The Dictionary of Human Geography

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bourgeois public sphere is nonetheless widely

criticized for universalizing a model that arose

within exclusionary (male, bourgeois, white)

spaces in historically specific European

societies (Howell, 1993; Mitchell, 2003a).

Feminists have argued thatgenderexclusions

are constitutive (and not simply incidental to)

Habermas’s idealization of the bourgeois pub-

lic sphere (Fraser, 1997), and that he unwit-

tingly reproduces a separate spheres ideology

that has been the focus of so much feminist

criticism and organizing (seefeminism;femi-

nist geographies). This is anideologythat

renders domestic space as the repository of the

emotions and private interest, and women ‘by

nature, guardians of the ‘‘household of emo-

tions’’. .. a kind of sphere within [the private]

sphere’ (Marston, 1990, p. 456).

A notion of public sphere is nonetheless

central to democratic theory and practice

(see radical democracy), and there have

been numerous, including important feminist,

attempts to rethink it in contemporary con-

texts. Fraser (1997) does this by questioning

four of Habermas’ assumptions, including the

liberal assumptions that private interests are

antagonistic to the public sphere, and that

one cohesive public sphere is the ideal. She

argues for a theory of multiple, contending,

sometimes mutually exclusive public spheres.

This questioning and retheorization reflects a

feminist understanding that what counts as

private and public is itself the result of political

struggle, and a scepticism about the ways in

which concepts of ‘privacy’ and ‘the private’

often protect dominant (male) interests by de-

politicizing a range of issues (such as spousal

assault and child care) and legitimating the

oppression of women.

Feminist retheorizing of multiple public

spheres tends to emphasize the many ways in

which a separate-spheres ideology continues

to haunt dominant public spheres, and the

persistent traffic between constructions of

public and private. Fraser (1989) has

described how the US state has installed a

separate-spheres ideology within systems of

social welfare provision, so that women are

often positioned as dependents and men as

deserving bearers ofrights. In her analysis

of a powerful coalition of women’s organiza-

tions advocating the rights of women to public

safety in northern Mexico, Wright (2005)

notes that activists in these organizations ‘face

the paradox that by exercising their demo-

cratic voices through public protest, they are

dismissed, by their detractors, as ‘‘unfit’’ cit-

izens, based on their contamination as ‘‘public

women’’ ’ (p. 279). And though they can chal-

lenge this ‘twisted logic’, ‘they cannot fully

escape its implications’ (p. 279). Berlant

argues that in the USA over the past 25 years,

the public sphere has collapsed into the intim-

ate, such that ‘the family sphere [is] consid-

ered the moral, ethical, and political horizon

of national and political interest’ (1997,

p. 262).

Geographers have sought to theorize the

relations between the public sphere(s) and

public space. There is a reticence simply to

layer the terms on to each other, in part

because much political organizing, especially

for non-dominant groups, takes place in so-

called private spaces, and thus there is a need

to expand our thinking about the spaces of

politics (or the public sphere) (Staeheli,

1996). Nevertheless, public spheres and pub-

lic spaces are linked. The regulation of public

space is instrumental in regulating public

debate and excluding some groups from

public life, and ‘public spaces are decisive,

for it is here that the desires and needs of

individuals and groups can be seen, and

therefore recognized, resisted, or ... wiped

out’ (Mitchell, 2003, p. 33). The distinction

between spheres and spaces preserves the

understanding that the concept of public

sphere is in large part a democratic ideal that

we strive towards, in and through the con-

struction and use of public space. It is an

ideal that can be redeployed by those who

are excluded from actual political spaces – to

demand inclusion within them. For this rea-

son, some theorists have been drawn to the

metaphorof ‘empty space’ to articulate the

inevitably unfulfilled promise of a democratic

public sphere (Pratt, 2004). gp

Suggested reading

Fraser (1997); Mitchell (2003).

private interest developments (pids)

Communal housing projects in the USA (also

known ascommunity interest developmentsand

common interest communities), in which the

propertyis held in common and its use gov-

erned by a homeowners’ association. Those

associations – many of which have consider-

able power over what can be done within the

development – operate as ‘private govern-

ments’ separate from thestate apparatus,

although their decisions can be challenged

legally. Originally associated with condomini-

ums, the pid form ofgovernancehas spread

to other housing types, covering more than

10 per cent of all US housing and a much

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_P Final Proof page 584 1.4.2009 3:20pm

PRIVATE INTEREST DEVELOPMENTS (PIDS)