Origins of democratic culture : printing, petitions, and the public sphere in early-modern England

David Zaret

This innovative work of historical sociology locates the origins of modern democratic discourse in the emergent culture of printing in early modern England. For David Zaret, the key to the rise of a democratic public sphere was the impact of this culture of printing on the secrecy and privilege that shrouded political decisions in seventeenth-century England. Zaret explores the unanticipated liberating effects of printing and printed communication in transforming the world of political secrecy into a culture of open discourse and eventually a politics of public opinion. Contrary to those who locate the origins of the public sphere in the philosophical tracts of the French Enlightenment, Zaret claims that it originated as a practical accomplishment, propelled by economic and technical aspects of printing - in particular heightened commercialism and increased capacity to produce texts. Zaret writes that this accomplishment gained impetus when competing elites - Royalists and Parliamentarians, Presbyterians and Independents - used printed material to reach the masses, whose leaders in turn invoked the authority of public opinion to lobby those elites. Zaret further shows how the earlier traditions of communication in England, from ballads and broadsides to inn and alehouse conversation, merged with the new culture of print to upset prevailing norms of secrecy and privilege. He points as well to the paradox for today's critics, who attribute the impoverishment of the public sphere to the very technological and economic forces that brought about the means of democratic discourse in the first place.

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[目次]

  • List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii Chapter One Introduction 3 Chapter Two Theory and History 18 Theories of the Early Public Sphere 21 Historical Revisionism 35 The Paradox of Innovation 39 Chapter Three Secrecy and Privilege 44 Principle 50 Contradictions between Secrecy Norms and Political Practice 61 Chapter Four Traditional Communicative Practice 68 Center to Periphery 69 Periphery to Center 75 Grievances and Petitions 81 Chapter Five News 100 Oral News: Rumors and Ballads 109 Scribal News 110 Chapter Six Printing and the Culture of Print 133 Presses and Printers 134 Legal and Political Issues 140 Authors and Sellers 145 Popular Literacy and Reading 150 Illicit Books 159 Appeals to Public Opinion in Religion to 1640 165 Chapter Seven Printing and Politics in the 1640s 174 Imposition of Dialogic Order on Conflict 176 Printed News 184 Printed Political Texts 197 Invoking Public Opinion 209 Chapter Eight Petitions 217 Petitions as Political Propaganda 221 Petitions as Indicators of Opinion in the Periphery 231 Petitions and Printing 240 The Paradox of Innovation in Petitioning 254 The Authority of Opinion 257 Toward Liberal Democracy 262 Chapter Nine Epilogue 266 Deism, Science, and Opinion 270 Contemporary Implications 275 Index 281

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この本の情報

書名 Origins of democratic culture : printing, petitions, and the public sphere in early-modern England
著作者等 Zaret, David
シリーズ名 Princeton studies in cultural sociology
出版元 Princeton University Press
刊行年月 2000
ページ数 xv, 291 p.
大きさ 24 cm
ISBN 0691006946
NCID BA45708372
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言語 英語
出版国 アメリカ合衆国
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