By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: February 23, 2009
SEOUL, South Korea — When Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, China’s largest carmaker, set its sights on overseas expansion in 2004, it first took a small hop across the Yellow Sea. It bought a controlling stake in Ssangyong Motor of South Korea, the most ambitious foreign venture for China’s surging auto industry.
Five years later, Shanghai Auto’s marriage with Ssangyong, a milestone of China’s rising industrial clout and South Korea’s deepening economic ties with its neighbor, is falling apart in acrimony and criminal investigations.
Walloped by declining sales and bitter battles with its Chinese parent, Ssangyong filed for bankruptcy protection last month. Its combative labor unions and some South Korean commentators have vilified Shanghai Auto as an exploitative owner that siphoned off Ssangyong’s technology, reneged on promises to invest, and dumped the company when the market turned sour.
Shanghai Auto has a different account of what went wrong. But the collapse of the venture is a black eye for China, which has pushed its top state-owned companies, including Shanghai Auto, to use the country’s enormous dollar-based savings to expand abroad. It may also serve as a cautionary tale for Western companies seeking a lifeline from cash-rich Chinese businesses during the financial crisis.
“The Chinese made us rosy promises and then betrayed us,” said Lee Chang-kun, a member of Ssangyong’s labor union.
The Shanghai company, which has partnerships with General Motors and Volkswagen in China that make it the country’s largest carmaker, said its troubles in South Korea revealed a deep-seated Korean bias against the Chinese. The company said South Korea remained fraught with difficulties for foreign investors, despite Seoul’s professed commitment to open up its economy.
“We hope that South Koreans of all walks of life will become objective and fair and abandon their prejudices against foreign investors,” Shanghai Auto said in response to written questions.
South Korea embraced China over the past decade as an economic and political partner, partly to offset its traditional dependence on the United States. Since the two countries formally ended Korean War-era hostilities and re-established diplomatic ties in 1992, China has replaced the United States as South Korea’s biggest trading partner.
But just as many South Koreans fret about the United States, it did not take long for many here to worry about overreliance on China as well. Korea is sandwiched between China and Japan and has come under the sway of both countries in the past.
Against this backdrop, modern-day failures like Ssangyong — and a similarly acrimonious breakup between BOE Technology Group, a Chinese electronics company, and Hydis of South Korea — loom large in Korean minds.
In 2003, BOE paid $380 million to buy Hydis, which makes displays for cellphones and laptop computers. A year later, Shanghai Auto bought 48.9 percent of Ssangyong, a specialist in sport utility vehicles and luxury sedans, for $510 million. It later increased its stake to 51.33 percent.
The Ssangyong purchase gave Shanghai Auto, known mostly for producing cars in China with foreign technology, an international brand of its own. Hu Maoyuan, Shanghai Auto’s president, said the deal allowed his company to “branch out into the global market.” Ssangyong researchers helped Shanghai Auto develop the Roewe, Shanghai Auto’s first independently made luxury car.
South Korea, once one of the most closed of the major industrial economies, began opening up to more foreign investment after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Foreign companies snapped up Korean banks and industrial concerns at fire-sale prices. When some later cashed out with sizable profits, South Korean workers began referring to them as meoktwi, a slang term that translates as “a thief who eats and runs away.”
Those fears increased when BOE used technology transferred from Hydis to build a new display panel factory in Beijing. When Hydis later ran into financial trouble, BOE did not pump in more money, leaving it to file for bankruptcy protection in 2006, according to Hydis employees. Now sold to a Taiwanese company, Hydis is a shell of its former self.
“BOE got the technology they wanted. All we got was layoffs,” said Hwang Pil-sang, a Hydis worker.
Shanghai Auto and Ssangyong never had much of a honeymoon. When the Shanghai company took over, Ssangyong was reporting net profits of $510 million a year. It was planning to roll out its new S.U.V. series: Kyron and Actyon.
But the new cars sold below expectations. Ssangyong’s hopes that Shanghai Auto could ease its entry into the rapidly growing but tightly regulated China market went largely unrealized, Ssangyong workers say. Heavy tariffs hindered Ssangyong’s sales in China. Ssangyong’s attempt to build a joint venture factory there faced red tape.
The two companies also clashed over how to expand sales. The 5,200-worker union demanded that the Chinese company infuse more cash, market more aggressively and speed up development of new models.
Shanghai Auto said that it had agreed to invest more in Ssangyong, but argued that it intended to reinvest profits Ssangyong was earning. When Ssangyong’s profits sank, so did the available cash to invest, the Chinese company said.
Chinese managers began shedding hundreds of Ssangyong workers in 2006, and relations spiraled downward. Ssangyong employees went on strike for nearly two months. Workers barricaded themselves inside the factory and locked the managers out.
The Ssangyong union also accused Shanghai Auto of stealing technology, setting off one investigation by prosecutors in 2006 and another last year. Last July, acting on tips from the National Intelligence Service, prosecutors raided Ssangyong’s research center, searching for evidence of illicit technology leaks.
The union’s allegations are disputed by Shanghai Auto. The Shanghai company says it has a normal technological give and take with its subsidiary. It shared its own technology with Ssangyong. It properly accounted for and compensated Ssangyong for Korean technology it took back to China, the company says.
No charges have resulted from the legal inquiry. But it generated headlines in South Korea, where the media were already abuzz with reports of high-profile industrial espionage cases in which former employees of South Korea’s biggest exporters — Hyundai and Kia Motors, LG Electronics, the Daewoo shipyard and the steel maker Posco — were convicted of leaking, or plotting to leak, sensitive technology to Chinese companies.
In December, union members surrounded a car carrying Shanghai Auto officials and held it hostage for seven hours outside their factory south of Seoul, accusing the executives of absconding with proprietary technology.
Yang Hyeong-geun, a 20-year veteran of the Ssangyong assembly lines, said he and his colleagues initially welcomed Shanghai Auto because the Chinese company promised job security, entry to the vast China market, and new investment to double Ssangyong’s annual capacity, to 400,000 cars.
“We trusted their promise to help us into the vast Chinese market,” Mr. Yang said. “In the end, they kept none of their promises, and they got what they wanted: our technology.”
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Cultural discount, External rofit, Joint-consumption
As Maule (1989: 90) explains, 'the position of successive Canadian governments has been that cultural industries are on a par with national defense, education, and the judiciary and are vital to the preservation of national identity (p. 6)
Colin Hoskins, Stuart McFadyen and Adam finn. Global television and film: An introduction to the economics of the business.
