Abstract
One of the most successful and influential contributions to examining the intersection between society and its effect on public action is Jurgen Habermas's landmark The structural transformation of the public space (1962). But as subsequent scholars pointed out, the Habermasian definition of “public sphere” needed to be expanded beyond its original historical context. This article contributes to that ongoing expansion by arguing that a social movement in the United States, social justice feminism, created an alternative public space in the United States by 1907 to the mainstream discourse championed by patriarchal political and social leaders about the effects of the Second Industrial Revolution. The alternative social justice feminist public space differed from Habermas’s original conception in three important ways: it involved a more ideological viewpoint; it encompassed a myriad of cross-class and cross-gender coalitions; and the movement embraced direct political action, promoting and passing women’s labor legislation as an “entering wedge” for the eventual inclusion of all workers under state protection.
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Notes
I use this term in part from the inspiration of Nancy Fraser’s reconceptualization of Habermas’s original definition of public sphere as “subaltern counterpublics” to encompass non-mainstream or subordinated public groups such as women or people of color (Fraser, 1992: 123). In terms of considering an alternative public sphere, the following definition seems especially apropos: a conceptual space for information sharing, discussion, and debate among those sections of the population that reject mainstream discourse (Oxford Reference, 2021). In addition I decided to use “public sphere” consistently throughout the article, given its interchangeability with “public space.”
This term originally comes from Sklar et al., (1998), Introduction: 8–9.
For an interesting discussion of how the public space can be extended to other areas such as anthropology, see Graan A. (2021). Publics and the public sphere. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.013.568.
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the anonymous editors and reviewers who made this article a better effort, as well as Benjamin Moss and Leo Kellogg. I dedicate this article to Kathryn Kish Sklar, my dissertation advisor, who introduced me to Jurgen Habermas in 1997.
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McGuire, J.T. Creating and maintaining an alternative public sphere: The struggles of social justice feminism, 1899–1925. Theor Soc 53, 143–165 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-023-09531-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-023-09531-6