The+Rationalization+of+the+Lifeworld

Habermas identifies 3 elements of the lifeworld. There are three different actor-world relations that a subject can take up towards something in a world: 1. Towards something in the ** objective **world 2. Towards something in the ** social ** world (normative understandings) 3. Or towards something in the ** subjective **world. In a conversation between speakers, all three of these have to synch up in order to have agreement – if one is perceived as being out of line, the listener is expected to object. Moreover, the lifeworld is understood to consist of elements from all three simultaneously. However, any given situation incorporates only certain select elements of these possible elements of the lifeworld, and as the boundaries of a situation change, so too do the elements of the realms that are relevant to it. All elements of the lifeworld fall into these three categories. But ** language **and ** culture **do not – they are transcendental to it, and constitute the lifeworld itself. By engaging with language and culture, we are simultaneously reproducing our lifeworlds, in three different dimensions (I can’t tell if these are supposed to parallel the above or not): 1. Culture reproduces through cultural reproduction – creating consensual scheme of what constitutes valid knowledge 2. Society reproduces through social integration – creating legitimately ordered social groups 3. And personality reproduces through socialization – creating interactive capabilities such as personal identity (see figure 27.1) 27.2 shows what happens when this reproduction fails and the criteria according to which we evaluate the success or failure of such reproduction. 27.3 shows how the reproductions promote mutual understanding. Now comes PTJ’s point from the other day about how Habermas sees the potential for us to move towards a quasi-utopian universal discourse. This has something to do with material reproduction needing to stop being justified by rationality, and then he launches into Marx. I see two interpretations here: (1) Maybe he means that the objective elements of the lifeworld should not be cloaked in the language of the social and normative. (2) Maybe he’s a Marxist and thinks that our systems of production are skewed. I’m really not sure, but the former seems more internally consistent with the beginning of the essay. Finally, he turns to the implications for social science. To do this, he introduces a new distinction, between systems and lifeworlds, and says that these two things constitute society. I think that systems exist outside people whereas lifeworlds are constituted by us, but I’m pretty sure the actual elaboration of this distinction is cut from the selection. In any case, whereas in a systems approach to social science you can have an external perspective and draw conclusions about what connects (or possibly motivates/causes/etc) actions; in a lifeworld approach the internal perspectives of members are paramount, and the researcher has to use hermeneutics to try to connect their understanding to that of their subjects. In fact, the thinks that subjects’ intuitive knowledge is what structures the social system, so this is impossible to get at as an outside observer. ||  || = = = = = = = = = = = =
 * =Title - The rationalization of the lifeworld= ||  ||
 * =Author - Juergen Habermas= ||  ||
 * =Date - 1981= ||  ||
 * =Summary By - Kate= ||  ||
 * =Summary=

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