Colin Hoskins, Stuart McFadyen and Adam finn. Global television and film: An introduction to the economics of the business.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
John Tomlinson and Cultural Imperialism
Original source of the text below is" http://www.bfe2009.net/3.html
John Tomlinson is Professor of Cultural Sociology; Director of the Institute for Cultural Analysis, Nottingham; Head of Research for Cultural, Communications and Media Studies (RAE Unit 66); and Chair of the School Professorial Group at Nottingham Trent University. John Tomlinson is an authority on the cultural aspects of the globalization process and has lectured at many distinguished universities across Europe, the United States and East Asia as well as at venues such as The Bauhaus Institute, Dessau; Tate Britain; The Council of Europe; the Festival Filosofia, Modena and Demos, Hungary. He has worked as a consultant on issues of globalization, culture and politics to several international public sector institutions including UNESCO, The Council of Europe, The Commonwealth Secretariat, and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and Nato Defence College. Articles, profiles and interviews on his work have been published in national newspapers such as the Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, the Guanming Daily, Beijing, the Hufvudsbladet, Helsinki and on Finnish Television, YLE TV1 and Italian National Television and Radio (RAI).
John Tomlinson is on the editorial advisory boards of several journals, including Theory, Culture and Society, Journal of International Communication, Global Media and Communication and the Asian Journal of International Studies. Published books include Cultural Imperialism and Globalisation and Culture, and John Tomlinson's recent work has explored the place of speed within modern telemediated culture, resulting in his latest book, The Culture of Speed: The Coming of Immediacy published by Sage Publications in October 2007. He is currently developing research into the constitution of public culture and cultural values within contemporary capitalist societies.
KEYNOTE ABSTRACT
Emergent Agendas of Cultural Globalization
After nearly two decades of analysis of the cultural dimensions of globalization, the overall picture remains far from clear. The early - largely speculative - scenarios of the emergence of either a unified or a uniform global culture have mostly been abandoned, as the inherent complexity of the globalization process has been more properly understood. But we seem to be left with a set of familiar, seemingly intractable, issues. These are either problems of empirical difficulty – for example the nature, extent and significance of Western cultural dominance - or of essential theoretical dispute or value incompatibility - such as the unresolved debate over the competing claims of cultural cosmopolitanism and cultural diversity.
In one way or another, these debates have all been about the contents of global cultures - be these artefacts and their symbolic meanings, beliefs, tastes, styles, values, or identities. However, if we approach culture in a different way – focussing instead upon the core dynamics of global modernity itself – some new issues and perspectives present themselves. The lecture will explore two of these emerging agendas.
The first of these is what I will call the global management of cultural diversity. Whilst it is increasingly clear that global cultural diversity is not directly threatened by an overwhelming tendency towards homogenization, we are nonetheless witnessing a deep transformation in the context in which the diversity of culture exists. The inherently modern drive towards institutional regulation, combined with the ever-rising gradient of the commodification of culture, is producing new - and sometimes perverse - ways in which cultural difference is understood, promoted and valued.
The second agenda concerns the impact of the combination of an accelerating global capitalist economy - ‘fast capitalism’ - and the ubiquity of globalizing media and communications technologies on the common texture of everyday life. The reiterated practices, protocols and routines associated with these core features of contemporary modernity are producing a new and challenging condition that I call ‘global immediacy’, which is displacing some of the founding assumptions of the earlier industrial modernity which gave rise to the globalization process. The coming of immediacy has potentially far-reaching implications for the way in which we understand future cultural production and consumption practices and the values we attach to them.
John Tomlinson is Professor of Cultural Sociology; Director of the Institute for Cultural Analysis, Nottingham; Head of Research for Cultural, Communications and Media Studies (RAE Unit 66); and Chair of the School Professorial Group at Nottingham Trent University. John Tomlinson is an authority on the cultural aspects of the globalization process and has lectured at many distinguished universities across Europe, the United States and East Asia as well as at venues such as The Bauhaus Institute, Dessau; Tate Britain; The Council of Europe; the Festival Filosofia, Modena and Demos, Hungary. He has worked as a consultant on issues of globalization, culture and politics to several international public sector institutions including UNESCO, The Council of Europe, The Commonwealth Secretariat, and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and Nato Defence College. Articles, profiles and interviews on his work have been published in national newspapers such as the Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, the Guanming Daily, Beijing, the Hufvudsbladet, Helsinki and on Finnish Television, YLE TV1 and Italian National Television and Radio (RAI).
John Tomlinson is on the editorial advisory boards of several journals, including Theory, Culture and Society, Journal of International Communication, Global Media and Communication and the Asian Journal of International Studies. Published books include Cultural Imperialism and Globalisation and Culture, and John Tomlinson's recent work has explored the place of speed within modern telemediated culture, resulting in his latest book, The Culture of Speed: The Coming of Immediacy published by Sage Publications in October 2007. He is currently developing research into the constitution of public culture and cultural values within contemporary capitalist societies.
KEYNOTE ABSTRACT
Emergent Agendas of Cultural Globalization
After nearly two decades of analysis of the cultural dimensions of globalization, the overall picture remains far from clear. The early - largely speculative - scenarios of the emergence of either a unified or a uniform global culture have mostly been abandoned, as the inherent complexity of the globalization process has been more properly understood. But we seem to be left with a set of familiar, seemingly intractable, issues. These are either problems of empirical difficulty – for example the nature, extent and significance of Western cultural dominance - or of essential theoretical dispute or value incompatibility - such as the unresolved debate over the competing claims of cultural cosmopolitanism and cultural diversity.
In one way or another, these debates have all been about the contents of global cultures - be these artefacts and their symbolic meanings, beliefs, tastes, styles, values, or identities. However, if we approach culture in a different way – focussing instead upon the core dynamics of global modernity itself – some new issues and perspectives present themselves. The lecture will explore two of these emerging agendas.
The first of these is what I will call the global management of cultural diversity. Whilst it is increasingly clear that global cultural diversity is not directly threatened by an overwhelming tendency towards homogenization, we are nonetheless witnessing a deep transformation in the context in which the diversity of culture exists. The inherently modern drive towards institutional regulation, combined with the ever-rising gradient of the commodification of culture, is producing new - and sometimes perverse - ways in which cultural difference is understood, promoted and valued.
