In Praise of the Public Sphere

A society in which citizens constantly feel they must explain their ordinary motives for taking part in public life to others may gradually lose some of the spontaneity and ease of public life.

Ambassador Arjan; Sajjad Behzadi; Scholar of Political Sociology - Jürgen Habermas, a German philosopher and social theorist, was always concerned that the public sphere would weaken and become an ideological element. The recent statements of the head of Tehran's local police about people who, according to him, "don't know why they come there" in some streets of the capital, and emphasizing that citizens should be "busy working or consuming" in the city, raises a fundamental question from a sociological point of view. How is it that there are always some who seek to undermine the public sphere?

This question brings us to one of the fundamental concepts of political sociology. public domain; An arena in which the citizen is an activist of the society before being a labor force or a consumer.

The ruling structure in Iran should look at the public sphere as a capacity and not a threat. If the public sphere is the street, it is not always supposed to be a place of conversation. Sometimes citizens walk in this area, pause, and sometimes spend part of their daily life in the public space without a predetermined destination. The importance of the city and its streets lies in this possibility: that being there does not necessarily depend on having an economic, occupational or administrative purpose.

Ideological management of public spheres is a dangerous business. According to which argument should the citizen in the public sphere like the street be only "producer or consumer"? If human presence in the city is acceptable only when it is being produced or consumed, the citizen gradually becomes a tool subject from a social actor. In such a situation, the public sphere is weakened by limiting the meaning of citizens' presence.

Hannah Arendt, another German philosopher, also discusses the importance of public space in the book The Human Condition. Contrary to what some people consider the movement of the public sphere to be only the aimless movement of human bodies; Arendt believes that "presence in public space is not just the movement of bodies in a physical environment; it is a kind of social presence. Humans experience part of the common world by being seen, seeing others and being exposed to differences."

In this difficult situation of Iranian society, the ruling system should try not only to recognize the public spheres as the origin of citizens' pluralism, but also to recognize the motives, interests and lifestyles of people in this sphere and never seek to provide a fixed model for the presence of citizens in the public sphere.

A society in which citizens constantly feel they have to explain their normal motivations for being in the public sphere to others may gradually lose some of the spontaneity and ease of public life. We all agree that "public order" is also very important in the public sphere, but this should not mean homogenizing lifestyles or restricting the unconventional but legal presence of citizens.

The street is a dynamic public sphere that is not just a path to get from the origin to the destination; Sometimes the street itself is the destination. Sometimes walking, seeing, hearing and being with others constitutes the whole meaning of a presence.

In fact, perhaps one of the signs of the quality of urban life is that a person can spend part of his time in the public space without a clear economic, administrative or even personal plan. This aimlessness does not mean irresponsibility; Rather, it is a reminder of the fact that human life is not always subject to the logic of productivity.

A citizen has the right to walk in the street before he needs a reason to be there. This right is applied within the framework of the law and respecting the rights of others, but it should not become a conditional privilege whose validity depends on the discretion of others.

The public sphere is the domain of the general society in which everyone can be an actor or even not. According to Hannah Arendt, this sphere is "very sacred" and separates the human from the private sphere and helps keep society dynamic. Maybe the principles of the public domain have declined in our society for a thousand and one reasons, but still this domain should not be subjugated.