i used to take danny to a family daycare provider, a friend and neighbor. at some point she decided to become certified. she had to attend weekly meetings where she learned about nutrition, discipline, psychology, etc. she did this because she wanted to be able to take advantage of the programs offered as incentives: grant monies for toys, play equipment, high chairs, cribs, even free food. and, she also wanted to legitimate the work she did by being able to say that she was a "certified" family daycare provider. she also wanted to avoid getting in trouble for caring for more than two children who weren't her own.
one day i learned that danny had a penchant for kicking the dog. so i said, "let's do x as a form of discipline." what did my friend say? she said, "can't do that because the state says that the only discipline allowed is one minute in time out for each year old" oh. "you mean we can't decide what's appropriate? you mean i'm his mother and even i can't say?" "nope" "well this is just swell" 'yep, and i'll get in trouble if i do what you ask me to do"
my friend, ronnie, agreed as to the stupidity. she told me that a number of other daycare providers thought it was ridiculous that parents had no say in how their children were raised. it wasn't so much that they thought they should have control, for they believed that other parents ultimately should have authority over their children. [individualist assumptions, of course]. in explaining that one, ronnie also told me that she wasn't allowed to do the following: 1] argue with her husband in front of the kids, which she had from 6-7. 2] discipline her own children as she saw fit.
so we had this long discussion about discipline--what each of thought was the right way and the wrong way. we disagreed. she believed in spanking and had interesting almost convincing reasons. i didn't and still don't, even though i could see her point of view. the point is, though, we both learned something from one another and may have changed our minds. we were friends, neighbors and we saw ourselves has possessing some form of authority in this discussion-- whether appeals to tradition, experience, what have you. we made judgments on one another.
now, what happened here? the state, by virtue of its authority to regulate childcare [which isn't necess. a 'bad' thing; surely it is trying to eliminate abusive situations, etc] had just taken away our capacity to decide for ourselves how to discipline our children. not only that, it has largely rendered the discussion ronnie and i had about the wrong way and right way to discipline moot. who cares? the state has decided that this is the right way. how? well some research revealed, of course, that they got together all the experts: the nutritionists, the pscyhologists, the educators, the health inspectors, etc. and the "experts" decided.
fact was, of course, that the daycare providors resisted because they new it was difficult for the state to back up their authority in punitive ways. so, when the experts said that they had to put dirty cloth diapers, unrinsed, into plastic bags to send home with the parents in the evening, they laughed at that and refused. why? because they surely wouldn't want to be unwrapping and 8 hour old diaper and they figured parents didn't want to either. and so forth.
nonetheless, you see what i'm getting at. this is what rationalization means in a very concrete setting. the bureaucratic state has the capacity to take away our ability to think for ourselves what we ought to do, how, and why and what the ends are for doing so. no longer do ronnie and i negotiate the way in which we think it best to take care of our children. we no longer need to have a discussion about discipline or nutrition or play or learning and what we think best, the friggin state does. gone is our ability to negotiate the rules by which we live and in its place is the legitimated authority of the state which backs up its authority by being able to fine ronnie for being unlicensed or for being licensed and breaking the rules.
now, of course, in this instance you see resistance. why? because people still believe that the family ought to be a sphere of privacy against the intrusions of the state. they see the state as the enemy here in many ways. and resistance comes a bit more readily. [btw, i've also looked how how the systems logic of money rationalized the family daycare situation too. and there i found a source of the 'stay at home mom' v 'working mom' war that played iself out in terms of "paying" for something that people were ambivalent about paying for. another post that one]. as habermas notes, such forms of resistance are defensive maneuvers that seek to protect a way of life. that actually defend a way of life that may not be so great upon more sustained consideration. but consideration didn't happen here because the knee jerk response, in this instance, was to see the state as the enemy and to not necessarily question, say, traditional forms of discipline.
in the realm of the polity the possibility of resistance is less readily considered since rationalization has been part and parcel of the creation of the polity to begin with [which is not to say that it hasn't been in terms of families, but in a different way. see esp christopher lasch's _haven in a heartless world_ and the rise of social work, medicine, psychology, education, etc as well as ehrenriech and english's _for her own good_. the argument has also been made in a diff way in terms of the US civil rights movement which was built on the networks of churches and neighborhood and kin]
ken writes:
>Fair enough. I once sunk the centered 8-ball off a break.
ace.
>Aren't human rights bureaucratic?
i knew you were going to ask this. in terms of the state, yes. in terms of the public sphere, no. the public sphere would be beyond the life world, civil society, but not subsumed under the bureaucratic mechanisms of the state. it isn't governed by the state. are the judgments made in these dialogic spaces going to be backed by the state's monopoly on the means of violence? who's enforcing that norms be upheld? the Law?
