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Reinvigorates Jürgen Habermas' early critical theory.
The first close study of Jürgen Habermas's theory of socialization, a central but infrequently discussed component of his defense of deliberative democracy, The Idolatry of the Actual charts its increasingly uneasy relationship with the later development of Habermas's social theory. In particular, David A. Borman argues that Habermas's account of the development of the subject and of the conditions under which autonomy can be realized is fundamentally at odds with the increasingly liberal tenor of his social theory. This leads Borman to return to the set of concerns that guided Habermas's social theory in the early 1970s, paying particular attention to questions of crisis and the means by which public reactions are shaped-questions perhaps more relevant today than they have been at any time since the 1930s. Using Habermas's early work as a framework, Borman constructs an original critical-theoretical argument that draws on research in the sociology of schooling to understand how attitudes toward work, reward, achievement, class, gender, and race are shaped in economically functional ways, and draws on philosophical and empirical scholarship to demonstrate the challenges of multicultural integration and the impact of both on the potential for progressive social transformation.
"This is perhaps the clearest and most compelling study of the late Habermas. Borman has mastered both Habermas's primary texts and scholarship on his work, and also provides a convincing view of many of Habermas's key ideas and their relevance for understanding contemporary societies." — Douglas Kellner, George F. Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education, UCLA
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
The Structure of Critical-Theoretical Argument
The Argument
The Critique of Late Habermas
1. CAPITALISM AND CONTRADICTION IN LEGITIMATION CRISIS
On the Concept of Crisis
System and Lifeworld
Liberal Capitalism and Contradiction
"A Descriptive Model of Advanced Capitalism"
Crisis Tendencies in Advanced Capitalism
The Critical Reception of Legitimation Crisis
2. RATIONALIZATION AND SOCIAL PATHOLOGY IN THE THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION
The Theory of Communicative Action in a Nutshell
Linguistification as Rationalization: An Evolutionary Account of the Lifeworld
Mediatization as Rationalization: An Evolutionary Account of System
System and Lifeworld Interchange Roles and the Thesis of Colonization
Summary
Protest Potential in The Theory of Communicative Action
Culture and Economy: On the Instrumentalization of Status Distinctions
The "Inevitability" of System
POSTSCRIPT: BETWEEN FACTS AND NORMS, IN WHICH LAW SAVES US FROM OURSELVES
INTERMEDIATE REFLECTIONS: HABERMAS AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE SCHOOL
Habermas on the Function of the School
Dominant Perspectives in the Sociology of the School
Schooling in Capitalist America: The Correspondence Principle
Correspondence and Legitimation
Jean Anyon and the Differentiation of the "Hidden Curriculum"
Paul Willis and "the Lads"
The Educational Exchange and the Counter-School Insight
"The Lads" Culture and the Role of Race and Gender
Fatalism, Positivism, and Working Class Culture
Conclusion
3. MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND POSTCONVENTIONALITY
Interactive Competence and the System of Speaker and World Perspectives
Postconventionality and Discourse
Vindicating the Developmental-Logical Argument
Problems in Kohlberg
4. SOCIALIZATION AND EGO AUTONOMY
The True Individual
The Causes of Postconventionality
Arrested Development and the Systems-Theoretical Individual
Arrested Development and Moral Consciousness
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS: MULTICULTURAL IDENTITY AS POSTCONVENTIONALITY
New York Multiculturalism and the "Contact" Hypothesis
Multiculturalism as a Fact and Multicultural Integration as an Aim of Policy
Multiculturalism as Political Integration
Constitutional Patriotism as Multicultural Identity
The Actualization of Democratic Rights as a Source of Postconventional Recognition
Multicultural Education and Capitalist Colonization: A Social Contradiction
The Practical Significance of the Contradiction
Conclusion: The Status of the Argument
Notes
Bibliography
Index