, -Carole
of the Public/Private Dichotomy" 55

the polis; it is a self-governitg political communiqy whose common affairs are


tff/urlE Nor ALL FEMINISTSwould agree with such an emphatic formularion,
in the hands of its citizens, which both allows and requires that they act ro-
gether and deliberate explicitly about collective ourcomes. (fu the Romans the split berween public and private life has been a central organizing theme
would have Put it, her ciry is not just urbs, which means a ciry as physical in feminist scholarship-as well as semischolarly debates-for the last several
decades.56 As one might expect, the concerns driving this scholarship have led
agglomeration, but ciuitas.) But the Greeks of Aristode's time were already
familiar with an alternative image of the city, and it was "Babylon": rhe world- to sorne sharp reformulations of the terms in which the publiclprivate distinc-
ciry defined by the interconnected facts that it was enormous, heterogeneous, tion is considered. This is by now too rich and diverse a field of discourse to
and unfree (that is, not self-governing). Size is not necessarily the essendal characterize in a short space. Rather than attempt anything like a comprehen-
sive overyiew of feminist treatments of the publiclprivate distinction, there-
point. The central point about "Babylon" was that it was not a political com-
muniry; and, since its heterogeneous multitudes were nor called upon ro be fore, I will focus on delineating a few of the distinctive themes they have
citizens, they could remain in apolitical coexistence, and each could do as he introduced to the discussion and their implications for some issues we have
wished without the occasion to deliberate with his neighbors. In shorr, this already encountered.

is the city, not as polis, but as cosmopolis-I mean "cosmopolis" not in the Broadly speakirg, the characteristic tendency in most branches of feminist
Stoic or Kantian sense of the ideal uniry of mankind, but in the sense of scholarship is to treat the family as the paradigmatic "private" realm, so that
Haroun al-Rashid's Baghdad or of "Paris, the capital of the nineteenrh cen- the formulation "domestic/public" is often used almost interchangeably with
"private/public." To that extent, a number of feminist approaches have some-
tvry." 54

Now, cosmopolis is not the only alternative to the polis as an image of thing in common with the perspective just discussed, and often shade into it
city life, but by its extreme opposition it highlights some of the k.y issues. in practice, but-and here one has to speak cautiously because of the range
Cosmopolis has often been decried, but it has also exercised a certain charm. of positions in feminist argumsnl-*rs implications tend to be different.
Its charms are those of diversiry, of openness, of "street life," and of the tolera- Vhile the "private" sphere tends to be that of the family (sometimes also of
ble (though ofren not h"ppy) coexistence of groups that mingle without join- intimacy), as with perspective III, the conception of the "public" sphere is
ing; but they are not necessarily-are not usually-the charms of active citi-
55. In Patenlan, The Disorder of Women: Democrd,e/, Feminism and Political Theory,
zenship- Can modern societies combine the advantages of polis and p. 119. (This essay originally appeared in 1983 in Benn and Gaus's edited volume, Public
and Priuate in Social flft.)
54. To borrow the phrase, though not the whole argument, from Walter Benjamin's 56. For a number of key formulations, see trv\io of the landmark essay collections of the
chapter on "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century" in Reflections. One of the discon- 1970s: Michell e Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere's \Yoman, Cuhure, and Society
certing sectets of the history of great cosmopolitan cities, which is broughr our nicely by (197 4), and Rayna R. Reite r's Toward an Anthropolog of'Women (197 5). For one illustration
Bonnie Menes Kahn's charming and stimulating boolc-lengdr essay on Cosmopolitan Cuhure, of the continuing centraliry of this themg-and of both continuities and elaborations in
is that ve{F often ,h.y flourish most successfully in a political context of (reiatively) benigp the ways it is now approached-see the essays in Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell's
despotism-Vienna being, perhaps, zrr especially poignant example. edited collection, Feminism as Critique (1987).