The second agenda concerns the impact of the combination of an accelerating global capitalist economy - ‘fast capitalism’ - and the ubiquity of globalizing media and communications technologies on the common texture of everyday life. The reiterated practices, protocols and routines associated with these core features of contemporary modernity are producing a new and challenging condition that I call ‘global immediacy’, which is displacing some of the founding assumptions of the earlier industrial modernity which gave rise to the globalization process. The coming of immediacy has potentially far-reaching implications for the way in which we understand future cultural production and consumption practices and the values we attach to them.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Vernacular Culture
As an analytical category in cultural theory, "vernacular" appeared as early as 1960 in an American Anthropologist article entitled " Vernacular Culture." In this article, Margaret Lantis used the term to refer to "the commonplace" (p. 202). "High" culture was only accessible by the elites of a society, but "vernacular culture" remained accessible to all. From this usage, two vectors of meaning came to be associated with the term. On the one hand, vernacular forms are those available to individuals or groups who are subordinated to institutions, and on the other, they are a common resource made available to everyone through informal social interaction. Based on this dual meaning, the vernacular came to refer to discourse that coexists with dominant culture but is held separate from it.
As the concept emerged in communication studies however, it became bifurcated along these two lines. On the one hand, the vernacular is imagined as local discourse that is distinct from larger institutional discourses. In this "subaltern" view, the vernacular voice is that of the subordinate counteragent seeking to be heard over hegemony. On the other hand, the vernacular is imagined asa shared resource, a sensus communis, or community doxa, In this "common" view, the vernacular is a communal chorus that emerges from the multiplicity of voices speaking in the noninstitutional discursive spaces of quotidian life. Both of these conceptions, however, rely on a strict division that fails to fully account for the vernacular's hybrid characteristics (p. 493).
Howard, G, H. (2008). The vernacular web of participatory media, Critical studies in media communicaition Vol 25(5). pp. 490-513.
As the concept emerged in communication studies however, it became bifurcated along these two lines. On the one hand, the vernacular is imagined as local discourse that is distinct from larger institutional discourses. In this "subaltern" view, the vernacular voice is that of the subordinate counteragent seeking to be heard over hegemony. On the other hand, the vernacular is imagined asa shared resource, a sensus communis, or community doxa, In this "common" view, the vernacular is a communal chorus that emerges from the multiplicity of voices speaking in the noninstitutional discursive spaces of quotidian life. Both of these conceptions, however, rely on a strict division that fails to fully account for the vernacular's hybrid characteristics (p. 493).
Howard, G, H. (2008). The vernacular web of participatory media, Critical studies in media communicaition Vol 25(5). pp. 490-513.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Charles Hedrick
http://polebridgepress.com/Fellows/hedrick.html
Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies
Southwest Missouri State University
Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies
Southwest Missouri State University
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Newspapers in Scottsboro Case
Burmingham News
Burmingham Ages Herald
huntsville, Alabama
Lafayette, Alabama
Burmingham Ages Herald
huntsville, Alabama
Lafayette, Alabama
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Be nice to people on your way up
Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down.
GI Underground Press
1969
Washington DC - First issue of OM The Servicemen’s Newsletter published.
http://www.sirnosir.com/timeline/chronology_GI_press.html
Movie "Sir No Sir" website also includes the chronology of GI underground press
Washington DC - First issue of OM The Servicemen’s Newsletter published.
http://www.sirnosir.com/timeline/chronology_GI_press.html
Movie "Sir No Sir" website also includes the chronology of GI underground press
Alice Paul Institute
http://www.alicepaul.org/alicepaul.htm
The Nineteenth Amendment
In 1917, in response to public outcry about the prison abuse of suffragists, President Wilson reversed his position and announced his support for a suffrage amendment, calling it a "war measure." In 1919, both the House and Senate passed the 19th Amendment and the battle for state ratification commenced. Three-fourths of the states were needed to ratify the amendment. The battle for ratification came down to the state of Tennessee in the summer of 1920; if a majority of the state legislature voted for the amendment, it would become law. The deciding vote was cast twenty-four year-old Harry Burn, the youngest member of the Tennessee assembly. Originally intending to vote “no,” Burn changed his vote after receiving a telegram from his mother asking him to support women’s suffrage. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee ratified the 19th Amendment. Six days later, Secretary of State Colby certified the ratification, and, with the stroke of his pen, American women gained the right to vote after a seventy-two year battle. August 26th is now celebrated as Women's Equality Day in the United States.
http://www.sirnosir.com/timeline/chronology_GI_press.html
Movie "Sir No Sir" website also includes the chronology of GI underground press
The Nineteenth Amendment
In 1917, in response to public outcry about the prison abuse of suffragists, President Wilson reversed his position and announced his support for a suffrage amendment, calling it a "war measure." In 1919, both the House and Senate passed the 19th Amendment and the battle for state ratification commenced. Three-fourths of the states were needed to ratify the amendment. The battle for ratification came down to the state of Tennessee in the summer of 1920; if a majority of the state legislature voted for the amendment, it would become law. The deciding vote was cast twenty-four year-old Harry Burn, the youngest member of the Tennessee assembly. Originally intending to vote “no,” Burn changed his vote after receiving a telegram from his mother asking him to support women’s suffrage. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee ratified the 19th Amendment. Six days later, Secretary of State Colby certified the ratification, and, with the stroke of his pen, American women gained the right to vote after a seventy-two year battle. August 26th is now celebrated as Women's Equality Day in the United States.
http://www.sirnosir.com/timeline/chronology_GI_press.html
Movie "Sir No Sir" website also includes the chronology of GI underground press
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Asahi database
http://database.asahi.com/library2e/
Constructing Immigrants
A Historical Discourse Analysis of the Representations of Immigrants in US Social Work, 1882-1952
http://jsw.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/2/169
Constructing Immigrants
A Historical Discourse Analysis of the Representations of Immigrants in US Social Work, 1882-1952
http://jsw.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/2/169
Monday, November 24, 2008
Valerie Jarrett's Life Lessons from NYTimes
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/jarretts-life-lessons/?scp=1&sq=Ms.%20Jarrett&st=cse
1. To thine own self be true.
2. All leaders are passionate about their beliefs, even the ones you don’t like.
3. Trust your gut after you have listened, studied and learned from those with a diverse range of opinions.
4. You never know who is watching, so work as hard as you can regardless of the assignment.
5. Don’t stay in your comfort zone too long.
6. As my grandmother would say: put yourself in the path of lightning.
7. Be flexible because opportunities rarely knock at the most opportune moments.
8. Take time to be kind to everyone.
9. Focus on your priorities.
10. In order to lead, someone must follow.
11. Effective leadership depends on your ability to connect and motivate people, not on your title, position or power.
12. Set high standards for yourself and your team (lead by example).
13. Take the time to develop personal relationships all along the way, and really cultivate those upon whom you depend. In order for them to help you, they must know you. And you must know what will motivate them. Nurture them so they can help you lead. They must believe in not just your ideas, but you.
