SOC 317
The Public and the Private Spring 2010
Division II Writing Skills
This is not the current course catalog

The sharp distinction between the private and the public spheres is often taken as one of the defining features of the Western modernity itself. Furthermore, the existence and vibrancy of the public sphere is a crucial precondition for participatory democracy, whereas respect for privacy and provisions and guarantees that ensure personal autonomy remain fundamental for the daily operations of society. This tutorial course will address the public and the private as concepts that are always in a state of tension, and will explore these tensions from a sociological and historical vantage point. Topics include: democracy and the public sphere, publicity and its institutions, from the coffee house to the mass media, individual and collective identities, the “religion of individualism” (Goffman) and its rites and priests, public and private uses of space, the shifting lines of differentiation between the private and the public and the contestations of this distinction, as well as the impact of new technologies on the relationship between the public and the private. The tutorial will mainly address the Western cultural tradition, although it will involve intercultural comparisons, drawing on a wide range of literature, from Jurgen Habermas to Svetlana Boym, Nancy Fraser and Joseph Brodsky.