Towards the (Re)Making of Public Space?

This article provides a critical analysis of Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre’s The Making of Public Space: News, Events and Opinions in the Twenty-First Century (2025 [2022]). While their earlier work, Enrichment: A Critique of Commodities (2020 [2017]), is situated within economic sociology, their latest book – originally published as Qu’est-ce que l’actualité politique ? Événements et opinions au XXIe siècle (2022) – marks a significant shift towards political sociology, broadly conceived. The article contends that The Making of Public Space represents a highly original contribution that will further consolidate the considerable influence of Boltanski and Esquerre’s collaborative work on cutting-edge debates and research agendas in the contemporary social sciences. In particular, the book makes a strong case for examining the relationship between processes of “turning into current affairs” [processus de mise en actualité] and processes of politicization [processus de politisation]. The analysis is structured in two main parts. The first part summarizes the central arguments advanced by Boltanski and Esquerre in The Making of Public Space. The second part offers a careful assessment of the book’s principal limitations and suggests possible ways to address them.