著者

権 安理

出版者

経済社会学会

雑誌

経済社会学会年報 (ISSN:09183116)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.39, pp.14-23, 2017 (Released:2021-04-01)

---

In the event that privatization and individualization become serious, what kind of “publicness” could be asked for and reconstructed? In light of such considerations, this paper presents the following two theoretical issues. The first is to reconsider Hannah Arendt's ideas about public space and clarify the theoretical importance of her concept of “ the common world.” Previous studies discussing Arendt's notion of the common world have tended to emphasize its republican aspect. For example, Michael J. Sandel quoted Arendt’s mention of the common world in the context of defending “a politics of the common good” that asks members for obligations and loyalty to the community―but is it possible to interpret Arendt’s concept from a perspective other than the republican view? This paper re-examines the concept of the common world. The second issue is to clarify that the common world is significant in considering publicness in the twenty-first century society. The prevalence of civil society theory in political philosophy since the 1990s produced a large volume of discourse on publicness, most of it addressing the question “what is it and what should it be?” However, in recent years, such discourse has become rare, and publicness has been drawing attention from a different point of view: the creation of public or common spaces through the reuse of buildings. For example, when utilizing public facilities that are no longer needed for their original purpose, such as defunct schools, or creating shared housing by refurbishing vacant houses, there is a tendency to make and revitalize spaces to be shared by various people. This paper focuses on this point and presents a rationale for the trend based on Arendt’s concept of the common world.