390 Resisting Publics
notion of public sphere a distinctive Western stamp, but has configured
it as a category that has been criticized as excluding certain groups and
the interests that they represent. Women, gays, people of color, and reli-
gious and ethnic groups are “undertheorized” in the liberal discourse of
the public sphere.^13 One could argue that notions of economic inequal-
ity are likewise ignored due to the failure of liberal thought, generally, to
systematically theorize the concept of social class and distributive justice.
The issue of historical contextualization raises the question of whether the
concept of the public sphere can be “broadened” to incorporate a larger
conceptual universe. This is particularly important in the Iraqi context
where what we can call the public sphere has always been linked to popu-
list [al-sha‘bῑ] political and social impulses as well as questions of social
justice [al-‘adāla al-ijtimā‘iyya]. A further examination of Habermas’s
formulation of the public sphere might be instructive in addressing the
concept’s historical and sociological specificity.
Habermas and the concept of the public sphere
In interrogating the concept of the public sphere, we find that one prob-
lem with Habermas’s original formulation is his lack of clarity on the
actual dynamics of its genesis. Given this shortcoming, Habermas’s asser-
tion that the public sphere’s conceptual utility is limited to a particular
social historical experience is open to question. Habermas is clear in link-
ing the emergence of the public sphere to the rise of capitalism and the
spread of markets during the Industrial Revolution. The political changes
brought about by the Industrial Revolution, which led to the development
of representative institutions and the notion of individual rights, were
associated with the rise of a particular social stratum, namely the entre-
preneurial bourgeoisie, whose increased political influence was, accord-
ing to Habermas, facilitated by the development of the public sphere.
However, the spread of capitalism and the development of markets, the
core processes of the Industrial Revolution, have not been limited to
Western societies. While the democratic impulses generated by capital-
ism’s spread may not have been as developed in non-Western societies
as those that emerged in parts of Western Europe, particularly England,