Commercial leisure spaces can in principle incubate civic talk but usually fail to.

Evidence

Can a group that comes together initially sharing only jokes and consumer tastes ever become an incubator of citizenship, of the sort that Aristotle and de Tocqueville described? There is good reason to think so: as free spaces for political conversation, bars and coffeehouses, rodeos and rock concerts could be crucial parts of the public sphere. We do not need to be nostalgic for ‘‘real,’’ pre-commercial, traditional community; since the 1800s, leisure and commercial institutions have been completely intermarried (Rybczynski 1991; Rosenzweig 1983, for example). A person freely spouting ideas in a bar can argue both sides at once just for the sake of making a good argument, try out half-baked ideas on an audience that is not poised for immediate action, write the mental rough draft before the idea congeals into a platform. In theory, these sociable, joking, loud, musical, fragrant, colorful, stylish public spaces are not risky places for exposing unformed ideas. Unlike speech in more formal settings like union meetings, volunteer groups, activist groups, or parties, conversation in these free spaces can be non-instrumental and utopian, but spoken as if it mattered.’ But, like many Americans, private people did not imagine fun and political debate in the same picture. As more Americans move to centerless suburbs like Amargo, creating common ground may often mean coming together initially unsure of sharing anything but a taste in commercial culture. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 653

Categorization

• QUESTION: What distinguishes commercial spaces that do become civic incubators (e.g. some coffeehouses) from those that stay shallow? Eliasoph implies it is the members’ assumption about what group life is, worth chasing.
• XREF: connects to: Commercial venues offer no stable common ground for group bonding. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 937

Broader Connections

• Commercial venues offer no stable common ground for group bonding. #corroborates (0.80) — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 937