Chapter1: Introduction: Sociological Theory

The Overall Project

Let us begin by briefly reviewing the overall argument, and then return to volumes 1 and 2 with a more detailed analysis. There are four types of action:(1) teleological, (2) normative, (3) dramaturgical, and (4) communicative.Only communicative action contains the elements whereby actors reach intersubjective understanding. Such communicative action--which is, actually, interaction--presupposes a set of background assumptions and stocks of knowledge, or, in Habermas's terms, a lifeworld. Also operating in any society are "system" processes, which revolve around the material maintenance of the species and its survival. The evolutionary trend is for system processes and lifeworld processes to become internally differentiated and differentiated from each other. The integration of a society depends on a balance between system and lifeworld processes. As modern societies have evolved, however, tiffs balance has been upset as system processes revolving around the economy and the state (also law, family, and other reproductive structures) have "colonized" and dominated lifeworld processes concerned with mutually shared meanings, understandings, and intersubjectivity. As a result, modern society is poorly integrated.

These integrative problems in capitalist societies are manifested in crises concerning the "reproduction of the lifeworld"; that is, the acts of communicative interaction that reproduce this lifeworld are~ displaced by "delinguistified media," such as money and power, that are used in the reproduction of system processes (economy and government). The solution to these crises is a rebalancing of relations between lifeworld and system. This rebalancing is to come through the resurrection of the public sphere in the economic and political arenas and in the creation of more situations in which communicative action (interaction) can proceed uninhibited by the intrusion of system's media, such as power and money. The goal of critical theory, therefore, is to document those facets of society in which the lifeworld has been colonized and to suggest approaches whereby situations of communicative action (interaction) can be reestablished. Such is Habermas's general argument, and now we can fill in some of the details.

The Reconceptualization of Action and Rationality

In volume 1 of The Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas undertakes a long and detailed analysis of Weber's conceptualization of action and rationalization. Habermas wants to reconceptualize rationality and action in ways that allow him to view ~rational action as a potentially liberating rather than imprisoning force. In this way, he feels, he can avoid the pessimism of Weber and the retreat into subjectivity of Lukacs, Adorno, and Horkheimer. There are, Habermas concludes, several basic types of action:

1. Teleological action is behavior oriented to calculating various means and selecting the most appropriate ones to realize explicit goals. Such action becomes strategic when other acting agents are involved in one's calculations. Habermas also calls this action "instrumental' because it is concerned with means to achieve ends. Most important, he emphasizes that this kind of action is too often considered "rational action" in previous conceptualizations of rationality. As he argues, this view of rationality is too narrow and forces critical theory into a conceptual trap: if teleological or means/ends rationality has taken over the modern world and has, as a consequence, oppressed people, then how can critical theory propose rational alternatives? Would not such a rational theory be yet one more oppressive application of means/ends rationality? The answers to these questions lie in recognizing that there are several types of action and that true rationality resides not in teleological action but in communicative action.

2. Normatively regulated action is behavior that is oriented to common values of a group, Thus. normative action is directed toward complying with normative expectations of collectively organized groupings of individuals.

3. Dramaturgical action is action that involves conscious manipulation of oneself before an audience or public. It is ego-centered in that it involves actors mutually manipulating their behaviors to present their own intentions, but it is also social in that such manipulation is done in the context of organized activity.

4. Communicative action is interaction among agents who use speech and nonverbal symbols as a way of understanding their mutual situation and their respective plans of action to agree on how to coordinate their behaviors.

These four types of action presuppose different kinds of "worlds' That is, each action is oriented to a somewhat different aspect of the udiverse, which can he divided into the (1) "objective or external world" of manipulable objects; (2) "social world" of norms, values, and other socially recognized expectations; and (3) "subjective world" of experiences. Teleological action is concerned primarily with the objective world; normatively regulated action with the social; and dramaturgical with the subjective and external. But only with communicative action do actors "refer simultaneously to things m the objective, social, and subjective worlds in order to negotiate common definitions of' the situation.'