14. Good will matters.
15. Women are particularly good at listening and studying their audience.
16. Have the courage to make tough decisions.
17. When you lead, not everyone will follow, and that’s okay.
18. You will fail. Don’t take your failures or your success too seriously. Learn to laugh at yourself. Trust me. It helps.
19. Affiliate yourself with worthy institutions, lead by good people who share your core values.
20. You can have it all, just not at the same time, and in the proportions you may want.
21. To those who much is given, much is expected.
1. To thine own self be true.
2. All leaders are passionate about their beliefs, even the ones you don’t like.
3. Trust your gut after you have listened, studied and learned from those with a diverse range of opinions.
4. You never know who is watching, so work as hard as you can regardless of the assignment.
5. Don’t stay in your comfort zone too long.
6. As my grandmother would say: put yourself in the path of lightning.
7. Be flexible because opportunities rarely knock at the most opportune moments.
8. Take time to be kind to everyone.
9. Focus on your priorities.
10. In order to lead, someone must follow.
11. Effective leadership depends on your ability to connect and motivate people, not on your title, position or power.
12. Set high standards for yourself and your team (lead by example).
13. Take the time to develop personal relationships all along the way, and really cultivate those upon whom you depend. In order for them to help you, they must know you. And you must know what will motivate them. Nurture them so they can help you lead. They must believe in not just your ideas, but you.
14. Good will matters.
15. Women are particularly good at listening and studying their audience.
16. Have the courage to make tough decisions.
17. When you lead, not everyone will follow, and that’s okay.
18. You will fail. Don’t take your failures or your success too seriously. Learn to laugh at yourself. Trust me. It helps.
19. Affiliate yourself with worthy institutions, lead by good people who share your core values.
20. You can have it all, just not at the same time, and in the proportions you may want.
21. To those who much is given, much is expected.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Korean Screen Quota: Views and Analyses
http://www.cine21.com/Article/article_view.php?mm=005001001&article_id=36791
2006년 1월 26일, 대한민국 정부는 스크린쿼터를 146일에서 절반인 73일로 줄인다고 공식 발표하였고, 이를 둘러싼 찬반 논란과 영화인들의 반대 시위가 이어지고 있다.
2006년 3월 7일, 이해찬 국무총리가 주재한 국무회의에서 스크린쿼터를 146일에서 73일로 줄이는 영화진흥법시행령 개정안을 통과시켰다. 통과된 개정안은 7월 1일부터 시행 중이며, 스크린쿼터문화연대를 중심으로 한 영화인들이 반발하고 있다.
http://breaknews.com/new/sub_read.html?uid=80341§ion=section37
□ 한미FTA는 돌아올 수 없는 강
한미FTA는 다른 FTA와 다른 큰 특징이 있다. 최악의 독소조항만을 모으면 △네거티브 리스트(negative list) △역진 금지(rachet) 장치 △미래의 최혜국(future MFN) △투자자-국가 소송제(ISD) 등이 있다.
'네거티브 리스트'는 시장개방의 원칙으로, 개방하지 않을 분야를 쓰는 것이다. 개방할 분야를 쓰는 방식에 비해 개방 폭이 훨씬 넓을 수밖에 없고, 새로 생기는 서비스분야는 무조건 개방된다. 새로운 서비스는 미국에서 압도적으로 많이 생기고, 무조건 개방이 되기 때문에 전부 미국기업이 독점하게 될 것이다.
개방 대상을 분류하는 기준으로 '현재유보'와 '미래유보'라는 개념이 있다. 간단히 정리하면 미래유보는 앞으로의 국내 상황의 변화에 따라 개방 폭 조정이 가능한 것이고, 현재유보는 조정이 불가능한 것이다.
김현종 본부장이 미국에서 한미FTA를 하자고 애걸을 하니까 미국이 내세운 4대 선결조건의 하나가 스크린쿼터 축소였다. 과거 146일이었던 한국영화 의무상영일수가 73일로 반토막났고, 영화인들은 한미FTA 협상과정에 스크린쿼터를 미래유보에 넣어달라고 요구했지만 결국 현재유보에 들어갔다.
여기에서 래칫(역진금지장치)이 문제가 된다. 래칫은 톱니바퀴의 역회전을 막기 위한 걸림쇠 장치를 말하는데, 개방 폭을 확대하는 것은 가능하지만 그것을 되돌리는 것은 불가능하다는 뜻이다.
현재유보에 들어간 스크린쿼터는 73일 이상으로 늘리는 것은 불가능하지만 만약 이명박 정부가 스크린쿼터를 50일로 줄여도, 다음정권에서 73일까지 되돌리는 것이 가능했을 것인데, 래칫 조항이 들어가면서 73일로도 늘릴 수가 없게 됐다. 만약 한나라당이 또 집권을 해서 20일로 줄이면 다시 그대로 고정이다. / 정태인
2006년 1월 26일, 대한민국 정부는 스크린쿼터를 146일에서 절반인 73일로 줄인다고 공식 발표하였고, 이를 둘러싼 찬반 논란과 영화인들의 반대 시위가 이어지고 있다.
2006년 3월 7일, 이해찬 국무총리가 주재한 국무회의에서 스크린쿼터를 146일에서 73일로 줄이는 영화진흥법시행령 개정안을 통과시켰다. 통과된 개정안은 7월 1일부터 시행 중이며, 스크린쿼터문화연대를 중심으로 한 영화인들이 반발하고 있다.
http://breaknews.com/new/sub_read.html?uid=80341§ion=section37
□ 한미FTA는 돌아올 수 없는 강
한미FTA는 다른 FTA와 다른 큰 특징이 있다. 최악의 독소조항만을 모으면 △네거티브 리스트(negative list) △역진 금지(rachet) 장치 △미래의 최혜국(future MFN) △투자자-국가 소송제(ISD) 등이 있다.
'네거티브 리스트'는 시장개방의 원칙으로, 개방하지 않을 분야를 쓰는 것이다. 개방할 분야를 쓰는 방식에 비해 개방 폭이 훨씬 넓을 수밖에 없고, 새로 생기는 서비스분야는 무조건 개방된다. 새로운 서비스는 미국에서 압도적으로 많이 생기고, 무조건 개방이 되기 때문에 전부 미국기업이 독점하게 될 것이다.
