A little more on Dean and Habermas

I'm sitting here racking my brain attempting to figure out how I can make a comment on Jodi Dean's scholarly critique of Jurgen Habermas's theory/notion/concept of the public sphere interesting, readable, and enjoyable. I sense the task is simply not possible. So rather I'll attempt to boil Dean's work down to something that's brief.

As I see the public sphere after reading Dean is that it's a way of conceiving how life works in democracy. Habermas modeled his concept of the public sphere on the 'table societies' of France, England, and Germany. These were groups of literary elites - writers and publishers of letters - who sat around drinking coffee and talking about the concerns of the day. As I read Dean, their concerns were twofold. First, being they were blokes, what was going on at home, and secondly, being they were supposedly intelligent debaters, what was going on with the state and the economy. Because they were also writers they concerned themselves with holding at bay the power of the state - a bit like a bunch of bike riders sitting around debating whether the state can tell them to wear helmets. They were also worried about the encroachment of the economy on their lives, kind of like the way people get passionate about the merits of extended trading hours or developing the foreshore.

Dean saw this model of society as problematic. For a starter, you'll notice that there were no women mentioned in the examples given above. That's the way the table societies started. Blokes talking about blokey things. As the years progressed these gender-biased discourses became institutionalised in a way that not only was it difficult for women to be involved in the debate without becoming 'blokey', it became almost impossible to even question what subjects were worth debating and how they should be debated in the first place. For Dean, Habermas's reliance on rational debate and critical dialogue was simply too stifling, too restrictive, and too dull. It had to be thrown out.

So Dean, along with other scholars, proposed the notion of civil society. Rather than seeing power coming from outside, as in the way the public sphere tries to keep the power at bay, she sees power, with all its messiness, coming from inside civil society. She sees civil society (and Dean would probably kill me for this) as a great big melting pot of difference, and diversity, and styles of self-expression, a site of "relationships of recognition" (p. 236).

If I've butchered Dean's critique in these few words, or made light of it, I don't mean to; her work provides promise and hope for the future of democracy and society. And if I have provided a misguided understanding of these important concepts, please feel free to make a comment.

After all, this very forum is civil society.

Footnote: this post was originally published on Curtin's webct.

The Formation of Objects | Michel Foucault

Commentary on The Formation of Objects that's slightly easier to read than the original.

Civil society: Beyond the public sphere | Jodi Dean

This is a review of a book chapter from Jodi Dean (2006) in which she argues for a move beyond the Habermasian notion of the public sphere to a differentiated model of civil society that allows for far greater multiplicity and diversity. Dean argues that clinging to the notion of the public sphere works against the development of new understanding.

Dean refers to an influential work by Cohen and Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory in which they established the concept of civil society as being "institutionalized components of the lifeworld (p. 221)"; and it is through these institutions that individuals mediate their social lives with "state and economic systems." She proposes that Cohen and Arato establish that the state and the economy are essential for means for integration, organisation, and material reproduction in complex modern societies.

Cohen and Arato establish, Dean believes, a model of civil society based on legtitimised democracy which itself relies on an ethics of discourse and communicative action and a basic set of human rights standards. A concept of a modern, functioning democracy must then include differentiated discursive spheres each with institutionalised procedures for democratically based decision making.

Dean suggests that Cohen and Arato's notion of civil society "presents itself as a powerful normative ideal" rather than simply a category ready for empirical research. They achieve this through emphasising in their description broad categories that contain general normative appeal in a modern democratic society: "plurality, publicity, privacy, and legality"; with the latter providing the essential protection for the individual right to participate in democratic decision making and the ability for institutions to act independently of both the economy and the state (see note 1).

However, Dean contends that the Habermasian notion of the public sphere, a "communicatively generated space" (p. 221) contained within the institutions of civil society, becomes normative, whilst the notion of civil society becomes merely descriptive, being made up of normative categories. In other words the institutions which make up civil society create the location in which the public sphere may form and develop. Civil society is structural, the public sphere is communicative. Dean argues that the resurgence in the concept of civil society and the corresponding critiques of the public sphere together demand that the concept of the latter must be replaced by the former.