76 27
Jerr WeTNTRAUB Tue Pueucl PnrvRre DtsrlNcrtoN

often quite different. The ideological and normative concerns driving the anal- to positions of inferioriry. The third is that, by classifting institutions like the
ysis also tend to be different-though they are themselves far from uniform. family as "privats"-sys11 when this is done in ostensibly gender-neutral
One further general point is worth making. I think it is fair to say that, ways-the public/private distinction often serves to shield abuse and dornina-
for perspectives I and II, the main conceptual interest is usually in defining tion within these relationships from political scrutiny or legal redress.
the "public" and its boundaries, with the "private" often becomirg, to some This version of the public/private distinction took a wide range of feminist
extent, a residual category. Here, however, the conceptual starting point is the scholarship by storm, since it appeared to speak to a dimension of gender
"private" sphere, conceived as the family, and if anything it is the "public" relations that was at once deeply consequential, apparently universal, and
which is often treated as a residual category. In this respect, perspective III is highly nuanced. A good many feminist writers treated the public/private dis-
intermediate benrreen I and II, on the one hand, and most feminist approaches, tinction as an essential k.y to understanding women's oppression, and in some
on the other. cases tended to forget that there were important versions of the public/private
The domestic/public framework was first elaborated by a set of writers in distinction that could not be mapped directly onto a female/male opposition.5e
the overlapping categories of feminist anthropology and Marxist (ot, more A nurnber of reconsiderations beginning in the 1980s have brought a more
broadly, socialist) feminism. One of the earliest influential formulations along troubled and ambivalent attitude toward this use of the public/private distinc-
these lines appears to have been that of the anthropologist Michelle Zimbalist tion as a conceptual tool. Some have argued that to accept that women have
Rosaldo.5T Her orienting framework, which opposes the "private" or "domes- indeed always been confined to the "private" realm is to repeat ideologies of
tic" sphere to the "public" sphere of extrafamilial economic and political activ- male domination rather than crtticizing them, and that the realiry has almost
ity, recurs with remarkable frequency in subsequent work. The central point always been more complex.60 There has also been an increasing recognition of
is that in all known societies (some would say "most") this social division is the complexiry of the public/private distinction itself, as well as an increasing
asymmetric in gender terms-in varying degrees, of course-and the "domes- diversiry in the ways it is approached.
tic" sphere is disproportionately (to use a nineteenth-century American One way or another, one of the significant contributions of feminist treat-
phrase) "woman's sphere." Vhile the arguments discussed in the previous ments of the public/private distinction has been to greatly extend the range
section of the essay tend to focus on the ways that many of the characteristically of people who are aware of the insights to be gained by linking the "private"
rnodern forms of publiclprivate division cut through the lives of both men ro the family-rather than, s?/: to the market or to the isolated individual.
and wornen, feminists have emphasized the ways that these public/private In a sense, however, it is odd that this perspective had to be recovered, since
divisions are gender-linked in terms of both social structure and ideology. it is, so to speak, the one with which Vestern social and political theory began.
Feminists have tended to make (at leait) three overlapping, but not pre- In Aristode, for example, the distinction between "private" and "public" is
cisely identical, points. One is that the conceptual orientations of much social fundamentally that between the household (th e oikos) and the political com-
and political theory have ignored the domestic sphere or treated it as trivial.ts muniry-with the household seen as a realm of both particularistic ties and
The second is that the public/private distinction itself is often deeply gen- "natural" inequaliry. The "public" space of the polis, on the other hand, is
dered, and in almost uniformly invidious ways. It very often plays a role in a sphere of wider engagement and fundamental equaliry in the practice of
ideologies that purport to assign men and women to different spheres of social
59. Both these characteristics are exemplified by an otherwise quite useful collection of
life on the basis of their "natural" characteristics, and thus to confine women
essays by feminist sociologists, edited by Eva Gamarnikow et al. , The Public and the Priuate
( 1 e83).
57 . Michell e Zimbalist Rosaldo, "Woman, Culture, and Socieqy: A Theoretical Over- 60. One important recent collection that focuses on these themes is Dorothy O. Helly
view," in Rosaldo and Lamphere's edited volume, Woman, Cubure, and Society. and Susan M. Reverby's edited collectio n, Gend.ered Domains: Rethinking Public and Priuate
58. The directions in which this complaint is developed are diverse. In *ris respecr, in Women\ History 0992); also see Karen Hansen's "Rediscovering the Social," in this
current feminist discussions tend increasingly to waver between those that rarger the family volume. (Itr 1980 Michelle Rosaldo wrote a reflective essay reconsidering her original argu-
as a site of isolation, emotional claustrophobia, and patriarchal oppression and those that menr, "The Use and Abuse of Anthropology: Reflections on Feminism and Cross-Cultural
approach it as the field of certain disdncdve values and virtus5-sf emotional depth, mutual Understanding." In the end, however, she essentially restates the original domestic/public
concern, and concrete attachments-that are harmfully devalued by the larger society. At- distinction, while acknowledging the complexiry and diversiry of the ways it is socially insti-
tempts to combine these themes add to the complexiry. tutionalized.)

