494 Featured Essay
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Sociology of the Public Sphere
University at Albany, State University of New York
In Reign of Appearances: The Misery and Splen-
dor of the Public Sphere, his important new
book, Ari Adut aims to develop a better,
more realistic, and more sociological theory
of the public sphere. He is concerned that
the concept of the public sphere, which has
its origins in normative political philosophy,
presents a distorted and idealized image of
public dialogue among citizens. This image
is distorted because it either ignores or
laments the kinds of events that attract the
most public attention—scandals, grand-
standing by politicians and other public
celebrities, and other kinds of public
Contemporary Sociology 48, 5
British Journal of Politics and International Rela-
tions 18:966–80.
Mosselman, Floris, Don Weenink, and Marie
Rosenkrantz Lindegaard. 2018. ‘‘Weapons,
Body Postures, and the Quest for Dominance
in Robberies: A Qualitative Analysis of Video
Footage.’’ Journal of Crime and Delinquency
55:3–26.
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Nassauer, Anne. 2016. ‘‘From Peaceful Marches to
Violent Clashes: A Micro-Situational Analy-
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Nassauer, Anne. 2018. ‘‘How Robberies Succeed
or Fail: Analyzing Crime Caught on Camera.’’
Journal of Crime and Delinquency 55:125–54.
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Ethnic Violence in High Schools. Oakland: Uni-
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Identity, Masculinity, and the Act of Violence in
Professional Wrestling. Durham, NC: Duke Uni-
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Sociological Analysis of the Emotional
Dynamics of Extreme Youth Violence.’’ British
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Performing Badness: A Micro-Sociological
Analysis of the Forms, Situational Asymmetry,
and Severity of Street Violence.’’ Sociological
Forum 30:83–102.
RONALD N. JACOBS
rjacobs@albany.edu
Reign of Appearances: The Misery and
Splendor of the Public Sphere, by Ari
Adut. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2018. 206 pp. $29.99
cloth. ISBN: 9781107180932.
spectacles. The normative image of the public
sphere also has a distorted understanding of
spectatorship. As Adut argues, a realistic the-
ory of the public sphere needs to come to terms
with the fact that, for most people most of the

time, participation in key public debates limits
them to the position of spectators, a situation
that many citizens actually prefer.
The project of developing a more realistic
approach that describes ‘‘actually existing
civil society’’ is now well established within
sociology. Instead of beginning with a norma-
tive theory about the ideal conditions for
generating deliberation, civic engagement,
and other public goods, sociologists such as
Jeffrey Alexander, Zygmunt Bauman, Gian-
paolo Baiocchi, Rodney Benson, Craig
Calhoun, and others have started with civic
life as it actually exists. There is an important
conceptual shift being made here. Rather
than evaluating how closely real civil socie-
ties match up to idealized principles, sociolo-
gists uncover how these idealized principles
operate on the ground, in an agonistic space
composed of other, competing principles.
The most cherished and idealized principles
of the public sphere can be used to include
new voices and new perspectives, but they
can also be used to exclude. They can be
invoked optimistically and hopefully, but
they can also be deployed cynically. There
is a certain ambiguity associated with the dif-
ferent ways the language of civil society and
the public sphere is invoked in real, empiri-
cal contexts.
Adut’s approach is significantly different
and innovative. Rather than focus on the
structure and process of symbolic contesta-
tion, Adut is more interested in the dynamics
of visibility that are associated with politics
and the public sphere. As he writes, ‘‘The
public sphere is simply where we are visible
. . . open to general sensory access, open to
the sight of spectators, in one’s body or repre-
sentation’’ (p. 18). Rather than being about
the search for rational deliberation and con-
sensus, Adut argues, the public sphere is
really about spectatorship.
Spectatorship presents opportunities as
well as challenges for politics and public
life, and most of the book is devoted to
exploring these. There are interesting empir-
ical illustrations and anecdotes throughout
the book, but the main objective is to develop
a sociological theory of public visibility.
Chapter Two examines the types of access
and the levels of visibility that are afforded
to actors and spectators in the public sphere.
Featured Essay 495
Chapter Three explores what happens to peo-
ple when they get publicity and become more
visible. Chapter Four explains how increasing
levels of visibility have shaped politics in
modern society. Chapter Five explores how
the structure of visibility is related to censor-
ship and other forms of content regulation,
while Chapter Six considers how different
levels of visibility affect minority groups.
Chapter Seven returns to the theme of the
inherent moral ambiguity of public visibility,
while Chapter Eight develops a normative
defense of public spectatorship.
Adut’s book is at its strongest and its most
insightful when it is exploring the limitations
and the negative consequences of visibility
and spectatorship. Visibility may bring to
light corruption and other bad actions of
the powerful, but it also can force public
authorities to become more punitive and
intolerant of behaviors that were widely
known and tolerated when they were more
‘‘private.’’ Bringing things into the public
sphere may increase transparency, but it
also makes it harder for groups to compro-
mise or to make concessions, which leads to
greater levels of conflict and polarization.