Dean next sets out how she sees Habermas developing the notion of the public shere; a way to describe the most conducive conditions in which private individuals could meet and discuss matters of public interest free from power effects of state authority. She notes the manner in which the concept of the public sphere traces it's roots from the emergence of the public sphere away from the ruling classes to that of the private forming a public. The formation of the literary public sphere, institutionalised through the "table societies" of France, England, and Germany became spaces in which members of this new public could meet in critical discourse to debate issues previously off limits, reflect on matters of public interest; and the strength of one's argument contributed to one's influence, not one's pedigree. Whilst the literary public formed itself as a public, in turn they were aware of being part of a much larger public of all private people.


Dean demonstrates the genesis of Habermas's notion of the public sphere observing the importance his reliance on the history of the move away from a public sphere that was representative of the power of the ruling class to a public sphere that formed when private people came together to form a public. It is in these public spaces in which issues of governance, rules, and regulations with regard markets and work were debated. From these publics came self-governance, constitutions that enshrined the notion that power comes from the people, freedom of the press and of property exchange, and the limits of the authority of the state. Additionally, these moves that created Habermas's public sphere also saw the creation of institutions that formalised the importance of critical debate as an essential part of the organisation of society.

The public sphere, therefore, whilst favouring the economic interests of a class of property owner, creates a protection against the encroachment of the power of the state and also formalise the centrality of "critical-rational debate" for the organisation of society (p. 223).

Dean goes on to explain that much of what us debated in the literary public originates from the very private concerns of the "patriarchal conjugal family" (p. 224). Concerns and ideals of the family become for Habermas ideals for the experience of humanity itself; and as expressed in literary form these ideals took the form of published collections of letters, hence providing the bourgeois public sphere with a subjectivity rooted in the presence of an audience.

Habermas, Dean suggests, outlines the ideals of "equality, reflexivity, and inclusivity" (p. 224) required for the existence of critical-rational debate in the bourgeois public sphere. From the normative basis of these ideals Habermas analyses the infiltration of the public sphere by the power of media manipulated by economic interests and self-interested agenda driven political organisations.

Dean proposes that Habermas refined his analysis by suggesting that the ideals present in the bourgeois public sphere - equality, reflexivity, and inclusivity - were also evident in the background to the communicative practices that give structure to the lifeworld. He also posited, she believed, that the encroachment of power actually occurred through business and governments gradual colonization of the lifeworld. These two refinements allowed Habermas to explain how it was that critical public debate was able to hold at bay the gradual invasion of systems into the lifeworld.

However, Dean is critical of Habermas's position on the grounds of his over-simplification of the concept of the public sphere and the manner in which he invoked an all pervasive public sphere with highly generalised norms. Citing examples of a black public sphere, Dean claims that many 'publics' may exist, each with a different set of norms to the bourgeois 'public'; and this she believes to be the flaw in Habermas's notion of a homogenous bourgeois public sphere.

Critising Habermas on the grounds of his failure to recognise the manner in which women have been excluded from a gender biased public sphere, Dean proposes that, despite his explanation that the very nature of the public was that it be able reflexively create its own self-transformation, his conception of the bourgeois public sphere represses sexual difference because of its very origins - the literary public sphere and the patriarchal family - both of which share ideals that tend to exclude women from the discourse.

Flowing from such gender-biased norms come a set of norms which intrinsically favour men she claims. Not only must women struggle to prove themselves in a manner that is often masculine, the rules of the game are set up to favour the male and the masculine agenda, something over which women have had little influence and can have little influence without increasing their felt sense of 'otherness'.

Dean is keen to labour the point that the literary public sphere, born as it was from sphere of the patriarchal family, created an environment where women were excluded from the process by which these bourgeois public spheres developed, with their primary contribution to society being in the matter of the home. Women had been constitutively excluded and this denies them the opportunity to be involved in communicative action that leads, as it does, to influence in a properly instituted democracy.

