Public-Private Relations in Totalitarian States

194 Pages·2011·2.461 MB·English

by  Gabriel A. Barhaim

Public-Private
Relations
in
TOTALITARIAN
STATES

Public-Private
Relations
in
TOTALITARIAN
STATES
Gabriel A. Barhaim
First published 2012 by Transaction Publishers
Published 2017 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2011017763
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barhaim, Gabriel A.
Public-private relations in totalitarian states / Gabriel A. Barhaim.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-4128-4260-0
1. Totalitarianism. 2. Social Order. 3. Politics and culture. I. Title.
JC480.B36123 2011
320.53—dc23
2011017763
ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-4260-0 (hbk)
For Itamar and Yael

Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Part I: Contemporary Cultures 1
1 Popular Culture: A Conception of a Vulnerable
Social Order 3
2 Global Culture: Th e Quest for World
Self-Emancipation Prospects and Diffi culties 31
3 Media Charisma and Global Culture:
Th e Experience of East-Central Europe 47
Part II: Th e Crises of Rituals and Rituals in Times of Crises 67
4 Anomie and the Crisis of the Ritual: Th e Rise
of Network Culture 69
5 Rituals of Political Purifi cation in East-Central
Europe after the Fall of Communism 81
Part III: Th e Empowered Public Sphere 119
6 Th e Exposure of Private Sphere to Public Moralities
and the Conditions Favoring Conformism 121
7 Th e Public Sphere as a Metanetwork Space 139
8 Th e Imbalance in Public/Private Relations in
Totalitarian States and the Ensuing Cultural Resistance 155
Index 171

Preface and
Acknowledgments
Culture, I argue, comments, guides and refl ects the ever-changing
social. It is its work of meanings behind the unfolding social drama
that resonates in the fate of an individual’s life. Culture is like an in-
dispensable mobile refl ector that without its projected light, the social
would not make sense. In its rotations it enlightens the quasi-chaotic
social kaleidoscope into endless commentaries.
A cultural analysis as I have applied it in this book, should explore
both the mode of intertwinement between social and culture as well
as the emerging value orientations. It examines both the dialectics
between the two domains as well as the emanating context of ideas
that is produced. Th e analysis weighs both the interplay between
the two fi elds as well as the derivative knowledge constitution. For
example, it attempts to both understand the interaction between the
public/private relations of totalitarian states and their typical offi cial
culture as well as the ensuing of a liberating discourse of resistance.
Th at is, the in-depth look at public-private relations in totalitarian
states, is concurrently a close look at a cultural understanding of such
societies.
Th e book is an attempt to challenge certain imperative issues and
ideas that I have perceived as valuable enough to be refl ected upon.
It has turned out that these issues, as all social ones, are ambiguous
and amorphous in nature, as well as historically conditioned which
made them diffi cult to be interpersonally reasoned. Further, I construe
the present Western societies as restless, temporal and often disori-
ented ones that await to be unraveled. Frequently, I have realized that
the use of the available conceptual apparatus that can be critically
applied as part of the analysis is limited, often faulty and reifi ed.
Th is book is the result of an eff ort to rise above the particular, to
observe concerns from an alienated viewpoint, to reveal the underlying
ix