Summary
Contents
Subject index
This volume takes a critical look at the popular representations of the concept of public and private in the context of democracy. Most analyses of state and citizenship in contemporary times invoke the idea of public and private. Though these are amongst the most commonly used terms in social science discourses, there exists considerable ambiguity about what each of these concepts denotes. Most often they are presented as discrete, if not separate, spheres of life and activity locked in an antagonistic relationship.
The essays in this volume take a critical look at these diverse representations of public and private, the manner in which they reinforce each other and collectively impact democracy. In the era of globalization, the relationship between public and private is being steadily redefined. The book reflects upon these changes and the implications they have for democratic citizenship.
Transcending Categories: The Private, the Public, and the Search for Home
Transcending Categories: The Private, the Public, and the Search for Home
If the carving out of collective life into discrete and perhaps mutually exclusive categories is peculiar to social science in the modern mode, it is not surprising that modern political scientists tend to subdivide collective life into plural and perhaps incompatible, categories in thought. They then proceed to add up all the parts they themselves have crafted with some dexterity, in order to construct a whole. Even as collective life is partitioned into autonomous categories in order to analyse the human condition, the domestic/home/the private + the market + civil society/public sphere + the state add up to generate a picture of how human ...
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