Global Communication and Transnational Public Sphere. Angela M. Crack. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 244 pp.
This investigation of transnational public spheres is grounded in international relations theory, and its (limited) integration with the study of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Author Angela M. Crack builds on this literature by means of a Habermasian approach, offering a functional definition of transnational public sphere as “a site of deliberation in which non-state actors reach understandings about issues of common concern according to the norms of publicity.” This may be problematic, though not fatally, given that many so-called “non-state” actors derive funding, authority, and protection from state agencies.
Crack, a lecturer in politics and international relations at Liverpool John Moores University, identifies three trends that provide structural preconditions for emergent transnational public spheres: transborder communicative capacity, transformations in sites of political authority, and transnational networks of mutual affinity. She provides an able critique of classic Habermasian public sphere theory, including reference to its focus on public as opposed to private domains, which helps account for how the concept can marginalize women and others who do not act within public domains.
She considers that classic public sphere theory is framed within presumptions of national sovereignty, whose relevance today is undermined by new media, institutions of “global governance,” and cross-border social movements. She prefers to talk of correspondences between deliberative spaces and sites of authority: For a deliberative space to be truly meaningful, it is necessary, she argues, that governing institutions be responsive to public opinion (an increasingly high bar, in my view, that is in danger of making success a precondition for membership). She distinguishes between “civil society” and “public sphere”—public sphere is premised on deliberative ideals of rationality and so forth, whereas “civil society,” which can encompass antiracist movements, for example, does not require inclusiveness, nor contain a theory of communication and participation.
The concept of public sphere needs to capture the rich diversity of transnational discourse, and Crack supports Fraser’s (2005) notions of multiple pubic spheres and subaltern counter publics. She registers Mitzen’s (2001) argument that transnational public spheres contain a horizontal legitimation dynamic, as opposed to the vertical process more characteristic of national public spheres, and calls on Dahlgren’s (2002) concept of a feeling of “affinity,” that she considers is suggestive of democratic norms that can (but do they?) underpin both national and extraterritorial deliberation.
Crack analyzes the limitations and possibilities of the structural preconditions for emergent transnational public spheres. Transborder communicative capacity, first of all, is threatened by gross inequalities in access and ownership of ICT, the predominance of U.S. corporations, concentration and monopoly, bias, filtering technologies and censorship, commercialization, English language dominance. (Some of the evidence here is looking dated.) On the positive side, ICTs have dramatically increased transborder communication (dramatically in the area of telephony). The Internet is inherently decentralized, and there is a clear trajectory toward its wider use. On global governance, secondly, Crack notes the decreasing relevance of territoriality, and the extent to which state sovereignty and ideas of “national interest” have been refashioned by the dynamics of globalization. She traces the rise of international institutions, not least in importance being the United Nations (though this is more multi-state than non-state, and is as vertical as it is hierarchical). She remarks on the growth of transnational policy networks between state representatives and official bodies such as regulatory agencies; the growing number of non-state actors, including private bodies as well as transnational social movements; the development of international law and challenges to traditional legal principles of state immunity from jurisdiction and immunity of state agencies; and the pluralization of citizen identities. Ultimately, the primacy of the state is subject to pressures from above and from below. At the very least global governance provides “an alternative political-institutional framework to the state for public dialogue and mobilization.”
Finally, Crack charts the growing visibility and political prominence of transnational networks of mutual affinity. These depend on networks of political activists in diverse locales, interlinked by regular ICT usage and may be assessed using criteria of mutual affinity, norms of publicity, and political efficacy. She presents evidence of such networks, ranking high on these criteria, using case studies of the women’s movement that grew from the 1995 U.N. Beijing Conference, the Zapatistas, and Greenpeace.
This sophisticated work for the most part successfully integrates theory and evidence. The datedness of the case studies does not detract from the formal properties of the argument, perhaps, but may reduce the luster of its relevance to the accelerating evolution of a multi-polar world built around strong and, in the case of the United States, at least, alarmingly aggressive, not to say imperialistic nation states. The ultimate efficacy of her chosen social movements is in doubt. To what extent can we say in 2011 that the situation of the Mexican indigenous has been enhanced by anything, let along transnational social movements? What has Greenpeace achieved in slowing the rush to the precipice of global climate change? And for any case we might cite as an effective example, are there not many others we might deem dismal (even if heroic) failures? These include the struggle against Israel’s suppression of the Palestinians or against the military dictatorship of Myanmar or the struggles of antiwar movements against what they perceive to be indefensible U.S. wars of invasion, occupation, murder, torture, and abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. Nonetheless, this book should be required of anyone who is engaged in the development of transnational public sphere theory.
OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT
Bowling Green State University