Finally, Dean critiques Habermas on the basis of the notion of the subject. She contends that Habermas was far too inclined to imagine the subject being far too audience oriented - a throwback to literary times when men of letters were constantly aware of the audience critique - and this she believes creates a subjugated rather than commnunicative subject. For Dean, Habermas's notion of the subject misses the complexities of nuance in the creation of any subjectivity.

Dean then moves on to the development of the concept of civil society and suggests that a decentred notion of society becomes possible through the adoption of the notion of the civil society. Again criticising Habermas, Dean believes that his move toward a view of society reliant on the "presuppositions of communicative action" (p. 228) left his theories without a time and place in which necessary discourse might occur; and this she contends despite Habermas's notion of the lifeworld which she thought was far too reliant on the background of communication to be a support for increased rationality.

Proceeding to the development of the concept of civil society, Dean suggests that Cohen and Arato's model of civil society, in which allow for the discussion of norms and values through structures of "institutionalized discourses and procedures of democratic decision making" (p. 229). Their model is one that stresses plurality in a multiplicity of possible publics; and this plurality is essential for a working model of democratic society.

Dean believes that, in addition to the institutionalisation of discourse across the many domains, spaces, and locations of society creating a more de-centred concept of society, the notion of civil society also brings with it a move away from the gendered nature of private and public spaces to one that is much more diverse and much less homogenising. In fact, she contends, even the boundaries between what is private and what is public are open for rational debate in this new model. Arising from these constantly shifting boundaries of the private and public, she claims there no longer exists the imperative for the public spaces to repress difference to the confines of the private. Rather, she contends "difference is already assumed as an aspect of institutionalised discourses in civil society and protected via a variety of rights" (p. 231, emphasis mine).

Additionally Dean believes that the notion of civil society points to an environment in which individuals can be expressive of alternate and fragile forms of identity whilst having the support of networks of association able to support their self-conception. Such a belief brings Dean to question why we still require the concept of the public sphere; a product of critical theory which she contends fails to acknowledge the "multiplicity and diversity in postconventional societies" (p. 231).

In answering that question Dean critiques Benhabib who proposes the importance of a strong notion of the public sphere in order to create institutionalised deliberative democracy. Whilst conceding the importance of regulation being not designed to benefit the few, she maintains that Benhabib, in creating a universalistic public space, misses out on the benefits of diverse minority points of view and become tied, once again to top down politics and lose the opportunity for the experience of new forms and locations for debate. Instead Dean prefers to conceive not of defining the boundaries of what is or is not the public sphere through the rigours of the rules of discourse, but rather to encourage the messiness, diversity, and fascination that is the concept of civil society.

For Dean, "simply "[a]dding an "s" to the public sphere" (p. 233) doesn't cut the mustard. She commends that the concept of 'a' or 'the' public sphere, by its very nature, excludes some at the expense of others; and this does not match with her conception of a truly multi-variant inter-dependent society of associations and relationships. Suggesting a move away from "a strict focus on communicative rationality" she commends the importance of respect for the many and varied ways humans might chose to identify, and encouraging people to see the disadvantage created by defining and categorising people in terms of already established norms.

The advantage of Habermas's theory says Dean is that the public sphere provides a protection or barrier against the encroachment of the systemising effects of the state and economy. It's purpose Dean suggests is to become the last line of defense against the relentless attack of these economic and state institutions against the intimacy of the private moments of the lifeworld. However this position, Dean believes, fundamentally relies on the primacy and importance of the power of communicative rationality, on which she maintains Habermas relies far too heavily, and further, that power comes from without and does not previously exist within ""public" discourses" (p. 234).

Dean is eager to make the point that Habermas's notion of the public sphere was far too rigid and far too mono-linguistic in its approach to the conception of society. She believes, and states in powerful manner, that his reliance on communnicative rationality created a model of society that failed to incorporate the many and varied means and styles of communication that exist in civil society. For Dean, the danger in following the letter, rather than the spirit, of the law was that such a move tends to marginalise some languages, and some forms of communication and could tend to damage and exclude individuals taking advantage of alternate modes of expression.

