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<h2 id="shifting-boundaries">Shifting boundaries</h2> <p>The parameters separating public and private spheres are not fixed but vary both in (cultural) space and in time. </p><p>In the classical world, economic life was the prerogative of the household,<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2"><sup>2</sup></a> only matters which could not be dealt with by the household alone entered the public realm of the <a href="/facts/Polis/U4qS9yqU">polis</a>.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a> In the modern world, the public economy permeates the home, providing the main access to the public sphere for the citizen become consumer.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4"><sup>4</sup></a> </p><p>In classical times, crime and punishment was the concern of the kinship group, a concept only slowly challenged by ideas of public justice.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:5" href="#fn:5"><sup>5</sup></a> Similarly in medieval Europe the blood feud only slowly gave way to legal control,<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:6" href="#fn:6"><sup>6</sup></a> whereas in modern Europe only the <a href="/facts/Feud/afA45JX4">vendetta</a> would still attempt to keep the avenging of violent crime within the private sphere. </p><p>Conversely, in early modern Europe, religion was a central public concern, essential to the maintenance of the state, so that details of private worship were hotly debated and controverted in the public sphere.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:7" href="#fn:7"><sup>7</sup></a> Similarly, sexual behavior was subject to a generally agreed code publicly enforced by both formal and <a href="/facts/Informal_social_control/at6jIsCw">informal social control</a>.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:8" href="#fn:8"><sup>8</sup></a> In <a href="/facts/Postmodern/aBgbw8QJ">postmodern</a> society, both religion and sex are now generally seen as matters of private choice. </p> <h3>Gender politics</h3> <p>Throughout many decades, the public and private sphere have incorporated traditional <a href="/facts/Gender_role/pt2sQYD2">gender roles</a>. Women were mostly kept to the private sphere by staying at home, taking care of their children and attending to house chores. They were not able to participate in the <a href="/facts/Public_sphere/nxQL43at">public sphere</a>, which was dominated by men. <a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:9" href="#fn:9"><sup>9</sup></a> </p><p>The private sphere was long regarded as women's "proper place" whereas men were supposed to inhabit the public sphere.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:10" href="#fn:10"><sup>10</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:11" href="#fn:11"><sup>11</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:12" href="#fn:12"><sup>12</sup></a> Although feminist researchers such as <a href="/facts/V._Spike_Peterson/hNU8l3kh">V. Spike Peterson</a> have discovered roots of the exclusion of women from the public sphere in ancient Athenian times,<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:13" href="#fn:13"><sup>13</sup></a> a distinct ideology that prescribed <a href="/facts/Separate_spheres/141bQFRx">separate spheres</a> for women and men emerged during the <a href="/facts/Industrial_Revolution/B6E3Fasm">Industrial Revolution</a> because of the severance of the workplace from places of residence that occurred with the build up of urban centres of work.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:14" href="#fn:14"><sup>14</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:15" href="#fn:15"><sup>15</sup></a> Even <a href="/facts/Writing/ke1HYEU8">writing</a> was traditionally considered forbidden, as "In the anxious comments provoked by the 'female pen' it [was] easy enough to detect fear of the writing woman as a kind of castrating female whose grasp upon that instrument seems an arrogation of its generative power".<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:16" href="#fn:16"><sup>16</sup></a> </p><p>Feminists have challenged the ascription in a number of (not always commensurate) ways. In the first place, the slogan "the personal is political" attempted to open up the 'private' sphere of home and child-rearing to public scrutiny as well as call to attention how the exclusion of women from the public sphere makes the private sphere political.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:17" href="#fn:17"><sup>17</sup></a> At the same time, there was a new valorisation of the personal – of <a href="/facts/Experiential_knowledge/hSU4E4LN">experiential knowledge</a> and the world of the body – as against the (traditional) male preserves of public speech and theory.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:18" href="#fn:18"><sup>18</sup></a> </p><p>All the while, due to the activism of feminists, the public sphere of work, business, politics and ideas were increasingly opened up to female participation.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:19" href="#fn:19"><sup>19</sup></a> </p> <h2 id="critical-theory">Critical theory</h2> <p><a href="/facts/Martin_Heidegger/VSvHqhcj">Martin Heidegger</a> argued that it is only in the private sphere that one can be one's authentic self, as opposed to the impersonal and identikit <a href="/facts/Generalised_other/A0nwDgYq">They</a> of the public realm.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:20" href="#fn:20"><sup>20</sup></a> </p><p>Contrary to Heidegger, <a href="/facts/Hannah_Arendt/ssB5GXJc">Hannah Arendt</a> argued that (public) <a href="/facts/The_Human_Condition_(Arendt_book)/scD0lLaS">action</a> is the only way to manifest "who" somebody is, as opposed to describing "what" they are. She argued that only in public realm it is possible to fully express oneself. <a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:21" href="#fn:21"><sup>21</sup></a> </p><p><a href="/facts/Richard_Sennett/awrb1jbX">Richard Sennett</a> opposed what he saw as the Romantic idealization of the private realm of intimate relations, as opposed to the public sphere of action at a distance.