Is thn The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere Habermas argues that prior to the 18th

century, European culture had been dominated by a "representational" culture, where one party sought to "represent" itself on its audience by overwhelming its subjects.[8] As an example of "representational" culture, Habermas argued that Louis XIV's Palace of Versailles was meant to show the greatness of the French state and its King by overpowering the senses of visitors to the Palace. [9] Habermas identifies "representational" culture as corresponding to the feudal stage of development according to Marxist theory, arguing that the coming of the capitalist stage of development marked the appearance of ffentlichkeit (the public sphere).[10] In the culture characterized by ffentlichkeit, there occurred a public space outside of the control by the state, where individuals exchanged views and knowledge.[11] In Habermas's view, the growth in newspapers, journals, reading clubs, Masonic lodges, and coffeehouses in 18th century Europe, all in different ways, marked the gradual replacement of "representational" culture with ffentlichkeit culture.[12] Habermas argued that the essential characteristic of the ffentlichkeit culture was its "critical" nature.[12] Unlike "representational" culture where only one party was active and the other passive, the ffentlichkeit culture was characterized by a dialogue as individuals either met in conversation, or exchanged views via the print media. [12] Habermas maintains that as Britain was the most liberal country in Europe, the culture of the public sphere emerged there first around 1700, and the growth of ffentlichkeit culture took place over most of the 18th century in Continental Europe.[12] In his view, the French Revolution was in large part caused by the collapse of "representational" culture, and its replacement by ffentlichkeit culture. [12] Though Habermas' main concern in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere was to expose what he regarded as the deceptive nature of free institutions in the West, his book had a major effect on the historiography of the French Revolution.[10] According to Habermas, a variety of factors resulted in the eventual decay of the public sphere, including the growth of a commercial mass media, which turned the critical public into a passive consumer public; and the welfare state, which merged the state with society so thoroughly that the public sphere was squeezed out. It also turned the "public sphere" into a site of self-interested contestation for the resources of the state rather than a space for the development of a publicminded rational consensus. His most known work to date, the Theory of Communicative Action (1981), is based on an adaptation of Talcott Parsons AGIL Paradigm. In this work, Habermas voiced criticism of the process of modernization, which he saw as inflexible direction forced through by economic and administrative rationalization.[13] Habermas outlined how our everyday lives are penetrated by formal systems as parallel to development of the welfare state, corporate capitalism and mass consumption.[13] These reinforcing trends rationalize public life.[13] Disfranchisement of citizens occurs as political parties and interest groups become rationalized and representative democracy replaces participatory one.[13] In consequence, boundaries between public and private, the individual and society, the system and the lifeworld are deteriorating.[13] Democratic public life cannot develop where matters of public importance are not discussed by citizens.[14] An "ideal speech situation",[15] requires participants to have the same capacities of discourse, social equality and their words are not confused by ideology or other errors.[14]In this version of the consensus theory of truth Habermas maintains that truth is what would be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation. Habermas has expressed optimism about the possibility of the revival of the public sphere.[16] He discerns a hope for the future where the representative democracy-reliant nation-state is replaced by a deliberative democracy-reliant political organism based on the equal rights and obligations of citizens.[16] In such direct democracy-driven system, the activist public sphere is needed for debates on matters of public importance and as well as the mechanism for that discussion to affect the decisionmaking process.

Several noted academics have provided various criticisms of Habermas's notions regarding the public sphere. John B. Thompson, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridgeand a fellow of Jesus College,[17] has pointed out that Habermas's notion of the public sphere is antiquated due to the proliferation of mass-media communications. Michael Schudsonfrom the University of California, San Diego argues more generally that a public sphere as a place of purely rational independent debate never existed.

Still, "bourgeois values" were never uncontested, even in the nineteenth century, often heralded as the golden age of the western European bourgeoisie when its ideology triumphed across class lines. Aristocrats were notoriously contemptuous of the bourgeois values of thrift, acquisitiveness, and morality. They ridiculed the lack of culture and refinement, the crudeness, the avariciousness, the "shopkeeper mentality" of the bourgeoisie. They saved their sharpest barbs for the upwardly mobile, the individual who was trying to buy his way up the social ladder, but whose lack of blood and breeding would forever mark him as bourgeois. Molire's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1671) underlines aristocratic disdain for the wealthy parvenu. And the lower classes, who might have looked to emulatecertain characteristics of their bourgeois betters, saw them as calculating, exploitative, and cruel. Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/bourgeoisie#ixzz1ccwmgtBc

Most Continental European countries appear in international social indicators and comparative statistics as comfortable intermediate middle class societies under the protection of strong and stable Welfare States. It is notably the case of France : for the last twenty years, the French Gini index and inerdecile ratio of post tax and transfer incomes has been remaining relatively low, the level of public employment and the number of civil servants show a remarkable permanence of the State, welfare indicators and health conditions of elderly population illustrate the efficiency of the French new middle class model of society. We could insist also deep French specificities such as the valorization of leisure, the priority to family equilibrium (with a fertility rate near to 2.0), quality of collective childcare, etc. Even if this model seems to be stable, clear signs of its destabilization have been appearing for the last decades, which have visible effects in politics.

http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/5452/Ratio-Juris-Vol12-No4.pdf http://www.google.ro/#sclient=psyab&hl=ro&source=hp&q=according+to+habermas+what+is+the+golden+phase+of+democra cy&pbx=1&oq=according+to+habermas+what+is+the+golden+phase+of+democracy&aq=f& aqi=&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=17690l30143l1l30494l43l42l1l0l0l0l1026l8373l2.24.11.2.71l43l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=1d44a4c4882a4e99&biw=1280&bih=673