개방 대상을 분류하는 기준으로 '현재유보'와 '미래유보'라는 개념이 있다. 간단히 정리하면 미래유보는 앞으로의 국내 상황의 변화에 따라 개방 폭 조정이 가능한 것이고, 현재유보는 조정이 불가능한 것이다.
김현종 본부장이 미국에서 한미FTA를 하자고 애걸을 하니까 미국이 내세운 4대 선결조건의 하나가 스크린쿼터 축소였다. 과거 146일이었던 한국영화 의무상영일수가 73일로 반토막났고, 영화인들은 한미FTA 협상과정에 스크린쿼터를 미래유보에 넣어달라고 요구했지만 결국 현재유보에 들어갔다.
여기에서 래칫(역진금지장치)이 문제가 된다. 래칫은 톱니바퀴의 역회전을 막기 위한 걸림쇠 장치를 말하는데, 개방 폭을 확대하는 것은 가능하지만 그것을 되돌리는 것은 불가능하다는 뜻이다.
현재유보에 들어간 스크린쿼터는 73일 이상으로 늘리는 것은 불가능하지만 만약 이명박 정부가 스크린쿼터를 50일로 줄여도, 다음정권에서 73일까지 되돌리는 것이 가능했을 것인데, 래칫 조항이 들어가면서 73일로도 늘릴 수가 없게 됐다. 만약 한나라당이 또 집권을 해서 20일로 줄이면 다시 그대로 고정이다. / 정태인
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Web Sites That Dig for News Rise as Watchdogs
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/business/media/18voice.html?_r=1&hp
NYTimes Article published
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: November 17, 2008
A version of this article appeared in print on November 18, 2008, on page A1 of the New York edition
SAN DIEGO — Over the last two years, some of this city’s darkest secrets have been dragged into the light — city officials with conflicts of interest and hidden pay raises, affordable housing that was not affordable, misleading crime statistics.
Investigations ensued. The chiefs of two redevelopment agencies were forced out. One of them faces criminal charges. Yet the main revelations came not from any of San Diego’s television and radio stations or its dominant newspaper, The San Diego Union-Tribune, but from a handful of young journalists at a nonprofit Web site run out of a converted military base far from downtown’s glass towers — a site that did not exist four years ago.
As America’s newspapers shrink and shed staff, and broadcast news outlets sink in the ratings, a new kind of Web-based news operation has arisen in several cities, forcing the papers to follow the stories they uncover.
Here it is VoiceofSanDiego.org, offering a brand of serious, original reporting by professional journalists — the province of the traditional media, but at a much lower cost of doing business. Since it began in 2005, similar operations have cropped up in New Haven, the Twin Cities, Seattle, St. Louis and Chicago. More are on the way.
Their news coverage and hard-digging investigative reporting stand out in an Internet landscape long dominated by partisan commentary, gossip, vitriol and citizen journalism posted by unpaid amateurs.
The fledgling movement has reached a sufficient critical mass, its founders think, so they plan to form an association, angling for national advertising and foundation grants that they could not compete for singly. And hardly a week goes by without a call from journalists around the country seeking advice about starting their own online news outlets.
“Voice is doing really significant work, driving the agenda on redevelopment and some other areas, putting local politicians and businesses on the hot seat,” said Dean Nelson, director of the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. “I have them come into my classes, and I introduce them as, ‘This is the future of journalism.’ ”
That is a subject of hot debate among people who closely follow the newspaper industry. Publishing online means operating at half the cost of a comparable printed paper, but online advertising is not robust enough to sustain a newsroom.
And so financially, VoiceofSan Diego and its peers mimic public broadcasting, not newspapers. They are nonprofit corporations supported by foundations, wealthy donors, audience contributions and a little advertising.
New nonprofits without a specific geographic focus also have sprung up to fill other niches, like ProPublica, devoted to investigative journalism, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, which looks into problems around the world. A similar group, the Center for Investigative Reporting, dates back three decades.
But some experts question whether a large part of the news business can survive on what is essentially charity, and whether it is wise to lean too heavily on the whims of a few moneyed benefactors.
“These are some of the big questions about the future of the business,” said Robert H. Giles, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Nonprofit news online “has to be explored and experimented with, but it has to overcome the hurdle of proving it can support a big news staff. Even the most well-funded of these sites are a far cry in resources from a city newspaper.”
The people who run the local news sites see themselves as one future among many, and they have a complex relationship with traditional media. The say that the deterioration of those media has created an opening for new sources of news, as well as a surplus of unemployed journalists for them to hire.
“No one here welcomes the decline of newspapers,” said Andrew Donohue, one of two executive editors at VoiceofSanDiego. “We can’t be the main news source for this city, not for the foreseeable future. We only have 11 people.”
(Page 2 of 2)
Those people are almost all young, some of them refugees from older media. The executive editors, Mr. Donohue, 30, and Scott Lewis, 32, each had a few years of experience at small papers before abandoning newsprint. So far, their audience is tiny, about 18,000 monthly unique visitors, according to Quantcast, a media measurement service.
The biggest of the new nonprofit news sites, MinnPost in the Twin Cities and the St. Louis Beacon, can top 200,000 visitors in a month, but even that is a fraction of the Internet readership for the local newspapers.
VoiceofSanDiego’s site looks much like any newspaper’s, frequently updated with breaking news and organized around broad topics: government and politics, housing, economics, the environment, schools and science. It has few graphics, but plenty of photography and, through a partnership with a local TV station, some video.
But it is, of necessity, thin — strictly local, selective in what it covers and with none of the wire service articles that plump up most news sites.
VoiceofSanDiego grew out of a string of spectacular municipal scandals. City councilmen took bribes from a strip club owner, a mishandled pension fund drove the city to the brink of bankruptcy and city officials illegally covered up the crisis, to name a few.
A semiretired local businessman, Buzz Woolley, watched the parade of revelations, fraud charges and criminal convictions, seething with frustration. He was particularly incensed that the pension debacle had developed over several years, more or less in plain sight, but had received little news coverage.
“I kept thinking, ‘Who’s paying attention?’ ” Mr. Woolley recalled. “Why don’t we hear about this stuff before it becomes a disaster?’ ”
In 2004, his conversations with a veteran columnist, Neil Morgan, who had been fired by The Union-Tribune, led to the creation of VoiceofSanDiego, with Mr. Woolley as president, chief executive and, at first, chief financial backer.
