Habermas and the public sphere
This area of research revolves around the work of Jürgen Habermas, the leading German critical thinker of his generation.
The book Espaço Público em Habermas focuses on a specific aspect of Habermas’s ambitious theory of society, namely the concept of “public sphere” (Öffentlichkeit).
In that book and other writings, Carreira da Silva tries to explain how this crucial notion has evolved in the course of Habermas’s 40-year long career.
The notion of public sphere is, he suggests, a useful interpretive key to Habermas’s theoretical strategy as well as to his contributions to social and political theory.
References
Espaço Público em Habermas (ICS, 2002)
Habermas e a Esfera Pública: Reconstruindo a História de uma Ideia. Sociologia - Problemas e Práticas, 35, 117-138.
[online] [document (pdf)]
Espaço Público e Democracia: o Papel da Esfera Pública no Pensamento Político de Habermas. Análise Social Vol. XXXVI (Primavera-Verão), 158-159, 435-459. [online]
See also:
Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (2009)
Habermas, Rorty e o Pragmatismo Americano. Dados - Revista de Ciências Sociais Vol. 49, 1, 43-60. [online] [document (pdf)]