[ecrea] new book: The Global Public Sphere

New book


Ingrid Volkmer

The Global Public Sphere:
Public Communication in the Age of Reflective Interdependence

Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2014


Over the last several years, the debate about publics seems to have 
newly emerged. This debate critically reflects the Habermasian ideal of 
a (national) public sphere in a transnational context. However, it seems 
that the issue of a reconstruction of a global public sphere is more 
complex. In this brilliant and provocative book, Ingrid Volkmer argues 
that a reflective approach of globalization is required in order to 
identify and deconstruct key strata of deliberate public discourse in 
supra- and subnational societal formations. This construction helps to 
understand the new processes of legitimacy at the beginning of the 21st 
century in which the traditional conception of a ‘public’ and its role 
as a legitimizing force are being challenged and transformed. The book 
unfolds this key phenomenon of global deliberate interconnectedness as a 
discursive and negotiated dimension within ‘reflective’ globalization, 
i.e. continuously constituting, maintaining and refining the ‘life’ of 
the global public and conceptualizes a global public sphere.

Offering insightful case studies to illustrate this new theory of the 
global public sphere, the book will be essential reading for students 
and scholars of media and communication studies , and social and 
political theory.


Reviews
"Ingrid Volkmer is not looking at the future in terms of a projection 
from the past, but in terms of 'what is to come'. This shift of 
perspective makes a tremendous difference. Reading her book becomes a 
fascinating eye-opening experience because we then “see” how the still 
dominant assumptions about nation-state organized publics, mass-media 
consumption, and so on, are blinding us to the new emerging personal 
networked realities that link individuals across world regions in 
'lived' global public spaces."
Ulrich Beck, University of Munich

"Where now do we think, reflect and deliberate? Can the complexities of 
today’s political reflexivities be contained within the borders of 
national territory? In this exhilarating and diversely grounded book, 
Ingrid Volkmer compels us to develop new and conceptually challenging 
answers to these questions. It is a landmark work of scholarship for the 
age of communicative globalization."
Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science

"Few concepts have been as central to understanding the 
interrelationship among individuals, civil society and the state as 
Habermas’s 'public sphere'.  And few scholars have addressed the need to 
rethink this concept in light of globalization and the spread of digital 
communication with the sophistication demonstrated by Ingrid Volkmer in 
The Global Public Sphere."
Michael X. Delli Carpini, Annenberg School for Communication, University 
of Pennsylvania



http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745639581

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