28 29
Je nr We INTRAUB THE Pueucl Pnlvnrr DrsrlNcrtoN
citizenship. Men (ot, at least, citizens) have the abiliry to move berween these in each camp). Since "domestic life is . paradigmatically private for femi-
two realms; and one of the bases of the citizen's public, civic personaliry is nists," she notes, it is civil sociery that is the "public" realm. The historic
his private Person"liry as a head of household. Vomen (like children and liberal forrnulation of the public/private distinction in rerms of the division
slaves), however, belong "naturally," and exclusively, in private life. Variations berween state and civil society has the effect of mystifting cerrain crucid facts
on this model have remained influential in political theory for the subsequent about social life. "Precisely because liberdism conceptualizes civil society in
2,50A years.6' In the last several centuries, however, it has been overlaid and abstraction from ascriptive domestic life, the latter remains 'forgotren' in theo-
often displaced by the alternative frameworks this essay has been examinirg. retical discussions. The separation between private and public is thus re-
The road back to family as the "private" realm seems to have had a dual established as a division within civtl sociery itself, within the world of men." 64
route: one, as noted, from feminist anthropology, the other from "the un, That is, the supposedly "private" realm of civil sociery as well as the "public"
h"ppy marriage of Marxism and feminism." 62 Since many feminisr wrirers realm of politics are populated largely by male heads of household (as with
and activists had to grapple with Marxism at some point in their intellectual Locke) or male wage workers (as with much Marxism), and so on. The truly
formation, one k.y question was how to deal with the fact that mosr formula- privatized realm of the family is hidden behind them. Thus, women "disap-
tions of the all-important "mode of production" relegated the household (and pear" theoretically along with the domestic sphere. This is nor, however, a
the women in it) to a minor role. The formulation of the "domestic/public" benign neglect. Its result is to exclude women (on the basis of their "natur.lly"
framework helped provide a theoretical emancipation from the more rigid private character) from both of the spheres in which men have increasingly
Marxist frameworks.63 On the other hand, in relation to the alternative forms claimed equaliqf and agency in the modern world, as independent actors in
of publiclprivate distinction I have been outlining so far, this move also leads civil socieqy and as citizens in the political communiry. On the other hand,
back to-and highlights-the analytical difficulties surrounding the rreat- the "private" realm of domesticiry to which this ideology confines women
ment of civil society in all these discussions. Once one adopts the standpoint continugs in practice to be regarded (as Aristode regarded ir) as appropriately
of the family and looks out, it seems very peculiar to treat civil sociery as rhe a realm of male authoriry and female subordination.
"private" sphere; and this recognition ought to raise questions about the whole Breaking the taken-for-granted identification berween "civil sociery" and
notion of a dichotornous model of public and private. the "private" side of the public/private dichotomy-indeed, recognizing that
Since at first there was not much traffic berween feminist writing and law and ideology in modern societies contain " a double separarion of the
"mainstream" political theory (let alone "public choice" economics!), it took
private and public," 65 not a single dichotomy-is therefore a key requiremenr
some time for this problem to be faced explicitly and sysrem atrcally. One of for a feminist rethinking of a wide range of social and political theory. And
the first people to do so was Paternan (who might be said to have had a foot overcoming the gendered and invidious separation ber'ween the "privare"
sphere of the family and the rest of social life is a key pracrical task for women's
61. As one of the first prominent figures in post- 1960s feminism whose starting point emancipation. One of the strengths of Pateman's analysis is that it confronrs
included an active engagement with classical political thought, Jean Elshtain was one of the
directly the essential ambiguiry of the public/private distinction itself-and
first to address this legacy and its problematic in Public Man, Priuate Woman (1981).
62- Heidi Hartmann, "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Femilism: Towards the importance of this ambiguiry. In this respect, however, it remains relatively
a More Progressive Union," in Lydia Sargent's Women and Reuolution: A Discussion of the unusual, despite the broad appeal of Pateman's recenr writings. It is striking
Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism (l9Bl).
63. A second extremely important step in this direction was Gayle Rubin's formulation 64. Pateman, "Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichoroffr/," pp. l2l-22. For
of the notion of the "sex/gender system" in "The Traffic in'Women: Notes on the 'Political some further elaborations and applications of this argument by Pateman, see "The Fraternal
Economy' of Sex" (in Reiter, ed., Toward an Antbropologt of Women). A third influential Social Contract" and "The Patriarchal Velfare State" (also included in The Disorder of
statement of this sort was Sherry Ortner's "ls Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?" Women).
(in Rosaldo and Lamphere, eds.,Woman, Cuhure, Andsociety); unfortunately, despite raising
65. Pateman, "The Patriarchd Welfare State," p. 183. In this passage Pateman is com-
some thought-provoking questions, Ortner's formulation is considerably more problematic menting on Hegel's picture of modern socieqy; but her larger point is that Hegel's theory
than the other rwo (since the universal and cross-cultural answer ro her central question is remains a mor€ illuminating guide to these questions than much of contemporary political
not unrformly yes). theory.

