M&D Deep Duck Read. First cuppa coffee post

[Dave Monroe]

Habermas, the coffeehouses and the public sphere

In the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas argues
that England in the 1700's saw the emergence of a new

'public sphere ... which mediates between society and state, in which
the public organises itself as the bearer of public opinion'. The
greatest contribution to the development of the public sphere was the
emergence of its institutional base, the organisational structures
that allowed these 'webs of social development' to exist. It links the
growth of an urban culture (metropolitan, provincial, imperial), as
the new arena of public life (theatres, museums, opera houses, meeting
rooms, coffeehouses), to a new infrastructure for social communication
(the press, publishing ventures, circulating libraies, improved
trasnportation (canals, carriages), increasing reading public, and
centers of sociability like coffeehouses and taverns), and the new
philanthropic movement of voluntary association. As Craig Calhoun
argues, the model allows of print culture and architecture as well as
organisations: but the prime example is the coffeehouse, and stresses
how 'the conversation of these little circles branched out into
affairs of state administration and politics' (p. 12). In these
circles or webs, there were several crucial features, Habermas argues:
'a kind of social intercourse that, far from presupposing equality of
status, disregarded status altogether' (Habermas, p. 37). There was
also a general trust in discursivity and reason. And the emerging
public web was established as inclusive by principle: anyone with
access to cultural technology like novels, journals, plays, had the
potential to claim the attention of the 'culture-debating public'.
'However exclusive the public might be in any given instance, it could
never close itself off entirely and become consolidated as a clique;
for it always understood and found itself immersed within a more
inclusive public of private people, persons who-insofar as they were
propertied and educated-as readers, listeners, and spectators could
avail themselves via the market of the objects that were subject to
discussion.'

http://home.fnal.gov/~annis/wild/digirati/habermas.html

Of public spheres and coffee houses

http://web2.ges.gla.ac.uk/~elaurier/cafesite/texts/cphilo016.pdf

On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 4:03 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> p.6..."freshly infus'd coffee flows ev'ryplace."....and was associated
> with rebellious political activities in Europe. From Venice, it was
> introduced to the rest of Europe. Coffee became more widely accepted
> after it was deemed a Christian beverage by Pope Clement VIII in 1600,
> despite appeals to ban the "Muslim drink." The first European coffee
> house opened in Rome in 1645.[24
>
> The Dutch East India Company was the first to import coffee on a large
> scale.[25]
>
> When coffee reached North America during the Colonial period, it was
> initially not as successful as it had been in Europe as alcoholic
> beverages remained more popular. During the Revolutionary War, the
> demand for coffee increased so much that dealers had to hoard their
> scarce supplies and raise prices dramatically; this was also due to
> the reduced availability of tea from British merchants,[29] and a
> general resolution among many Americans to avoid drinking tea
> following the 1773 Boston Tea Party.[30]
>
> After the War of 1812, during which Britain temporarily cut off access
> to tea imports, the Americans' taste for coffee grew. Coffee
> consumption declined in England, giving way to tea during the 18th
> century.
>
> ed across the Americas.[33] The territory of Santo Domingo (now the
> Dominican Republic) saw coffee cultivated from 1734, and by 1788 it
> supplied half the world's coffee.[34] The conditions that the slaves
> worked in on coffee plantations were a factor in the soon to follow
> Haitian Revolution. The coffee industry never fully recovered
> there.[35] It made a brief come-back in 1949 when Haiti was the
> world's 3rd largest coffee exporter, but fell quickly into rapid
> decline.[36]
>
> Coffee was first discovered in Ethiopia; legend has it that a goatherd
> found his goats eating some strange berries that made them so lively
> that he could not catch them. The substance had made its way to the
> Arab Nation by the 15th century, and in 1511 the first Islamic ban on
> coffee, by the governor of Mecca, shut down all the coffee houses. But
> his superior, the sultan of Cairo, soon stepped in and overruled the
> governor.
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l