IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/poango/v11y2023i3p98-108.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Subaltern Counterpublics in Global Politics

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin Herborth

    (Department of International Relations and International Organization, University of Groningen, The Netherlands)

Abstract

Publics have traditionally been conceived as sites of social integration. While discord, controversy, and contestation may be acknowledged, theorising publics and especially public spheres are characteristically geared toward the production of consensus and/or the conditions of the possibility of unified decision-making. On this view, publics beyond the nation-state are reduced to conceptual extensions of the nation-state—The move to a higher level of aggregation, imagined as global or international, seems to make no conceptual difference. Against this, I propose to conceptualize publics as sites of the constitution of social struggles. To this end, I introduce Nancy Fraser’s concept of “subaltern counterpublics,” previously applied exclusively to national contexts, to the study of global politics. With a view to future empirical application, I discuss three promising sites for the further study of subaltern counterpublics in global politics: colonial public spheres, transnational social activism, and the circulation of extreme right-wing conspiracy tropes. Taken together, I conclude, these three sites of inquiry provide an important corrective to a statist concept of the public in which the place, purpose, and direction of publics are always already taken for granted.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Herborth, 2023. "Subaltern Counterpublics in Global Politics," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(3), pages 98-108.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v11:y:2023:i:3:p:98-108
    DOI: 10.17645/pag.v11i3.6792
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/6792
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/pag.v11i3.6792?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tobias Liebetrau & Linda Monsees, 2023. "Assembling Publics: Microsoft, Cybersecurity, and Public‐Private Relations," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(3), pages 157-167.
    2. Gabi Schlag, 2023. "European Union’s Regulating of Social Media: A Discourse Analysis of the Digital Services Act," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(3), pages 168-177.
    3. Manuel Castells, 2008. "The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 616(1), pages 78-93, March.
    4. Janne Mende, 2023. "Public Interests and the Legitimation of Global Governance Actors," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(3), pages 109-119.
    5. Gabi Schlag, 2023. "European Union’s Regulating of Social Media: A Discourse Analysis of the Digital Services Act," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(3), pages 168-177.
    6. Janne Mende, 2023. "Public Interests and the Legitimation of Global Governance Actors," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(3), pages 109-119.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Janne Mende & Thomas Müller, 2023. "Publics in Global Politics: A Framing Paper," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(3), pages 91-97.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt, 2023. "Public Legitimation by “Going Personal”? The Ambiguous Role of International Organization Officials on Social Media," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(3), pages 213-225.
    2. Benjamin Herborth, 2023. "Subaltern Counterpublics in Global Politics," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(3), pages 98-108.
    3. Simon Hartmann & Thomas Lindner & Jakob Müllner & Jonas Puck, 2022. "Beyond the nation-state: Anchoring supranational institutions in international business research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(6), pages 1282-1306, August.
    4. David Ongenaert, 2019. "Refugee Organizations’ Public Communication: Conceptualizing and Exploring New Avenues for an Underdeveloped Research Subject," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(2), pages 195-206.
    5. Andrea Salustri & Andrea Appolloni & Maria Alessandra Antonelli, 2025. "Social and solidarity economy: a conceptual framework for social impact measurement and evaluation," Public Finance Research Papers 67, Istituto di Economia e Finanza, DSGE, Sapienza University of Rome.
    6. Cornelia Brantner & Joan Ramon Rodríguez-Amat & Yulia Belinskaya, 2021. "Structures of the Public Sphere: Contested Spaces as Assembled Interfaces," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(3), pages 16-27.
    7. Jang Hyo Park & Han Woo Park, 2024. "A new methodological quest to evaluate South Korean digital diplomacy in US government web domains," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-11, December.
    8. Janne Mende & Thomas Müller, 2023. "Publics in Global Politics: A Framing Paper," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(3), pages 91-97.
    9. Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt, 2023. "Public Legitimation by “Going Personal”? The Ambiguous Role of International Organization Officials on Social Media," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(3), pages 213-225.
    10. Martin Mullins & Martin Himly & Isabel Rodríguez Llopis & Irini Furxhi & Sabine Hofer & Norbert Hofstätter & Peter Wick & Daina Romeo & Dana Küehnel & Kirsi Siivola & Julia Catalán & Kerstin Hund-Rink, 2023. "(Re)Conceptualizing decision-making tools in a risk governance framework for emerging technologies—the case of nanomaterials," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 43(1), pages 3-15, March.
    11. Perng, Sung-Yueh, 2017. "Practices and politics of collaborative urban infrastructuring: Traffic Light Box Artworks in Dublin Streets," OSF Preprints 2xpq7_v1, Center for Open Science.
    12. Manuel Enverga III, 2023. "Helpful partner or infringing interloper? Examining discursive contestation in the engagements on the EU delegation in the Philippines’ Facebook page," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 19(1), pages 30-41, March.
    13. R. S. Zaharna, 2024. "A generational tale of two public diplomacy paths: fierce competition, global collaboration," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(1), pages 29-32, November.
    14. Damien Spry & Kerrilee Lockyer, 2022. "Large data and small stories: A triangulation approach to evaluating digital diplomacy," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 18(3), pages 272-286, September.
    15. Acosta, Matias & Szlamka, Zsofia & Mostajo-Radji, Mohammed A., 2020. "Transnational youth networks: an evolving form of public diplomacy to accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals," SocArXiv 8247s_v1, Center for Open Science.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v11:y:2023:i:3:p:98-108. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.