46 Philosophical Frames
world. Then I will address the problematic role of the public sphere in the
democratization process. Habermas has often repeated that the idea of the
public sphere is motivating, not simply instrumental. He is here emphasiz-
ing the public sphere’s independent influence on action, political action in
particular. However, the aim in both cases remains the same. It is the con-
tribution of public spheres to the democratic process, whether as a factor
in the transition to democracy, in countries with nondemocratic regimes
or as a corrective agent of the distortions and the corruption of democratic
institutions and practices in the advanced countries of the West.
Preliminary remarks
The prevailing uncritical acceptance of much of the globalized intellectual
production in the countries of the South during the post-Cold War era
raises a number of critical and methodological questions and comments.
The ever-shifting modes of approach to the questions of the region have
generated a tabula rasa approach to the production of social knowledge.
Thus intellectual production changes course with every “intellectual fash-
ion” globally imposed, frequently blocking any attempt to critically assess
the previous “fashion,” which is generally castigated as obsolete or unfit
for coping with new international developments or the new world order.
The result is invariably repeated beginnings with little or no accumulation
of knowledge as elements of social reality are constantly redefined, rede-
signed and sometimes simply renamed.
s tendency can be traced in practically all fields of intellectual Thi
production. A good illustration of this are the Human Development
Reports initiated by the UN on the region. “Human development” now
replaces “development” as the idea of development itself is displaced from
the economic realm (now left to the deregulated markets and referred to
at best by the more modest term of “growth”) to cover the new trinity of
freedom, knowledge and gender. That displacement, rather than incorpo-
rating the novelty into the body of real problems of the region or assimi-
lating it in its theoretical problematic, more often than not simply occults
them. Studies in poverty replace studies on income distribution—the lat-
ter at best restricted to the global level (the rich billion and the rest)—as