Credits, references, and bibliography

Jürgen Habermas	http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBl6ALNh18Q

Lifeworld, System, Colonization

• Lifeworld
  • Schutz--world of everyday life. Intersubjectivity
  • Habermas--Interpersonal communication
    • Free and open
    • The rationalization of communication in the lifeworld
    • "Rationalization" as positive in this context--leads to mutual understanding--Consensus
    • The "better" argument wins the day
    • Power and authority do not determine consensus
• System
  • Source from within the lifeworld
  • Develops distinctive structure: family, state, education
  • As they develop, they become removed from lifeworld
  • Progressive rationalization: for the system increasingly differentiated, complex, and self-sufficient (reification).
  • This leads to:
• The colonization of the lifeworld by the the system (it's structures)
  • Limits the ability of actors to have free and open discussion (access to information, control over speech)
  • it is only through the separation of the system from the lifeworld that the former can colonize the latter.
  • Takes the lifeworld to the point of destruction, yet extensive colonization sustains it (in a fragmented and rigidified form).
    • Universities run on market strategies
    • Penetration of all areas of life by law (juridification)

Rationalization of System and Lifeworld: the solution?

• Allow system to grow and differentiate itself, but also refine the lifeworld.
• A more rational system can enhance rational discourse in the lifeworld
• The product of individual communication is fed back into the system.

Ideal Speech Situation

• One that is free of all distorting influences--especially power
• Truth arises from consensus.
• Problem of contemporary society--limited openness: inequality.

"In his magnum opus Theory of Communicative Action (1981) he criticized the one-sided process of modernization led by forces of economic and administrative rationalization. Habermas traced the growing intervention of formal systems in our everyday lives as parallel to development of the welfare state, corporate capitalism and the culture of mass consumption. These reinforcing trends rationalize widening areas of public life, submitting them to a generalizing logic of efficiency and control. As routinized political parties and interest groups substitute for participatory democracy, society is increasingly administered at a level remote from input of citizens. As a result, boundaries between public and private, the individual and society, the system and the lifeworld are deteriorating. Democratic public life only thrives where institutions enable citizens to debate matters of public importance. He describes an ideal type of "ideal speech situation"[1], where actors are equally endowed with the capacities of discourse, recognize each other's basic social equality and speech is undistorted by ideology or misrecognition." (from, wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas, accessed 10/6/08 16:25.

"Jürgen Habermas's grand theory of modernity is concerned with the progress of rationalization and the possibility of achieving a substantively rational society.  Habermas was trained by members of the Frankfurt School, but his theory departs from their critique of the culture industry.  Habermas thought that the sphere of everyday action, in which free and open communication can take place (the lifeworld), was being colonized by the progressively rationalized structures of the system.  These structures include the family, the legal system, the state, and the economy.  As they grow increasingly differentiated, complex, and self-sufficient, the structures of the system increasingly constrain free and open communication.  As a result, people have fewer opportunities to make substantively rational decisions based on the force of argument."(1)

The Jürgen Habermas Web Resource: https://imamsamroni.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/the-jurgen-habermas-web-resource/ (includes entries on the public sphere, discourse ethics, and modernity)

Jürgen Habermas http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Habermas/Index.html

Notes on Habermas: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~frank/habermas.html

Archive at marxist.org: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/habermas/index.htm

Chapter 5 quiz

1. Much of this page comes from the "Instructor's Manual" to accompany Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics, Second Edition, George Ritzer, Mcgraw-Hill, 2007. The Instructor's Manual was prepared by James Murphy, University of Maryland, College Park and Todd Stillman, Fayetteville State University. These excerpts are from chapter 5.
2. Ritzer, George. 2007/2010/2013. Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics. 2nd/3rd/4th editions. St. Louis: McGraw-Hill

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