18 Introduction
beyond mere challenges to the liberal order to the development of alter-
native programs and that the public sphere is a “site for solidarities.” The
authors turn to Gramsci and Foucault to look at the relationship between
religion and collective action where the transformation of power relations
is simultaneously a transformation of subjectivity, of the self. The concep-
tual apparatus offered by the authors enables an analysis of socio-religious
movements that brings together within one framework their welfare and
social solidarity functions with their politics of resistance and their philo-
sophical formulations and trajectories—aspects of such movements that
are often studied separately (and by different disciplines). Their discussion
also holds the promise of understanding such relationships beyond the
case study, beyond Islam and beyond East and West.
eynep Gambetti’s chapter provides yet another perspective on the Z
types of theoretical linkages and social relationships that the concept of
the public sphere elucidates. She focuses on the role of micro-practices,
everyday life and “spheres of circulation” that create and recreate pub-
lics and public spheres. In this, Gambetti’s goal is to “expand the scope
of communication” thus broadening the understanding of the ways in
which publics are constituted, as well as the spaces through which com-
munication takes place. She particularly focuses on “liminal” spaces and
moments where conflict and rupture in fact become forms of communica-
tion that allow for the reformulation of power relations. Citing examples
of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey and the Zapatistas in
Mexico, she argues that the public sphere needs to be rethought in terms
of “its connection to struggle, collective action and self-determination.”
This perspective highlights “the creative potential built into the structure
of crisis,” where even armed conflict is a field of interaction, communi-
cation and negotiation over the parameters and substance of political
engagement. Gambetti is careful to point out that the finding of a “mid-
dle ground” or “common ground” through conflict is not automatic but
dependent on a number of factors. Still, for her as for the other authors in
this section, the promise in the notion of the public sphere is in creating a
new theory of action.
e issues engaged by these three theoretical interventions are Th
taken up in different settings by the case studies in the following three
sections. The second section of this volume, entitled Between Private