30 3l
Jerr WTTNTRAUB TsE Pusr-rcl PRrvnrr DrsrrNcrroN

that most feminist writing (there are important exceptions) continues ro trear sion of preindustrial societies the "public realm" often remains an undifferen-
the public/private dichotomy as a binary opposili6n-or, rarher, as a shifring tiated residual categ oA, in terms of mod.ern sociery the effective conception
cluster of binary oppositions. of the "public" realm is essentidly the market economy. A rypical example
Once the social world has been split along domestic/public lines, the nexr (of many) would be Karen Sacks's distinction (following Engels) benrreen the
question is how the "public" realm is defined. To this question there is no "private domesticlabor of women" and "public or wage labor." 70 At this point
uniform answer; and most of the time, as I noted earlier, the "public" side the attentive reader will have noticed that, as our discussion of the public/
of the division tends to be an undifferentiated or grab-bag residual category.66 private distinction has moved from the liberal-economistic formulation to the
One move to give the "public" realm a more concrete content involved the Marxist-feminist formulation, the market economy has migrated from the
convergence, via the influence of Engels's book on The Family, Priuate Prop- heart of the "private sector" to the heart of the "public realm."
erry, and the State,67 of the "domestic/public" framework with a Marxist, I have picked out this particular approach, not because it is in any way
feminist discussion stressing the articulation berween the "mode of produc- predominant (nor even as pervasively influential as it once was), but because
tion" and the "mode of reproduction." This approach also suggested a way it constituted the most sharply defined solution within feminism to the prob-
of understanding the historical specificity of the public/private split as it has lem of formulating a binary public/private dichotomy that included a concrete
developed in modern societies. One effect of the triumph of capitalist com- picture of both poles. However, while this is a solution, it is not an entirely
modiry production (as people from a number of theoretical perspectives have adequate one. Aside from flattenirg out the complexiry of past and present
pointed out) is to sharpen, in many respects, the institutiond separation be- societies, it may be quite misleading as a guide to action. As Jean Elshtain,
tween "work" and home. Only the production of exchange-value (dispropor- for example, has pointed out in a series of sharp criticisms beginning in the
tionately by men) in the rnarket economy is considered real "work," as op- 1970s, the way in which this literature formulates the publiciprivate distinc-
posed to the production of use-values and emotional managemenr tion has dre effect of conf.ating "public" in the sense of the market economy
(disproportionately by women) in the home. In the process, both of these with "public" in the quite different sense of politics (in the form of citizen-
realms are transformed-and the domestic realm, it could be argued, is simul- ship). Thus, while the family has been rescued from theoretical invisibiliry,
taneously feminized and socially marginalized. Eli Zaretsky's synthesizing ar- the end result is that the civic "public realm" is blanked out as thoroughly
gument in Capitalism, the Fa*ib, and Personal Lift played a pivoral role in as in the utilitarian liberal perspective.
