Habermas and Giddens on Praxis and Modernity

Craig Browne

Description

A comprehensive and original comparison of two of the most important and influential contemporary social theorists

In Habermas and Giddens on Praxis and Modernity Craig Browne investigates how two of the most important and influential contemporary social theorists have sought to develop the modernist visions of the constitution of society through the autonomous actions of subjects. Comparing Habermas’s and Giddens’s conceptions of the constitution of society, interpretations of the social-structural impediments to subjects’ autonomy and attempts to delineate potentials for progressive social change within contemporary society, Browne draws on his own work, which has extended aspects of the social theorists’ approach to modernity. Despite the criticisms developed over the course of the book, Habermas and Giddens are found to be two of the most important theorists of democratization and social democracy, the dynamics of capitalist modernity and their paradoxes, social practices and reflexivity, and the foundations of social theory in the problem of the relationship of social action and social structure.

Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. New Paradigms and social theory Perspectives; Chapter One Habermas’s New Paradigm of Critical Theory; Chapter Two Giddens’s Theory of Structuration – an Ontology of the Social; Part II. Institutionalizing Modernity: Development and Discontinuity; Chapter Three Habermas on the Institutionalizing of Modernity: Communicative Rationality, Lifeworld and System; Chapter Four Giddens on Institutionalizing Modernity: Power and Discontinuity; Chapter Five Intermediate Reflections on Social Theory Alternatives: Contrasts and Divisions; Part III. The Political and Social Constellation of Contemporary Modernity; Chapter Six Globalization, the Welfare State and Social Democracy; Chapter Seven Deliberative Politics, the Democratizing of Democracy and European Cosmopolitanism; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Sujets

• PHILOSOPHY
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Social theory
• General officer
• Social sciences
• Critical theory
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 02 janvier 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783085033
• Langue: English

Extrait

Habermas and Giddens on Praxis and Modernity
KEY ISSUES IN MODERN SOCIOLOGY
The Key Issues in Modern Sociology series publishes scholarly texts that give an accessible exposition of the major structural changes in modern societies. These volumes address an academic audience through their relevance and scholarly quality, and connect sociological thought to public issues. The series covers both substantive and theoretical topics as well as addresses the works of major modern sociologists. The series emphasis is on modern developments in sociology with relevance to contemporary issues such as globalization, warfare, citizenship, human rights, environmental crises, demographic change, religion, postsecularism and civil conflict.

Series Editor
Peter Kivisto – Augustana College, USA

Editorial Board
Harry Dahms – University of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA
Thomas Faist – Bielefeld University, Germany
Anne Rawls – Bentley University, USA
Giuseppe Sciortino – University of Trento, Italy
Sirpa Wrende – University of Helsinki, Finland
Richard York – University of Oregon, USA
Habermas and Giddens on Praxis and Modernity
A Constructive Comparison
Craig Browne
Anthem Press

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© Craig Browne 2017

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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. NEW PARADIGMS AND SOCIAL THEORY PERSPECTIVES Chapter One Habermas’s New Paradigm of Critical Theory Chapter Two Giddens’s Theory of Structuration – an Ontology of the Social
Part II. INSTITUTIONALIZING MODERNITY: DEVELOPMENT AND DISCONTINUITY Chapter Three Habermas on the Institutionalizing of Modernity: Communicative Rationality, Lifeworld and System Chapter Four Giddens on Institutionalizing Modernity: Power and Discontinuity Chapter Five Intermediate Reflections on Social Theory Alternatives: Contrasts and Divisions
Part III. THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONSTELLATION OF CONTEMPORARY MODERNITY Chapter Six Globalization, the Welfare State and Social Democracy Chapter Seven Deliberative Politics, the Democratizing of Democracy and European Cosmopolitanism
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index s
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am quite certain that I would not have been able to complete this book without the support of my family, friends and colleagues. I am most grateful for the work of everyone involved with this project at Anthem Press. I would like to thank the Anthem Press reviewers of a draft of this book for their generosity and most helpful comments. I would particularly like to thank Maria Márkus for her long-standing commitment to my work in social theory. Rob Stones has been enormously significant to the facilitating of this book, and I especially thank him for his interest in my approach to structuration theory. I would like to thank José Maurício Domingues for discussions relating to our shared theoretical interests, as well as for his and Breno Bringel’s invitation to participate in the conference on Global Modernity and Social Contestation that they organized. I would like to thank Peter Murphy for his invitation to participate in a conference on Chicago School Sociology – I have learned a great deal from my discussions with him. A number of scholars have contributed to my engagement with the themes of this book, and I would like to mention the contributions of Axel Honneth, Johann P. Arnason, Richard Bernstein and William Outhwaite. I would like to thank Anthony Giddens for discussing his work with me, and Peter Wagner, Hans Joas and Luc Boltanski for the interviews that I conducted with them. My collaborations and discussions with Gilles Verpraet, Simon Susen, Paul Blokker and Colin Cremin have been most valuable. Jocelyn Pixley has been a major source of support, and I have considerably benefited from her advice. I would very much like to thank Phillip Mar for our research collaborations and for his supportive discussions and comments on my work. I would like to thank Daniela Heil most of all for her indefatigable support and incisive perspective.
INTRODUCTION

