Exploring publicness as social practice: An analysis on social support within an emerging economy

Abstract

By utilizing the concepts of field, habitus, and capital inherited from Bourdieu, this study explores publicness as a social practice. In doing this, the paper problematizes publicness concerning accountability and public value and empirically explores the organization of social support delivery in Istanbul. We posit our research question: In what manners does publicness open up a space for collaboration and convergence in relation to accountability? The data gathering and analysis follow a qualitative methodology. We found different forms of publicness under three different conditionalities: (1) publicness as political authority based on hierarchization and centralization; (2) publicness as competing positions produced by diverse actors and their diverse positions taken beyond hierarchical relations; (3) publicness as social inclusion and diversity that is all-embracing by employing more inclusive practices. Publicness relationally unfolds public value with and among formal rules, voluntary practices, and networks. By delving into constitutive elements of practice—symbolic capital and habitus—engaging in the field struggles of redefining and owning publicness, the paper goes beyond the conventional dichotomy of normative versus empirical conceptualizations of publicness and instead differentiates among distinct forms of publicness in different conditionalities and contributes to the literature by bridging publicness and accountability habitus.