bringing these threads together6s; but, once this paradigm had crystallized, it Elshtain has also argued that the same urge for simplification lies behind
was elaborated and applied by remarkably wide arcay of writers, in contexrs potentially dangerous tendencies in some varieties of feminist argument to
"
ranging from political controversy to academic historiography-among oth- call for eliminating any separation between "public" and "privat e." 71 (These
ers.6e One distinctive feature of this model is worth noting: while in the discus- tendencies, which were once fueled by Maoist fantasies, are now more likely
66. One nice illustrative example would be Rayna Reiter's (perceptive but analytically to be informed by "postrnodern" deconstruction or by the rype of radical
diffuse) essay on "Men and \fomen in the South of France: Public and Private Domains" feminism represented by Catharine MacKinnon.T2) Similar argurnents have
(in Reiter, ed., Toward an Anthropologt of Women). The "privare" domain is defined by
been made by other writers whose viewpoints are in other respects very differ-
the household and kinship relationships; the "public" domain comprehends the economy,
politics, open (versus enclosed) physical spaces-and so on. It would be easy to multiply Promise and Predicament of Private Life at the End of the Twentieth Centry," pp.2ll-
further examples. t2.
67. Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Priuate Proper4t, and the State tlB84]. 70. Karen Sacks, "Engels Revisited:'W'omen, the Organization of Producdon, and Pri-
68. This first appeared as a series of articles in Socialist Reuolutinn> nos.13-1! (January- vate Properry" (in Reiter's Toward an Anthropolog of Women, p. 232). For a key formulation
June 1973), before being published as a book in 1976. The influence of this work on the of this contrast by Engels, see pages I37 -38 of Origin,
emerging ferninist scholarship of the 1970s was rnore significant and pervasive than explicit 71. See, for examp\e, Public Man, Priuate Woman, especially chapter 5. For a more
citations alone would lead one ro believe. recent discussion, with new polemical targets, see Elshtain's "The Displacement of Politics,"
69. For a brief (*d critical) overview of this perspective and its influence, especially in this volume.
in the fields of social history and historicd sociology, see Karen Hansen's "Rediscovering 72. See, for example, Catharine A. MacKinnon, "Privacy v. Equaliry," in Feminism
the Social," in this volume, particularly pp.27l-73; some of the argumenrs emerging from Unmodifed (1987), and "Abortion: On Public and Private," rn Toward a Feminist Theory
this approach are also discussed in Krishan Kumar's essay for this volume, "Home: The of the State (1989).

32 33
J rnr We TNTRAUB THr Puelrc/Pnrverr DrsrrNcrroN
ent from Elshtain's; one important example is Nancy Fraser, who is one of Sociohistorical
the current feminist writers most perceptively sensitive to the complexities of Priuate Public Point of Reference
the public/private distinction and to the need-both theoretical and practi- fuistotle Househ old (oikos) Political communiry Polis
cal-for complexification rather than simplification.T3 AriEs Domesticity Sociabiliry Old Regime
These criticisms and reservations seem to me well taken. But the problem Marxist feminism Family Market economy Capitalism