Such communicative action is therefore potentially more~ rational than all of the others because it deals with all three worlds and because it proceeds as speech acts that assert three types o f validity claims. Such speech acts assert that (1) statements are true in "propositional content," or in reference to the external and objective world; (2) statements are correct with respect to the existing normative context, or social world and (3) statements are sincere and manifest the subjective world of intention and experiences of the actor. The process of communicative action in which these three types of validity claims are made, accepted, or challenged by others is inherently more rational than other types of action. If a validity claim is not accepted, then it~ is debated and discussed in an effort to reach understanding without recourse to fore and authority The process of reaching understanding through validity claims, their acceptance, or their discussion cakes place against

The background of a culturally ingrained pre-understanding. This background remains unproblematic as a whole; only that part of the stock of knowledge that participants make use of and thematize at a given time is put to the test. To the extent that definitions of situations~ are negotiated by participants themselves, this thematic segment of the lifeworld is at their disposal with the negotiation of each new definition of the situation.

Thus, in the process of making validity claims through speech acts, actors use existing definitions of situations or create new ones that establish order in their social relations. Such definitions become part of the stocks of knowledge in their lifeworlds, and they become the standards by which validity claims are made, accepted, and challenged. Thus, in reaching an understanding through communicative action, the lifeworld serves as a point of reference for the adjudication of validity claims, which encompass the Full range of worlds—the objective, social, and subjective. And so, in Habermas's eyes, there is more rationality inherent in the very process of communicative interaction than in means/ends or teleological action. As Habermas summarizes,

We have . . . characterized the rational structure of the processes of eaching understanding in terms of (a) the three world relations of actors and the corresponding concepts of the objective, social, and subjective worlds; (b) the validity claims of propositional truth, normative rightness, and sincerity or authenticity; (c) the concept of a rationally motivated agreement, that is, one based on the intersubjective recognition of criticizable validity claims; and (d) the concept of reaching understanding as the cooperative negotiation of common definitions of the situation.

Thus, as people communicatively act (interact), they use and at the same time produce common definitions of the situation. Such definitions are part of the lifeworld of a society; if they have been produced and reproduced through the communicative action, then they are the basis for the rational and nonoppressive integration of a society Let us now turn to Hahermas's discussion of this lifeworld which serves as the "court of appeals" in communicative action.

The Lifeworld and System Processes of Society

Habermas believes the lifeworld is a "culturally transmitted and linguistically organized stock of interpretative patterns" But what are these "interpretative patterns" about? What do they pertain to? His anger, as one expects from Habermas, is yet another typology. There are three different types of interpretative patterns in the lifeworld: There are interpretative patterns with respect to culture, or systems of symbols; there are those pertaining to society or social institutions; and there are those oriented to personality, or aspects of self and being. That is, (1) actors possess implicit and shared stocks of knowledge about cultural traditions, values, beliefs, and linguistic structures as~ well as how these are to be used in interaction; (2) actors also know how to organize social relations and what kinds and patterns of coordinated interaction are proper and appropriate; and (3) actors understand what people are like, how they should act, and what is normal or aberrant.

These three types of interpretative patterns correspond, Habermas asserts, to the following functional needs for reproducing the lifeworld (and, by implication, for integrating society): (1) reaching understanding through communicative action transmits, preserves, and renews cultural knowledge; (2)communicative action that coordinates interaction meets the need for social integration ~and group solidarity; and (3) communicative action that socializes agents meets the need for the formation of personal identities, Thus, the three components of the lifeworld -culture, society, personality--meet corresponding needs of society--cultural reproduction, social integration, and personality formation--through three dimensions along which communicative action is conducted: reaching understanding, coordinating interaction, and effecting socialization. As Habermas summarizes in volume2

In coming to an understanding with one another about their situation, participants in communication stand in a cultural tradition which they use and at the same time renew; in coordinating their actions via interubjective recognition of "criticizable" validity clams, they rely upon their membership in groupings and at the same time reenforce their integration; through participating in interaction with competent persons, growing children internalize value orientations and acquire generalized capacities for action.

These lifeworld processes are interrelated with system processes in a society~ Action in economic, political, familial, and other institutional contexts draws on, and reproduces, the cultural, societal, and personality dimensions of the lifeworld. Yet evolutionary trends are for differentiation of the lifeworld into separate stocks of knowledge with respect to culture, society, and personality and for differentiation of system processes into distinctive and separate institutional clusters, such as economy, state, family, and law. Such differentiation creates problems of integration and balance between the lifeworld and system. And therein reside the dilemmas and crises of modern societies.