Most of this new breed of news sites have a whiff of scruffy insurgency, but MinnPost, based in Minneapolis, resembles the middle-age establishment. Its founder and chief executive, Joel Kramer, has been the editor and publisher of The Star Tribune, of Minneapolis, and its top editors are refugees from that paper or its rival, The Pioneer Press in St. Paul.
MinnPost is rich compared with its peers — with a $1.5 million bankroll from Mr. Kramer and several others when it started last year, and a $1.3 million annual budget — and it has been more aggressive about selling ads and getting readers to donate.
The full-time editors and reporters earn $50,000 to $60,000 a year, Mr. Kramer said — a living wage, but less than they would make at the competing papers. MinnPost has just five full-time employees, but it uses more than 40 paid freelance contributors, allowing it to do frequent reporting on areas like the arts and sports.
If MinnPost is the establishment, The New Haven Independent is a guerrilla team. It has no office, and holds its meetings in a coffee shop. The founder and editor, Paul Bass, who spent most of his career at an alternative weekly, works from home or, occasionally, borrows a desk at a local Spanish-language newspaper.
In addition to state and city affairs, The Independent covers small-bore local news, lately doing a series of articles on people who face the loss of their homes to foreclosure.
With a budget of just $200,000, it has a small staff — some are paid less than $30,000 — and a small corps of freelancers and volunteer contributors. It does not sell ads, which Mr. Bass says would be impractical.
“There’s room for a whole range of approaches, and we’re living proof that you can do meaningful journalism very cheaply,” Mr. Bass said.
Crosscut.com, a local news site in Seattle, does reporting and commentary of its own, but also aggregates articles from other news sources. It began last year as a business, but is changing to nonprofit status.
VoiceofSanDiego took yet another approach, hiring a crew of young, hungry, full-time journalists, paying them salaries comparable to what they would make at large newspapers and relying less on freelancers. Mr. Donohue and Mr. Lewis earned $60,000 to $70,000 last year, according to the VoiceofSan Diego I.R.S. filings.
On a budget under $800,000 this year — almost $200,000 more than last year — everyone does double duty. Mr. Lewis writes a political column, and Mr. Donohue works on investigative articles. But the operation is growing and Mr. Woolley says he has become convinced that the nonprofit model has the best chance of survival.
“Information is now a public service as much as it’s a commodity,” he said. “It should be thought of the same way as education, health care. It’s one of the things you need to operate a civil society, and the market isn’t doing it very well.”
NYTimes Article published
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: November 17, 2008
A version of this article appeared in print on November 18, 2008, on page A1 of the New York edition
SAN DIEGO — Over the last two years, some of this city’s darkest secrets have been dragged into the light — city officials with conflicts of interest and hidden pay raises, affordable housing that was not affordable, misleading crime statistics.
Investigations ensued. The chiefs of two redevelopment agencies were forced out. One of them faces criminal charges. Yet the main revelations came not from any of San Diego’s television and radio stations or its dominant newspaper, The San Diego Union-Tribune, but from a handful of young journalists at a nonprofit Web site run out of a converted military base far from downtown’s glass towers — a site that did not exist four years ago.
As America’s newspapers shrink and shed staff, and broadcast news outlets sink in the ratings, a new kind of Web-based news operation has arisen in several cities, forcing the papers to follow the stories they uncover.
Here it is VoiceofSanDiego.org, offering a brand of serious, original reporting by professional journalists — the province of the traditional media, but at a much lower cost of doing business. Since it began in 2005, similar operations have cropped up in New Haven, the Twin Cities, Seattle, St. Louis and Chicago. More are on the way.
Their news coverage and hard-digging investigative reporting stand out in an Internet landscape long dominated by partisan commentary, gossip, vitriol and citizen journalism posted by unpaid amateurs.
The fledgling movement has reached a sufficient critical mass, its founders think, so they plan to form an association, angling for national advertising and foundation grants that they could not compete for singly. And hardly a week goes by without a call from journalists around the country seeking advice about starting their own online news outlets.
“Voice is doing really significant work, driving the agenda on redevelopment and some other areas, putting local politicians and businesses on the hot seat,” said Dean Nelson, director of the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. “I have them come into my classes, and I introduce them as, ‘This is the future of journalism.’ ”
That is a subject of hot debate among people who closely follow the newspaper industry. Publishing online means operating at half the cost of a comparable printed paper, but online advertising is not robust enough to sustain a newsroom.
And so financially, VoiceofSan Diego and its peers mimic public broadcasting, not newspapers. They are nonprofit corporations supported by foundations, wealthy donors, audience contributions and a little advertising.
New nonprofits without a specific geographic focus also have sprung up to fill other niches, like ProPublica, devoted to investigative journalism, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, which looks into problems around the world. A similar group, the Center for Investigative Reporting, dates back three decades.
But some experts question whether a large part of the news business can survive on what is essentially charity, and whether it is wise to lean too heavily on the whims of a few moneyed benefactors.
“These are some of the big questions about the future of the business,” said Robert H. Giles, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Nonprofit news online “has to be explored and experimented with, but it has to overcome the hurdle of proving it can support a big news staff. Even the most well-funded of these sites are a far cry in resources from a city newspaper.”
The people who run the local news sites see themselves as one future among many, and they have a complex relationship with traditional media. The say that the deterioration of those media has created an opening for new sources of news, as well as a surplus of unemployed journalists for them to hire.
“No one here welcomes the decline of newspapers,” said Andrew Donohue, one of two executive editors at VoiceofSanDiego. “We can’t be the main news source for this city, not for the foreseeable future. We only have 11 people.”
(Page 2 of 2)
Those people are almost all young, some of them refugees from older media. The executive editors, Mr. Donohue, 30, and Scott Lewis, 32, each had a few years of experience at small papers before abandoning newsprint. So far, their audience is tiny, about 18,000 monthly unique visitors, according to Quantcast, a media measurement service.
The biggest of the new nonprofit news sites, MinnPost in the Twin Cities and the St. Louis Beacon, can top 200,000 visitors in a month, but even that is a fraction of the Internet readership for the local newspapers.
VoiceofSanDiego’s site looks much like any newspaper’s, frequently updated with breaking news and organized around broad topics: government and politics, housing, economics, the environment, schools and science. It has few graphics, but plenty of photography and, through a partnership with a local TV station, some video.
But it is, of necessity, thin — strictly local, selective in what it covers and with none of the wire service articles that plump up most news sites.
VoiceofSanDiego grew out of a string of spectacular municipal scandals. City councilmen took bribes from a strip club owner, a mishandled pension fund drove the city to the brink of bankruptcy and city officials illegally covered up the crisis, to name a few.