they point to is not merely a problem of Marxist or radical feminism-nor, Mainstream economics Market economy Government (that is, Capitalism

indeed, of feminism more generally. Rather, 2s I have already hinted more administrative
"intervention")
than once, it reflects the sort of difficulry which any attempr at a dichoto-
mous public lprivate model will eventu"lly encounter. \[hen used as compre-
One sociohistorical factor deserves special mention, since it helps to explain
hensive models of social life, such binary frameworks will always prove inade-
the ultimately irreducible complexiry of modern treatrnents of the public/
quate-both theoretically and normatively-to the complexiry of modern so- private distinction: For Aristotle, the sphere of the oihos comprises both the
cieties.
family and "economic" life, since he could regard the household as the main
institution regulating production and distribution. With the increasing cen-
THe GnEAT DrvrDE-AND lrs Lrmlrs
traliry of the market economy, and the whole world of contractual social rela-
Lrr us rAKE srocK. My primary purpose has been to establish the historical tions centered on the market, it becomes less plausible to combine family and
and theoretical complexiry of the public/private distinction; to delineare some "economy" in the same category of "private" life. And indeed the market
of the more important of the multipliciry of ways in which this distinction econom/r as a large-scale and impersonal system of interdependence, is "pri-
is employed; and to bring out some of the implications of this multipliciqy.
vate" only in a rather special and ambiguous sense-which explains why some
I hope this task has been accomplished. As a quick reminder of the main approaches can treat it as the "public" realm. \We have been encountering this
outlines of the discussion, I offer below a somewhat simplified illustrative
ambiguiry throughout the discussion.
restatement of examples from the four organ rzing models I have been examin-
Arendt, of course, faces this difficulry directly, and in response develops
itg, reshuffled slightly to bring out some salient contrasts. Listed in column an explicitly tripartite model of modern sociery, introducing the category of
4 are the social forms which provide-explicitly or implicitly-each perspec- "the social" as a realm alternative to both "the private" and "the public," one
tive's k.y point of reference. As I have been trying to suggest, the "roots" of
whose rise is distinctive to moderniry. Essentially-to sweep too quickly over
the different perspectives are sociohistorical as well as theoretical and ideolog-
some complicated interpretive proble1115-"the social" is fuendt's character-
ical.
ization of modern civil sociery, in the sense that I have been using the term
in this essay. In this way, despite some very important differences, her rypology
73. See, in particular, "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique has a certain family resemblance to another influential tripartite model of mod-
of Actually Existing Democracy" (in Craig Calhoun's edited volume , Haberrnas and the
ern socieqy, Hegel's framework of family, civil sociery, and the state. Both
Public Sphere), and "What's Critical about Critical Theory?: The Case of Habermas and
Gender" (in Unruly Practica). Although Fraser's arguments along these lines are parricularly examples illustrate the tendency for dichotomous models of modern sociery to
cogent, one could cite a growing feminist theoretical literature that is sensitive to these break down when they are thought through seriously and to begin generating
complexities and their normative significance. To pick out just rwo examples that concen- intermediate and residual categories, as well as underlining the specific diffi-
trate on different sides of the public/private dichotomy: Seyla Benhabib, in a recenr essay, culties involved in fitting modern civil sociery into any dichotomous public/
delineates and conffasts three "Models of Public Space" (in Calhoun's Habermas and the
private framework,Ta
Public Sphere) associated, respectively, with Arendt, with neo-Kantian liberalism of a broadly
Rawlsian variery, and with Habermas. However, it ought to be noted that all rhree of these 74. By denying the attribution of "private" to civil sociery, transferring it to the domes-
versions of "public space" fall within just one of the categories I have outlined in this essay tic sphere, yet continuing to recognize the need to distinguish berween civil sociery and
(namely, category II). For a vigorous antisimplificationist defense of the discourse of politics, Pateman also moves (not entirely explicitly) to a tripartite model. This parallel
privacy and privacy rights against borl feminist and "communitarian" critiques, see Jean benveen Pateman and Arendt is ironic, since Arendt can hardly be termed a feminist thinker,
Cohen's "Rethinkirg Privacy: Autonomy, Identity, and the Abordon ControVersf," in this and her ideal involves precisely the kind of rigid division between the "private" sphere of
volume. rhe household and the "public" realm of political communiqy (along with a devaluation of