Queer politics is an example, Dean claims, of people being disaffected by the dominant discourse of society. She refers here to the necessity for lesbians and gay men to "come out" as their only form option in order to achieve recognition, representation, and privacy - a fact clearly disregards their essential human rights. And it is this fight that Dean believes should never be required, rather it is the very discourse of identity creation that should be addressed in order to give minority groups of all forms an opportunity for self-expression without the constraints currently experienced.

Dean concludes her critique of the public sphere with a look at what might be next; and here she sees a notion of civil society "as the site of relationships of recognition" (p. 236). Habermas, through his strict reliance on the rules of rational communication, effectively relagated personal harms, which are usually unspoken, out of the field of rationality to something beyond the public sphere. This for Dean is a problematic position in that it tends to allow injury to another; however, employing the concept of civil society, these unspoken harms can be brought to the surface and be dealt with. Civil society, therefore, "constitutes the wider terrain with which relationships of recognition are situated, institutionalised, and interconnected" (p. 237).

One of the problems Dean sees with the concept of the public sphere is the way in which power was always seen to be external. According to Dean a conception of civil society must include the notion of power as an integral part of the concept, after all relationships, be they individual or association, are never equal.

This inequality leads to a struggle for recognition by people excluded from society or against pre-existing systems that privilege the few. A site of recognition, she suggests, recognise these asymmetries allowing for the creation of new and unique personal identities that might arise from them, and to critique the harms that may arise from them. In this way, she explains, political struggle becomes a representation of the very deepest parts of who we are as human beings and does not require the establishment of minority groups or the all-pervasive power of an ethics of discourse.

Power, Dean believes, is integral to, and flows from civil societies inclusion of difference; and these differences are always indicative of a relationship even where the motivations behind them may be unclear. Differences are the primary characteristic of relationships and therefore something to be valued.

In civil society, unlike the disembodied nature of agents in the public sphere, individuals can suffer physical harm; and it is this risk that behooves all to act in a way that recognises our inter-relationship in order to reduce the possibility of harms to another.

Notes

1. It may be worth looking at the institutions to which Cohen and Arato refer here to see how their independence from the economy occurs. With so many modern institutions, by which I imagine sporting clubs and social groups, being driven by the dictates of the economy, one wonders how this independence is achieved. Arguably the largest group of institutions of civil society are workplace institutions in which people regularly engage in civic discourse. These organisations are far from autonomous to the economy. That having been said it could be argued that families are an institution autonomous to both the state and the economy; and the protection of human rights and the ability to participate in the democratic process as a result of a legal framework is important for the achievement of "both self-realization and self-determination" (p. 221).
   

Dean, J. (1996). Civil Society: Beyond the Public Sphere. The handbook of critical theory. D. Rasmussen. Oxford, Blackwell Publishers: 220-242.

Deconstructing queer theory | Steven Seidman

Seidman (1995) believes that the discourse of what it means to be gay or lesbian has changed, particularly since the 1970's. Up until that point it was common for intellectuals, and the gay community, to position homosexuality as condition that was both universal and natural; hence the convenience of the term "the gay brain". However, intellectual argument has since progressed to an understanding of homosexuality that is grounded in a social and historical perspective.

For many in the gay community, this position is problematic. Whereas "essentialism" allows for the creation of politics around the unifying categorisation of "homosexual", the growing "constructionist" movement brought into question the binary nature of the friend versus foe of the homosexual movement. As this binary broke down so to did the "solidarity" of the gay and lesbian community with a corresponding loss of clarity in the gay community voice.

Queer theory, he contends, is a way to counter the normative effects of both mainstream gay and hetero politics. Whilst the radical position it holds can tend toward the creation of a politics of anarchy, the author notes that it can also create a radical pluralistic democratic position.