History is not only an object in front of us, far from us, beyond our reach, it is also our awakening as subjects . (Merleau-Ponty 1973 , 30)
Modernity is a sociological category that has both explanatory and normative dimensions. It is commonly used to describe the dominant institutions, patterns of meaning, and modes of living of modern societies. That is, the type of societies that emerged after feudalism , initially in Europe and North America. The category of modernity has always been evaluative, since it is meant to convey some sense of the realization of the modern. The concept of the modern has been consistently used to describe the temporal separation of the present from the past. The modern is not simply a concept or an idea. It is a social imaginary signification, in the sense that Cornelius Castoriadis proposed: the creation of a meaningful outlook on the world and its symbolic representation. Social imaginaries are not just cultural frameworks and representations; they are institution. To be precise, Castoriadis ( 1987 ) argues that social imaginaries are instituted and instituting.
The social imaginary of modernity, I argue, concerns the configuring of the relationship between the instituted form of society, in its various dimensions, and the instituting practices of subjects. In its different expressions, modernity involves the view that the existing institution of society is not given and that there is a constant tendency towards transformation inherent in the present. Modernity is a social imaginary in the further sense that this view of the constitution of society and its transformation are only true because of the practices that seek to realize it. For this reason, there is a strong connection between modernity and the ideal of autonomy, since autonomy presupposes that practices are self-determining.
Modernity has to a large extent meant the empowerment of human capabilities. Peter Wagner ( 1994 ) observes that modernity is founded on the assumptions that the world is intelligible and shapeable. Of course, the actual institution of modernity has not always been consistent with these principles. Modern institutions have generated new forms of domination and destruction, such as through the market’s conditioning of class relations, the power of the apparatuses of the political administrative systems to intensively control individuals and groups, and the destruction of the natural environment as a consequence of industrialization . It is a modernist perspective that assumes that modernity is the condition for transforming modernity’s deleterious institutionalization and negative consequences, as well as the transforming of those persisting social relations of domination and the irrational systems of belief that preceded the advent of modernity. This is the modernist standpoint of the two social theorists compared in this work: Jürgen Habermas and Anthony Giddens. Habermas and Giddens have each sought to develop and rethink the modernist vision of the potential constitution of society through the autonomous actions of subjects.
The modernist vision of the autonomous constitution of society is part of a process that emerges from the originally political notion of the constitution of legitimate government. It has a background in the notion that the institution of society originates from the actions of social subjects and that social relations of domination and inequality are amenable to change by the actions of free and equal citizens (Habermas 1996a ; Castoriadis 1991 ). Further, it was at the threshold of modernity that it was recognized that the sphere of political authority did not encompass the broader social preconditions of autonomy. Under pressure from the ensuing political demands and social struggles, this recognition would result in a democratizing of political authority and a protracted process of extending political freedom, eventually to property-less males and subsequently to women. Still, the modernist vision has challenged the sufficiency of political freedom to satisfying the demands for social autonomy, whilst generally considering political freedoms are a progressive development. Further, the unfolding of modernity showed that the ‘social’ was a realm with its own independent dynamics (Taylor 2004 ; Honneth 2014 ). These dynamics have been conceived of in different ways from the outset, such as being v