Civil Society and the Public Sphere

This article examines the importance of the public sphere theory to civil society. It explains that theories of the public sphere developed alongside both the modern state with its powerful administrative apparatus and the modern capitalist economy with its equally powerful capacity to expand wealth and also inequalities and intensify exploitation of nature and people. It argues that the value of a public sphere rooted in civil society rests on the claims that there are matters of concern important to all citizens and to the organization of their lives together and that states and other powerful organizations might be organized to serve the collective interests of ordinary people rather than state power as such.