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Reading Club, part 2: LEGITIMACY
🕑 Added 2023-06-05 17:32:10 +0000 UTCAs previously announced, the 2023 Reading Club is focusing on three principal works. The middle part of the year will be dedicated to reading Jürgen Habermas' 1973 classic, Legitimation Crisis.
The current order is evidently undergoing a crisis of legitimacy, but with nothing to replace it, we're stuck. How did Habermas theorise these questions in his context: one in which the Keynesian welfarist model still stood strong? And what can we learn from him to understand the crises of our time?
For the first episode we will be reading Part 1: A Social-Scientific Concept of Crisis (~33pp long), and the episode is due to be recorded on 30 June.
We want this to be as participatory as possible, so send in your questions. The more basic and simple the better!
Comments
Andrew Scerri
This is my first question, thanks for running this: On p. 14, H. argues "With growing individuation, the immunization of socialized individuals against decisions of the differentiated control center seems to gain strength. The normative structures become effective as a kind of self-inhibiting mechanism vis-a-vis imperatives of power expansion". Translated from H.'s pickled sociologese, I take this to mean "With growing individuation (access to healthcare, education, housing, skilled jobs etc.), individuals become more reflexive and, so, potentially critical of technocratic decisions". With hindsight, is H. recognizing that one of the contradictions of the 'normalization' of the welfare state (so its unmooring from political conflict) was the production of a libertarian culture, or, is he missing that completely (when he goes on to elaborate the system/lifeworld-communicative rationality thesis)?