Sediman outlines how he sees the historical development of queer theory from the late 1960's through to the early 1990's including the development of a "liberationist" movement that argued against the narrow constraints of a "genital-centered" notion of what it was to be gay or lesbian. Through the 1970's and 1980's Seidman claims, the gay and lesbian movement matured in terms of its position as an action movement through to the development of an established and influential political apparatus which, in turn lead to the increasing popularity of prominent gay and lesbian cultural figures who were instrumental in supporting the development of mainstream gay culture. At the same time, claims Seidman, research into what it meant to be homosexual became common-place in the academic community, and it was this research that unearthed the discovery that the idea that homosexuality and identity were inextricably linked - a concept conveniently popularised by the mainstream gay community - was found to be something of a recent, "Western historical event, not a universal condition." These academics soon found favour with mainstream media outlets and publishing houses providing an outlet for their research with access to a wider community audience. Finally, Seidman claims, queer theory, the product of a new form of intellectual elite who reference "French poststructural theory and the critical method of deconstuction" and who share a common language and culture, is becoming ever more influential in "gay intellectual culture and politics".

Whilst gains have been made in terms of equality for gay-identified groups and individuals, Seidman argues that the very factor that helped unify the gay community - a politics of identity based around a homosexual subject - has successfully been argued away by the new academic leaders in the queer theorists.

Seidman believes that literary texts are predicated on "foundational symbolic figures" by which he refers to all those binary categories of social organisation with which we have become so familiar such as male/female and hetero/homosexual. It is the goal of literary criticism to deconstruct and destabilise these binaries through exposing their arbitrary nature and thus remove their power and influence in society. It is for this reason, he says, that queer theory has become so influential and important theory.

In the same way as differences continue to emerge, and prejudices develop, while ever individuals are seen as black or white, seeing people as essentially gay serves to further entrench existing power structures. Seidman suggests that normalising and legitimating gayness and homosexuality, whether that be by way of essentialist or cultural methods, simply serves to entrench the power structures that are reinforced through the maintenance of the homo/hetro binary. It is this structure, he argues, that continues to maintain a politics of control, discipline, and domination over a minority; and this he sees as being unhealthy.

Seidman goes on to add that this binary view of identity that is caused by a homo/hetro conception of identity, excludes other forms of legitimate sexual preference that does not neatly fall into one or the other categories; and it would be expected that people choosing to avail themselves of these other forms of sexual orientation may well feel disenfranchised by the problems created by the homo/hetero binary - rather like a person without a national identity.

Seidman, relying on the works of Fuss (1991), suggests that identity is created as a way of affirming that which we are not; the other - that which we are not - is an ever present shadow though, becoming evident at the limits and outer edge of our self-identity. In this manner, he argues, the specter of a gay other is present in all hetero identifying individuals and vice versa. Put simply, the creation of an individuals identity through the agency of sexual orientation is simply a means by which we create our boundaries with which to keep the other out. It is these boundaries he claims that are the ones in urgent need of review in order to break down the politics of identity brought about through the politics of the binary hetero/homo world view.

Seeing parallels between queer theory and the works of Marx and feminist theorists, Seidman contends that queer theory is an important addition to the thinking about politics and culture. Again referring to Fuss, Seidman suggests that the goal of queer theory is to destabilise the hold which gay theory, and the hetero/homo binary, has produced as a means of discipline and control in society. Seidman questions though the benefits that may be gained from such a destabilsation. How might such a project play out in the real world? He notes that another prominent queer theorist, Eve Sedgwick, is aware of the limitations and problems with the deconstructionist ideals of the queer theory movement. Whilst the method may have internal validity, it resides in a deep and complex web of social entanglements that involve numerous binaries which are hardly likely to be untangled overnight.

Seidman goes on to opine that essentially, queer theory and gay theory amount to attempting to achieve similar ends through different means. In the case of queer theory a politics of difference is encouraged through a radically pluralistic vision of democracy where diversity is sought without limits. However, he notes, the political aspirations of queer theorists have not yet been fully articulated and furthermore, they have failed to explain how their radical view of identity and sexual behaviour might be played out in the real world.

References

Fuss, D. (1991). Inside/out: lesbian theories, gay theories. New York: Routledge.