The fight to expand visibility to groups and
to practices that used to remain hidden is
a central goal of many social movements
(pp. 108–10), but the increasing visibility
granted to minority groups is also associated
with vindictive targeting, scapegoating, and
threat (pp. 124–28). ‘‘Visibility,’’ Adut notes,
‘‘has equivocal effects on groups’’ (p. 128).
In general, the presence of spectators
means that public actions will always be
performances, with all of the associated bag-
gage that comes with performance: elaborate
staging and choreography, a concern with
appearances, and a general sense that every-
thing is inauthentic. As the public sphere
grows and envelops more of political life,
Adut argues, we should expect higher levels
of political conflict and intolerance, a general
lack of confidence or trust in politicians and
political institutions, and a basic inability to
get things done. As a description and an expla-
nation of our current era, this is pretty good.
If visibility is not wholly good and advan-
tageous, then it stands to reason that secrecy
is not wholly bad. As Adut argues, secrecy
and invisibility are an important part of
Contemporary Sociology 48, 5
496 Featured Essay
politics and public life, even in democratic
societies. Secrecy often produces better delib-
eration; free from the glare of visibility,
participants are more free to change their
minds, to show empathy for their opponents,
to be respectful, and to make decisions based
on conscience rather than the reactions of
spectators and interest groups (pp. 88–89).
Among allies, secrecy allows more easily
for dissent and critique, rather than simply
following the party line. Among citizens,
secrecy allows people to express their true
opinions with less fear of reprisal; this is
why the secret ballot is so important to dem-
ocratic politics, while public voting is viewed
as coercive and illegitimate (pp. 91–92).
While there is much to like about Reign of
Appearances, the book is not without flaws.
The writing is exceptionally clear and
concise—this is a book that could easily be
assigned in an undergraduate course—but
there are two costs that are associated with
the narrative style. First, in the desire to pres-
ent a vivid and readable text, Adut largely
refrains from presenting any sustained
empirical analysis. The empirical illustra-
tions and anecdotes do an effective job of
moving the narrative along and making the
abstract arguments more concrete, but
many sociologists will want to know wheth-
er the arguments made in the book can
hold up under more systematic empirical
research. As long as the reader recognizes
that this is primarily a theoretical text, it
should not be a major concern.
The second issue is that Adut mostly
refrains from engaging in a sustained dia-
logue with other sociologists who have
already covered similar ground and made sim-
ilar arguments: for example, Alexander (2004)
on cultural performance, Eliasoph (1998) on
public and private talk, Cohen and Arato
(1992) on social movements and the public
sphere, or Seidman (2002) on the politics of nor-
malization. Readers who want to know where
Adut’s arguments reinforce these previous
works and where they challenge them will
have to do most of that work themselves. Per-
sonally, I did not have a problem with this. I
understand and respect the decision to produce
a more readerly text, and I am confident that
Adut knows this sociological literature well
(he cites much of it in footnotes, in fact). But
Contemporary Sociology 48, 5
readers who are not well versed in this litera-
ture (e.g., graduate students and advanced
undergraduate students) would benefit from
better signposting about the key contemporary
texts in the sociology of civil society and the
public sphere.
I was also left wanting to know a lot more
about the defense of spectatorship, which
Adut addresses in the last chapter of the book.
Adut argues that social theorists have placed
too much emphasis on interaction and dialogue
as the key processes that support a vibrant civil
society. For most normative theories, he astutely
notes, the solution to most of our civic ills is
more interaction and more dialogue. They den-
igrate ‘‘mere spectatorship’’ for producing pas-
sive, selfish, voyeuristic, and disengaged citi-
zens. Pushing against these criticisms, Adut
insightfully argues that spectatorship is also
driven by curiosity and that it reinforces in
the minds of the citizen a curious spirit
(p. 150). I would love to see this idea devel-
oped further. Perhaps that is part of a future
project. But a normative defense of public
spectatorship will need to answer several
key questions that still remain largely unex-
plored. Are variations in curiosity connected
to different kinds of spectatorship, or to dif-
ferent kinds of spectators? To what extent is
spectatorship also characterized by moral
ambiguity? And how is the spectatorship
of ordinary citizens connected to processes
of public opinion and public will formation?
Despite these reservations, however, this is
a really important book that should be read by
most political sociologists and cultural sociol-
ogists. I will most certainly recommend it to
my graduate students, and I anticipate that
it will inspire important changes in how
they go about asking their research questions.
References
Alexander, Jeffrey. 2004. ‘‘Cultural Pragmatics:
Social Theory between Ritual and Strategy.’’
Sociological Theory 22:527–73.
Cohen, Jean, and Andrew Arato. 1992. Civil Socie-
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Press.
Eliasoph, Nina. 1998. Avoiding Politics: How Amer-
icans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Seidman, Steven. 2002. Beyond the Closet: The
Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life. New
York: Routledge.