A semiretired local businessman, Buzz Woolley, watched the parade of revelations, fraud charges and criminal convictions, seething with frustration. He was particularly incensed that the pension debacle had developed over several years, more or less in plain sight, but had received little news coverage.
“I kept thinking, ‘Who’s paying attention?’ ” Mr. Woolley recalled. “Why don’t we hear about this stuff before it becomes a disaster?’ ”
In 2004, his conversations with a veteran columnist, Neil Morgan, who had been fired by The Union-Tribune, led to the creation of VoiceofSanDiego, with Mr. Woolley as president, chief executive and, at first, chief financial backer.
Most of this new breed of news sites have a whiff of scruffy insurgency, but MinnPost, based in Minneapolis, resembles the middle-age establishment. Its founder and chief executive, Joel Kramer, has been the editor and publisher of The Star Tribune, of Minneapolis, and its top editors are refugees from that paper or its rival, The Pioneer Press in St. Paul.
MinnPost is rich compared with its peers — with a $1.5 million bankroll from Mr. Kramer and several others when it started last year, and a $1.3 million annual budget — and it has been more aggressive about selling ads and getting readers to donate.
The full-time editors and reporters earn $50,000 to $60,000 a year, Mr. Kramer said — a living wage, but less than they would make at the competing papers. MinnPost has just five full-time employees, but it uses more than 40 paid freelance contributors, allowing it to do frequent reporting on areas like the arts and sports.
If MinnPost is the establishment, The New Haven Independent is a guerrilla team. It has no office, and holds its meetings in a coffee shop. The founder and editor, Paul Bass, who spent most of his career at an alternative weekly, works from home or, occasionally, borrows a desk at a local Spanish-language newspaper.
In addition to state and city affairs, The Independent covers small-bore local news, lately doing a series of articles on people who face the loss of their homes to foreclosure.
With a budget of just $200,000, it has a small staff — some are paid less than $30,000 — and a small corps of freelancers and volunteer contributors. It does not sell ads, which Mr. Bass says would be impractical.
“There’s room for a whole range of approaches, and we’re living proof that you can do meaningful journalism very cheaply,” Mr. Bass said.
Crosscut.com, a local news site in Seattle, does reporting and commentary of its own, but also aggregates articles from other news sources. It began last year as a business, but is changing to nonprofit status.
VoiceofSanDiego took yet another approach, hiring a crew of young, hungry, full-time journalists, paying them salaries comparable to what they would make at large newspapers and relying less on freelancers. Mr. Donohue and Mr. Lewis earned $60,000 to $70,000 last year, according to the VoiceofSan Diego I.R.S. filings.
On a budget under $800,000 this year — almost $200,000 more than last year — everyone does double duty. Mr. Lewis writes a political column, and Mr. Donohue works on investigative articles. But the operation is growing and Mr. Woolley says he has become convinced that the nonprofit model has the best chance of survival.
“Information is now a public service as much as it’s a commodity,” he said. “It should be thought of the same way as education, health care. It’s one of the things you need to operate a civil society, and the market isn’t doing it very well.”
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Translator's introduction to "Gramophone, Film, Typewriter"
Eric Havlock - whose work on the Hellenic shift from orality to early literacy had become required reading for media and communication historians...
In 1962-63, five prominent text shedding lights on the role of oral communication appeared within twelve months.
In 1962-63, five prominent text shedding lights on the role of oral communication appeared within twelve months.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
News Articles related to Choi, Jinsil
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/world/asia/03actress.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=choi%20jin-sil&st=cse&oref=slogin
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/technology/internet/13suicide.html?scp=3&sq=choi%20jin-sil&st=cse
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/technology/internet/13suicide.html?scp=3&sq=choi%20jin-sil&st=cse
Friday, October 17, 2008
Order of Discourse
Text drawn from N. Fairclough's "The dialectics of discourse Textus" XIV.2 2001a, pages 231-242
Social practices networked in a particular way constitute a social order – for instance, the emergent neo-liberal global order referred to above, or at more local level, the social order of education in a particular society at a particular time. The discourse/semiotic aspect of a social order is what we can call an order of discourse. It is the way in which diverse genres and discourses and styles are networked together. An order of discourse is a social structuring of semiotic difference – a particular social ordering of relationships amongst different ways of making meaning, ie different discourse and genres and styles. One aspect of this ordering is dominance: some ways of making meaning are dominant or mainstream in a particular order of discourse, others are marginal, or oppositional, or ‘alternative’. For instance, there may be a dominant way to conduct a doctor-patient consultation in Britain, but there are also various other ways, which may be adopted or developed to a greater or lesser extent in opposition to the dominant way. The dominant way probably still maintains social distance between doctors and patients, and the authority of the doctor over the way interaction proceeds; but there are others ways which are more ‘democratic’, in which doctors play down their authority. The political concept of ‘hegemony’ can usefully be used in analyzing orders of discourse (Fairclough 1992, Laclau & Mouffe 1985) – a particular social structuring of semiotic difference may become hegemonic, become part of the legitimizing common sense which sustains relations of domination, but hegemony will always be contested to a greater or lesser extent, in hegemonic struggle. An order of discourse is not a closed or rigid system, but rather an open system, which is put at risk by what happens in actual interactions.