Seidman, S. (1995). Deconstructing queer theory, or the under-theorization of the social and ethical In , Social Postmodernism: Beyond Identity Politics (pp. 116-141). Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

How business use blogs to create fear

There are many reported instances of employees being fired for blogging. All too often these cases become very public. Partly as a result of the public nature of a private blog, and partly as a result of the surveillance methods used by corporations, employees are understandably fearful of being too public about their discussions about there work.

However, according to Bruce Barry in an interview on Business Week, such a situation is unhealthy for society. Whilst he agrees that it's quite within the legal rights of an employer to keep a watch on what is said about their company through a variety of surveillance methods, he questions whether this is wise business practice. He points out that employees have been gathering around water coolers and in other private public places discussing their work for decades. He argues that blogs are simply a new form of water cooler (my term not his) and as such bosses should be a little more circumspect when responding to blog posts. After all, he believes, blogs are simply old speech in a new setting.

Barry's views very much accord with my own view of blogging. Whilst my hypothesis is that blogs are conducted as a means to personal emancipation, the act of recognising the message beyond the words of a blog post is a skill that upcoming managers do well to develop. By reducing or eliminating fear in the workplace managers and leaders improve the relationships they have with their employees and thus improve the conditions for productivity and team cohesion.

Is this the final draft of my thesis statement?

How do employees use private blogs for personal emancipation?

This sentence is the next draft of my thesis statement, and hopefully my last (although once I speak with my supervisor I'm sure this wish will prove to be in vane).

Here's my thoughts on the question. Firstly, it's tightly focussed on employees and their use of private blogs. By that definition I exclude social networking sites and other self-publication platforms. Why? These platforms are owned by corporations which have their own level of censorship. After all, even on this blog, which is operated on a Blogger platform owned by Google, someone who takes offense at my posts can report the blog to Google and, if the company thinks fit, the blog can be taken off line. Much more then is this the case on the likes of MySpace and Facebook. There are other reasons for focusing on private blogs. Unlike Facebook, which is known as a walled garden, tucked away from the prying eye of search engine indexing, private blogs are generally search engine friendly. In other words, they are effectively designed to not only allow personal publication, but be efficiently located by a public interested in their subject matter.

Secondly, I focus here on the matter of personal emancipation. Personal emancipation suggests a struggle on the part of an individual for the improvement of the self through political and social equality. How does this struggle show up in real life on a private blog? Examples such as Dooce (Heather Armsotrong) and QueenofSky - prominent examples of employees who blogged privately and ended up getting fired as a result - demonstrated, subsequent to their dismissal, a very clear passion for their own development and a desire to not let their experiences be wasted in a struggle for fairness and equality. In fact, Armstrong presents an ongoing theme of struggle to escape the effects of growing up in a Mormon household, and in some parts of her blog the anger boils to the surface in a natural and vigorous manner.

The struggle for equality and recognition often appears in the relationship with other key life figures by which I refer to employers who may become substitute parents (this is an issue I wish to stay clear of in my thesis as I am far from qualified to comment on the matter) and who must deal with an employees personal struggles in the context of an employment relationship. As in both cases, and particularly that of Dooce, it could well be argued that, rather than the individuals in question being corporate rebels and misfits, they were simply seeking to find and refine their own boundaries through self-publication and engagement with authority figures.

Why is this at all important? What benefits could arise from such an exploration? For a start a more enlightened view of free speech in a corporate setting may go a long way to improving the relationships between employees and employers. Often the real message is lost in the translation and enlightened managers do well to look beyond what was said or done to the unspoken, unwritten code many layers below the surface. At a broader level I hope that the research might spark some debate about how relevant censorship is in an organisation and whether it's costs far outweigh it's effects in the long run. Perhaps surveillance and censorship may be the seeds of a far too fertile crop of distrust and resentment that yields an abundance of inefficiency and lost productivity.

I'm keen to hear or read your comments.

The end of the pubic space on the internet?