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:22" href="#fn:22"><sup>22</sup></a> </p><p><a href="/facts/Deleuze_and_Guattari/7RIqUjKF">Deleuze and Guattari</a> saw <a href="/facts/Postmodernism/aBgbw8QJ">postmodernism</a> as challenging the traditional split between private and public spheres, producing instead the supersaturated space of immediate presence and media-scrutiny of <a href="/facts/Late_capitalism/43q1PhnY">late capitalism</a>.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:23" href="#fn:23"><sup>23</sup></a> </p> <h2 id="see-also">See also</h2> <ul><li><a href="/facts/Bertold_Brecht/Jttg3tUA">Bertold Brecht</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Dasein/nCQcsQaR">Dasein</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Gender_studies/vTsmrHfU">Gender studies</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Glass_ceiling/CVAsg9Ec">Glass ceiling</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Lana_Rakow/Mv54qRL0">Lana Rakow</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Privacy/C269YalS">Privacy</a></li></ul> <h2 id="further-reading">Further reading</h2> <p><a href="/facts/Hannah_Arendt/ssB5GXJc">Hannah Arendt</a>, <i>The Human Condition</i> (1958) </p><p>Zizi A. Papacharissi, <i>A Private Sphere</i> (2013) </p><p>Alan F. Westin, <i>Privacy and Freedom</i> (1967) </p> <h2 id="references">References</h2> <ol> <li id="fn:1"><p>Habermas, Jurgen (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger; Frederic Lawrence. Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-58108-0. <a href="978-0-262-58108-0" target="_blank">978-0-262-58108-0</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:2"><p>M. I Finley, The World of Odysseus (1967) p. 69 and p. 91 <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:3"><p>J. O'Neill, Sociology as a Skin Trade (1972) pp. 22–3 <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:4"><p>J. O'Neill, Sociology as a Skin Trade (1972) pp. 23–4 <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:5"><p>R. Fagles trans. Aeschylus: The Oresteia (1977) pp. 21–2 <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:6"><p>G. O. Sayles, The Medieval Foundations of England (1967) pp. 109, 234 <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:7"><p>J. H. Elliott, Europe Divided (1968) p. 93-5 <a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:8"><p>F. Dabhoiwala, 'The First Sexual Revolution' The Oxford Historian X (2012) pp. 41–6 <a href="#fnref:8" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:9"><p>King, Kathryn R. (1995). "Of Needles and Pens and Women's Work". Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 14 (1): 77–93. doi:10.2307/464249. ISSN 0732-7730. JSTOR 464249. <a href="/wiki/Doi_(identifier)" target="_blank">/wiki/Doi_(identifier)</a> <a href="#fnref:9" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:10"><p>Vickery, Amanda (1993). "Golden age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and chronology of English women's history" (PDF). The Historical Journal. 36 (2): 383–414. doi:10.1017/S0018246X9300001X. S2CID 53508408. <a href="/wiki/Amanda_Vickery" target="_blank">/wiki/Amanda_Vickery</a> <a href="#fnref:10" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:11"><p>Tétreault, Mary Ann (2001). "Frontier Politics: Sex, Gender, and the Deconstruction of the Public Sphere". Alternatives: Global, Local, Political. 26 (1): 53–72. doi:10.1177/030437540102600103. S2CID 141033858. <a href="/wiki/Alternatives:_Global,_Local,_Political" target="_blank">/wiki/Alternatives:_Global,_Local,_Political</a> <a href="#fnref:11" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:12"><p>May, Ann Mari (2008). "Gender, biology, and the incontrovertible logic of choice". The 'woman question' and higher education: perspectives on gender and knowledge production in America. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 39. ISBN 978-1-84720-401-1. <a href="978-1-84720-401-1" target="_blank">978-1-84720-401-1</a> <a href="#fnref:12" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:13"><p>Peterson, V. Spike (2014-07-03). "Sex Matters". International Feminist Journal of Politics. 16 (3): 389–409. doi:10.1080/14616742.2014.913384. ISSN 1461-6742. S2CID 147633811. <a href="/wiki/Doi_(identifier)" target="_blank">/wiki/Doi_(identifier)</a> <a href="#fnref:13" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:14"><p>Wells, Christopher (2009). "Separate Spheres". In Kowaleski-Wallace, Elizabeth (ed.). Encyclopedia of feminist literary theory. London, New York: Routledge. p. 519. ISBN 978-0-415-99802-4. <a href="978-0-415-99802-4" target="_blank">978-0-415-99802-4</a> <a href="#fnref:14" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:15"><p>Adams, Michele (2011). "Divisions of household labor". In Ritzer, George; Ryan, J. Michael (eds.). The concise encyclopedia of sociology. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 156–57. ISBN 978-1-4051-8353-6. <a href="978-1-4051-8353-6" target="_blank">978-1-4051-8353-6</a> <a href="#fnref:15" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:16"><p>King, Kathryn R. (1995). "Of Needles and Pens and Women's Work". Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 14 (1): 77–93. doi:10.2307/464249. ISSN 0732-7730. JSTOR 464249. <a href="/wiki/Doi_(identifier)" target="_blank">/wiki/Doi_(identifier)</a> <a href="#fnref:16" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:17"><p>J. Childers/G. Hentzi ed., The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (1995) p. 252 <a href="#fnref:17" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:18"><p>Mary Eagleton ed., Feminist Literary Criticism (1991) p. 6 <a href="#fnref:18" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:19"><p>Susan Faludi, Stiffed (1999) pp. 9, 35 <a href="#fnref:19" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:20"><p>J. Collins and H. Selina eds., Heidegger for Beginners (1998) pp. 64–9 <a href="#fnref:20" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:21"><p>Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958) <a href="#fnref:21" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:22"><p>Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (1976) <a href="/wiki/Richard_Sennett" target="_blank">/wiki/Richard_Sennett</a> <a href="#fnref:22" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:23"><p>M. Hardt/K. Weeks eds., The Jameson Reader (2000) pp. 329–30, 280 <a href="#fnref:23" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> </ol>