The Making of Internationalist Publics and Civility behind the Iron Curtain

• In Event: 209 - Theory Section Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Historical Sociology 2

Abstract

This paper reexamines the concept of the public sphere, as well as the related concept of civil society, in light of the historical experience of internationally oriented publics in state-socialist Eastern Europe. It argues for the necessity to consider five analytical dimensions associated with publicness: context, actors, form, content, and outcome, and to acknowledge their historical variability. As an empirical illustration of the argument, the paper identifies the unique forms of Eastern European civility and publicness typified by the Esperanto movement, which are distinct from Western models of civil society and the public sphere. Eastern European civility and publicness are grounded in three discursive fields: (1) global cultural models, particularly the social, economic, and cultural rights norms, (2) Marxism as understood and lived under state-socialism, and (3) a local ethics of civility as friendship and fellowship. Each of these discursive fields represents an ideal-type of a universal logic. In reality, however, each logic operates only locally and, to a limited degree, transnationally. The resulting civil political culture emerges as a historically and spatially defined hybrid of the three logics.

Author

• Ana Velitchkova, University of Notre Dame