The point is made that the initial hopes for the Internet was that it would become a "grand "public forum"" in which free speech, at least in the US, would be given the very highest protection; however during the development of the Internet, the US government was influenced to hand over the regulation of the Internet to private organisations. Effectively these grand public spaces have become owned commercial spaces under the control of their various owners. As a result, the government is no longer able to protect the rights of free speech in these privately owned commercial spaces. The promise of the Internet, that it would become a grand publci space has all but been lost. At least in real space we have the opportunity of both private and public speech, but in a commercially owned space, much of this balance is lost.

The authors claim that "[o]n the Intemet, however, essentially no places exist to serve as "pub-
lic forums" because the places within which expression occurs are over-whelmingly privately owned." However they appear to ignore, or make light of, the existence of private blogs, particularly those using freely available, publicly developed software such as WordPress. Whilst there argument may be that the files making up the blog are hosted by a privately owned ISP, and therefore subject to the private censorship of the ISP, the experience of the private blogger is that, utilising such software, they are quite free to say whatever they chose.

If their argument is that there are essentially no public spaces on the Internet in or on which individuals can avail themselves of the opportunity for uncensored free speech, then the nature of private blogs must be questioned. If they are not public spaces, then at what point do they become commercially owned spaces. It is understandable to say that private blogs on MySpace or Blogger - controlled and censored as they are by their corporate owners - are the subject of corporate censorship of free speech. Just how a private blog, hosted on an individual's own domain, and regulated only very minimally by the regulations of the ISP - which could be a very liberal overseas ISP - is regulated by commercial interests is not made clear.

It is this unusual nature of a private blog, one of the few remaining platforms for free speech, that is so interesting for this research. If employees attempt to use a corporate blog to create organisational change they must inevitably come up against the power of the corporate censors. On a private blog, they are free to say whatever they chose. Inevitably corporations will attempt to broaden their domain and sphere of influence into the world of the private blog if it is thought that their interests are not being served by the employee. Their attempts to do so will be by way of employment contracts that consider a variety of censorship options aimed at the regulation of the otherwise free speech of employees, including that of private blogging, and employees will continue to test these censorship limits.

As a footnote to this short review, it is worth noting that the article is very US focussed with a very detailed legal examination of the First Amendment rights of free speech in the United States. There are many countries in which no such amendment exists (Australia is one such example); and it is worthwhile examining the nature of private blogs and the use to which they are put by employees.

THE DEATH OF THE PUBLIC FORUM IN
CYBERSPACE
By Dawn C. Nunziato
downloaded from http://web.ebscohost.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/ehost/pdf?vid=27&hid=8&sid=0a5b81f3-76eb-4ab1-95b8-57abec0b1014%40sessionmgr2
on 4th March 2008

Soldier's blogs censored by the US military

Tatum Lytle has produced an excellent article (subscription required for this link, but can also be found here) about the manner in which the US (and one would assume other administrations to have done the same) military has censored and stopped a number of US military personnel from blogging about their experiences in Iraq and other theatres of war. Such a move is hardly surprising. After all there are a number of unique reasons why giving too much information away. Placing too much information in the hands of the enemy can endanger lives and create unnecessary risks. However the military appear to have gone further than simply shutting down blogs that contain too much operational information. The article suggests that there are a number of instances where the rights of the individual of free speech has been violated; and this has often been with the support of the US judicial system.

What Lytle does well is build her case based on a very detailed understanding of the ways soldiers are using blogs and of the way the military and the courts are prosecuting adherence to rules and regulations. What would be of interest is to find out where she comes from in terms of philosophical underpinning. Lytle appears to accept that the US courts are the final umpire and the precedents they set therefore become the final arbiter of the issue. I think Lytle could have helped the issue further by addressing more fundamental issues of humanity and the rights to personal sovereignty. Does the US military, or a any corporation or organisation for that matter, have the right to control the free speech of a human. How does this control come about? These are matters probably not within the scope of Lytle's article but would make for interesting research nonetheless.

A soldier's blog: balancing service members' personal rights vs. national security interests

Lytle, Tatum H. Federal Communications Law Journal • June, 2007