I have previously mentioned attending a recent conference on publics and problems at Westminster, where I talked to a forthcoming paper titled Theorising emergent public spheres – well, it is now published, which is nice. The paper works through some ideas about how to think about the values of publicness, in relation to various issues arising from South African politics and public culture. I try to use the South African examples as occasions to think about how the values associated with  publicness always arise in contexts of ‘extension’, and therefore of transformation and translation, and not just of ‘application’ (the paper doesn’t actually put in like that though).

This paper sits alongside another one, more explicitly framed around how best to think about the value of public space, which together seek to spell out an analytical framework of sorts, or a set of questions at least, for investigating the formation of public life. These pieces are products of 5 years worth of workshopping around ‘public’ topics, including various ongoing invitations to listen or talk. I’m not sure if sitting around listening to what other people think about publicness, and specifically why they think it matters or not, counts as fieldwork but I have ended up thinking that this has been the ‘methodology’ I have been using to ‘theorise’ about these issues.

My paper is part of a theme issue of a South African journal, based at the University of Free State, called Acta Academica. The special issue on publics arises out of a workshop held in Bloemfontein back in 2012. It is also the first edition of the re-launched journal, which under the editorship of Lis Lange is now framed very clearly as a venue for “Critical views on society, culture and politics”:

“Acta Academica is an academic journal dedicated to scholarship in the humanities. The journal publishes scholarly articles that examine society, culture and politics past and present from a critical social theory perspective. The journal is also interested in scholarly work that examines how the humanities in the 21st Century are responding to the double imperative of theorising the world and changing it.”

The journal is available via the Sabinet platform, and it does also have an Academia.edu page (here). I have copies of the papers in this special issue should you be interested.