34 35
Je rr We TNTRAUB
T n E Pu eL tc lP RlvATe D rsrrNCTIoN
These considerations help to explain why the reader should nor now expecr
Then, as we have seen, there rs anotlrer freld of discourse (or, rarher, several)
me to offer a new and comPrehensive typology that can resolve the ambiguities
in which the realm of "private life" is above all the world of personal relation-
and loose ends I have outlined. However, as a more modest and partial srep,
ships, particularly those bound up with intimacy, domesticiry, and "privacy."
I do think it is possible to point to two major families of currenr approaches
The "public" realm to which this version of the private is contrasted is either
to the treatment of "public" and "private" and to suggest that they are rooted
that of sociabiliry or-especially in the context of rnoderniqF-the large-scale
in attemPts to use the public/private distinction to caprure (at least) rwo kinds
order of gesellschafr based on impersonality, formal institurions, instrumental
of institutional divisions that have become increasingly sharp and salient in
relations, and so on. In sociohistorical terms, the new sphere of the private
modern societies (in culture and experience as well as theory). I should empha-
being addressed here is exemplified by new types of personal relationships, a
size that these broad charact erizations are offered as an interpretive supplemenr
k.y characteristic of which is that, to a great exte nt, they are defined in direct
to the four central categories I have used in this essay, not as a replacemenr
opposition to the ethos of the (equally new) "public" realm of impersonal
for them.
relations and institutions, and are valued precisely for that reason. In this
On the one hand, a wide range of discussions and debates that draw on
connection, a key task is to grasp the way in which the world of "personal"
the notions of "public" and "private" tend to assume (often implicitly and
relations has become so essentially private-in this particular sense of "privare."
more or less unreflectively) that the distinction public/private corresponds,
That is, this version of the public/private distinction is not straightforwardly
one way or another, to the distinction political/nonpolitical. In mosr of these
universal in its applicabiliry-any more than the other versions-bur is socio-
discussions, the predominant (even paradigmatic) irnage of the nonpolitical,
historically variable. In this framework, unlike the first one(s) I jusr ouflined,
"private" sphere is that of the market (and/or of the civil society based on
the market is often paradigrnaric of the public realm.
the market). The "private" sphere is thus characterized by the centraliry of
In nvo different forms then, what might have appeared as an institutional
explicit contract, rational exchaoge, impersonaliry, instrumenral calculation of
and experiential continuum in other kinds of society has increasingly appeared
individual advant a1e, and so forth.75 As I emphasized earlier, the character
as a great divide-which makes the invocation of the grand dichotomy of
of the "political" is deeply ambiguous in these discussions. If the political
public/private appear especially appropriate to capture it. However, this com-
is conceived in terms of the administrative state, then the "public" realm is
parison also brings out some of the limitations of the public/private dichotomy
distinguished by the use of legitimate coercion and the authoritative direction
for these purposes. First, although each of these pictures of polarization cap-
of collective outcomes, as opposed to formally voluntary conrract and sponra-
tures pervasive and powerful rcndencies, they are tendencies rather than accom-
neous order based on market exchan gr.'u Or, in certain more "civic" perspec-
plished outcomes. In neither case have the social mediations benrieen the rwo
tives, the distinctiveness of the "public" realm (or "public sphere") m"y have
poles of the dichotomy actually disappeared, nor are they likely to. Second,
more to do with the significance of solidariqy, of "public spirit," of participa-
it is clear that (at least) rwo different forms of public/private distinction are
tion in a Process of active citizenship and collective self-determination, and
involved, raising different sets of issues, which cannot usefully be amalgamated
so on.77 But, in either "public" realm is commonly defined, above
case, the
into a single grand dichotomy. Nor could this problem be solved by a quantita-
all, in opposition to the "private" realm of the market and civil sociery. These
tive scale of degrees of "publicness" or "privateness," 5in6s-25 I have just
conceptual mappings, and the problematics that go with rhem, are of course
been trying to make clear-the (more or less implicit) defining criteria of
tied up with historical emergence of the new "private" sphere of civil sociery
"public" and "private" differ berween the two cases. It mighr appear, for exam-
and of distinctively modern forms of srare and poliry.
Ple, that we can describe the market economy as more "public" than the
nuclear family, while the state is more "public" still. But the basis for this scale
the former) which Pateman would like to overcorne. But this convergence brings out rhe
theoretical difficulry to which both are responding. is far from self-evident. It seems straightforward to describe the jurisdictions of
7 5 - In other fields of discourse, these are all taken to be the characteristics of the "pub- both ciry governments and national states as "public," bur what makes them
lic" realm-which is precisely the point I am trying to emphasize here. more "public" than the market? The comprehensive interdependencies of the
76. Thus, public/private : smrelsociery or srare/market. market routinely transcend the boundaries of these jurisdictions, and market
77. In which case, as we have seen, the "public" realm is something d.istinct from rhe relations can often be more "open" and "visible" than the activities of govern-
administrative srare.
ment bureaucracies. Part of what makes the market economy "private" is that
36
37
Tue PuBLrcl PnrvArr DrsrrNcrroN
Jrrr WeTNTRAUB