Social practices networked in a particular way constitute a social order – for instance, the emergent neo-liberal global order referred to above, or at more local level, the social order of education in a particular society at a particular time. The discourse/semiotic aspect of a social order is what we can call an order of discourse. It is the way in which diverse genres and discourses and styles are networked together. An order of discourse is a social structuring of semiotic difference – a particular social ordering of relationships amongst different ways of making meaning, ie different discourse and genres and styles. One aspect of this ordering is dominance: some ways of making meaning are dominant or mainstream in a particular order of discourse, others are marginal, or oppositional, or ‘alternative’. For instance, there may be a dominant way to conduct a doctor-patient consultation in Britain, but there are also various other ways, which may be adopted or developed to a greater or lesser extent in opposition to the dominant way. The dominant way probably still maintains social distance between doctors and patients, and the authority of the doctor over the way interaction proceeds; but there are others ways which are more ‘democratic’, in which doctors play down their authority. The political concept of ‘hegemony’ can usefully be used in analyzing orders of discourse (Fairclough 1992, Laclau & Mouffe 1985) – a particular social structuring of semiotic difference may become hegemonic, become part of the legitimizing common sense which sustains relations of domination, but hegemony will always be contested to a greater or lesser extent, in hegemonic struggle. An order of discourse is not a closed or rigid system, but rather an open system, which is put at risk by what happens in actual interactions.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
PAPER IDEA; Politics of memory in media representation of political debate
The Presidential Commission for Truth and Reconciliation
The Presidential Commission for Undocumented Deaths
The Presidential Commission for Undocumented Deaths
Hohendahl- Recasting Public Sphere
Habermas's theory of the public sphere responds rather directly to Koselleck's theory of the modern state, which he received from Carl Schmitt. Koselleck set out to demonstrate that the modern absolutist state, as it emerged during the religious wars of the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, constituted itself by denying any competing political authority and by depoliticizing its subjects. Moral and political decisions were clearly separated by removing morality from the political sphere. Only through this separation could the state guarantee the stability of the political order. For Koselleck, the project of the Enlightenment, on the other hand, consisted of an attempt by intellectuals (philosophers and critics) to undermine the authority of the state not so much through actions as through public discussion. The public sphere of the eighteenth century is the locus where, according to Koselleck, the moral criticism of private citizens challenges the authority of the state as sovereign decision maker. This criticism, although claimed to be strictly moral, has major political implications, namely the destruction of the state through a political revolution. In Koselleck's narrative, modern postrevolutionary societies have lost their secure foundations. Hence they are prone to chaotic upheavals caused by subjects who are no longer controlled by the proper authority of the state. From this perspective, democracy is a symptom of decline rather than the achievement of free and politically mature citizens. By the same token, Koselleck would interpret modern fascism as a consequence of democracy, not its principal opponent.
Unmistakably, Habermas's theory of the public sphere reworks Koselleck's narrative, using most of its building blocks: the concept of the absolutist state, the idea of moral criticism as the primary weapon against the state, the dichotomy of private and public, and the understanding of the Enlightenment project as a fundamental critique of authoritarian structures. Habermas, however, coming from the Hegelian-Marxist tradition of the Frankfurt School, reversed the trajectory of the narrative. Where Koselleck perceived decline (already during the eighteenth century), Habermas saw the beginning of modernity, containing the very project that was supposed to shape postwar Germany. This project he defined as the development of a postauthoritarian civil society, based on democratic political institutions. More specifically, he focused on the emergence of the public sphere in the eighteenth century and its subsequent transformation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to offer a historically grounded analysis of the viability and the limitations of democracy after World War II.
Essentially, Habermas links the decline of the public sphere to a new entwinement of state and society during the late nineteenth century. While the state increasingly takes over social functions, social organizations, which are by nature private, tend to participate in the political process. As a result, political decisions, which are supposed to be prepared in the public sphere, turn into a bargaining process between social organizations (Verbinde) and administrative organizations. These arrangements result in a depoliticization of the public sphere. When administrative and representative organizations such as Berufsverbdnde (professional organizations) closely cooperate in the legislative process, the political participation of the citizens is reduced to a few formal acts. The public sphere as a space for critical debate and a locus for political opposition, as Habermas argues, has been emptied of its former substance. Public opinion, the classic control mechanism of early liberal theory, is no longer the result of rational debate but the product of publicity. "Publicity work is aimed at strengthening the prestige of one's own position without making the matter on which a compromise is to be achieved itself a topic of the public discussion. Organizations and functionaries display representation."14 In short, public opin- ion is largely manipulated for the purpose of working out compromises between state and society.
The incident in Hoyerswerda, where right-wing youths attacked and burned a building in which foreigners were temporarily housed, demonstrated in no uncertain terms that for a segment of the German population physical violence has replaced the willingness to enter public debate.
While Habermas's theory of the public sphere had no room for a multicultural society, it did discuss, as we have seen, the transformation of the bourgeois public sphere under the conditions of the social welfare state. Habermas's contribution is particularly remarkable because it was formulated before the serious economic crises of the seventies and eighties.
The social crises of the seventies and early eighties resulted in the marginalization of the unemployed, the old, and the handicapped. To these groups we have to add millions of foreign workers and political refugees who for the most part were not German citizens and therefore, especially during a period of crisis, not accepted as social equals.
Unmistakably, Habermas's theory of the public sphere reworks Koselleck's narrative, using most of its building blocks: the concept of the absolutist state, the idea of moral criticism as the primary weapon against the state, the dichotomy of private and public, and the understanding of the Enlightenment project as a fundamental critique of authoritarian structures. Habermas, however, coming from the Hegelian-Marxist tradition of the Frankfurt School, reversed the trajectory of the narrative. Where Koselleck perceived decline (already during the eighteenth century), Habermas saw the beginning of modernity, containing the very project that was supposed to shape postwar Germany. This project he defined as the development of a postauthoritarian civil society, based on democratic political institutions. More specifically, he focused on the emergence of the public sphere in the eighteenth century and its subsequent transformation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to offer a historically grounded analysis of the viability and the limitations of democracy after World War II.
Essentially, Habermas links the decline of the public sphere to a new entwinement of state and society during the late nineteenth century. While the state increasingly takes over social functions, social organizations, which are by nature private, tend to participate in the political process. As a result, political decisions, which are supposed to be prepared in the public sphere, turn into a bargaining process between social organizations (Verbinde) and administrative organizations. These arrangements result in a depoliticization of the public sphere. When administrative and representative organizations such as Berufsverbdnde (professional organizations) closely cooperate in the legislative process, the political participation of the citizens is reduced to a few formal acts. The public sphere as a space for critical debate and a locus for political opposition, as Habermas argues, has been emptied of its former substance. Public opinion, the classic control mechanism of early liberal theory, is no longer the result of rational debate but the product of publicity. "Publicity work is aimed at strengthening the prestige of one's own position without making the matter on which a compromise is to be achieved itself a topic of the public discussion. Organizations and functionaries display representation."14 In short, public opin- ion is largely manipulated for the purpose of working out compromises between state and society.
The incident in Hoyerswerda, where right-wing youths attacked and burned a building in which foreigners were temporarily housed, demonstrated in no uncertain terms that for a segment of the German population physical violence has replaced the willingness to enter public debate.
While Habermas's theory of the public sphere had no room for a multicultural society, it did discuss, as we have seen, the transformation of the bourgeois public sphere under the conditions of the social welfare state. Habermas's contribution is particularly remarkable because it was formulated before the serious economic crises of the seventies and eighties.
The social crises of the seventies and early eighties resulted in the marginalization of the unemployed, the old, and the handicapped. To these groups we have to add millions of foreign workers and political refugees who for the most part were not German citizens and therefore, especially during a period of crisis, not accepted as social equals.
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