it is seen as a legitimate field for competitive and self-interested individualism; Blau, Peter. L964. Exchange and Power in Social Lrft, New York: Wiley.
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Dictatorship. Minneapoli.s: LJniversiry of Minnesota Press.
life" of friendship, home, and family is precisely that it is valued as a refuge
Calhoun, Craig, ed. 1992. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Carnbridge, MA: MIT
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Press.
Nevertheless, while the public/private distinction is inherently problematic
Casanova, Jos6. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: Universiry of
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Chicago Press.
also a powerful instrurnent of social analysis and moral reflection if approached
Chandler, Alfred D.,Jr. 1977. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Reuolution inAmeri-
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can Business. Cambridg., MA: Harvard Universiry Press.
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Cohen, Jean, and Andrew Arato. 1992. Ciuil Society and Polirical Theory. Cambridge,
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MA: MIT Press.
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the richness and apparent indispensabiliqF of this grand dichotomy. Darnton, Robert. I 985. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural
History. New York Vintage.
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42
CorrENrs
C oNrENTs
I Dh'A Btu;n From Public Housing to Pr:y.re
Communitiar: The Disciplin€ oI Derigr
and $e Materialization of the
PublidPriyate Dbtin.tion in the
Euilt EnYironm€nt 237
l0 Kztn V Hansm Rediscoveriq the Social Visitint hdctices
in Antebellum New EnSland and the
Umits oft,l€ Public,/Prirdt€ Dkhotorny 26A

| | Man Gzrcehn The Shadow od the Leviethan: Public and


Priyrte in Communist and P6r.
conrributors
About the
"i communist society 30,
Preface n | 2 oLgKtc*bo k Reveal and Dissimulate A Genealoy of
I lfveintraut The Theory and Politics ot the Pri!'rte Life in Soviet Russia 333
hrblic/Private Distinction I Indo 365
2 Allan Siba "Two Ditrerert Sons of Comme.ce"-
Friendship and Strangership
in CMI Society 13

3 CmigCahou Nationalism and the Public Sphere 75

1 Danieh Gobatti Humankind as a Sysrem: Privat€ md


Public Atency at tle Oridns
of Modem Liberalism 103

5 Jean L. Cohen Rethinking Privacy: Autonomy, ldentity,


and the Abortion Controversy 133

6 Jean Bethke Elshtain The Displacement of Politics 166

7 Alan WoW Public and Private in Theoq/ and Practice:


Some lmplications of an Uncertain
Boundary l1z
8 Krishan Kumar Home: The Promise and Predicament
of Private Life at the End of the
Twentieth Century 2A4

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