>And the idea that bureaucracy "depletes us of imagining" is
>really interesting. Why is that?
see above. and.....
"it's not my job, that's someone else's job. next"
"why isn't it your job"
"because it says so in the rules and regulations governing my job"
"who wrote that?"
"look, don't get me wrong, but if i had it my way, i'd help you out. but i can't because the rules say...."
"well if you want to help me, then why not. would it hurt?"
"yeah, because then i'd get behind in my work and i've got enough headaches. and if my boss ever found out....."
now, ken, there's something fundamentally different here. the rules of how we might behave together in terms of trying to come to an agreement over what to do about recycling or whatevA aren't not operating like the rules operate in a bureaucracy. an anonymous someone doesn't make them up. the people at the table do and they know this.
>I think Horkheimer changed his view about this in his later
>work - esp. after Dialectic of Enlightenment - where the lone
>intellectual became an "imaginary witness."
haven't read the latest stuff that they've been republishing. you mean _between philosophy and social science_?
>I don't get it. Do you mean that Habermas provides a critique
>of Kant into order to subordinate the monological process of
>self-relfection and moral testing with an action theoretic?
noope. i mean, objecting to a sociological analysis on the basis of the either/or in the whole "free will" debate in philosophy doesn't work because those aren't the terms of the debate in sociology.
1. sociologists don't presume that humans have "free will" or "freedom" 2. freedom is a product of society, in the same way concepts like the self or the individual or character or anything else--even the idea of society is created by society. 3. specifically how we think of freedom is also contingent on the social relations particular to a society and there can be discordant understanding of what constitutes freedom. 4. the focus, then, isn't on whether people possess freedom, naturally, outside of society, but rather, the focus is on the conditions that can nurture freedom however that's conceived. i.e, if we think of freedom as the freedom to choose then the focus is on lots of choices but isn't necessarily on the freedom to have some say over what those choices are to begin with. we don't just make that up, it comes from the way social institutions, as embodied in language, practices, which operate in and through people, conceive of freedom. and, as i said, there can actually be competing understanding of freedom depending on who, when, where you ask and look.
> think what Habermas fails to understand here is that the
>ifeworld is more akin to Lacan's imaginary than it is Weber's
>ationalization...
?? you mean habermas is presuming some sphere that exists in and of itself and then is colonized by the systems? as if the lifeworld is some redemptive realm of truth? and that he's probably not unlike conventionally freudians who think that the unconscious is where Truth resides and we need to get at that so the unconscious will speak to us and reveal our fundamental problems and then we'll be whole?
i don't think so. i mean, i know he's got this approach to psychoanalysis that is far too reconstructive for you. but this is where i see the difference: if he thought that then he'd say civil society is where it's at. he wouldn't characterize new social movements as "defensive" and thus mistaken in their attempts to preserve the lifeworld against the onslaught of systems rationalization. the lifeworld doesn't have the truth against the logics of money and power. that's not how he sees it.
>Yeah, no one should judge.
worming your way around. you're getting very good at this ken ole boyo.
>Guess where that comes from.
>That's what I mean about not giving up on desire. Take the
>Sati ritual for instance. People are unwilling to be critical of it
>because it makes a religious claim.... so it is covered under
>"spellbinding power" and "I have no right to interfere with the
>religious beliefs of other people even if I disagree." This is
>the surrender of desire. You give up on universality, on
>speaking your mind.
> the ones who maintained that all theoretical positions
were equally valid.
>Again, this seems to be a "giving up on desire" (not to mention
>any sort of reason!). It is one thing to support theoretical
>pluralism on an institutional level (academic freedom) but it is
>another to say that everything is true. As Hegel might has
>said, the actual is rational, and the rational is actual. I guess
>this is the end of ideology thesis run amok.
yah. but you seemed to have been criticizing a claim i made by suggesting that it was totalitarian or whatever and you seemed to be suggested that normative claims are, in and of themselves, bad things.
>Funny eh? All theoretical approaches are valid, except for the
>ones arbitrarily chosen to be invalid or everyone is wrong
>except me.
yeah, well the all positions are equally valid folks are the ones who forced the early retirement of the fellah who made public judgments on dissertations and the like. go figure.
>Actually, he's asking for normative practices - not substantive
>practices.
oh two diff. languages here ken doll, what you mean?
>The procedure of justification is, for Habermas, an
>impartial one (minted with the procedure of application to fill
>impartiality out). That's the problem.
but this isn't the only aspect of it. it's *part* of the process.
>This is why Habermas
>is sadistic in theory. The substance comes from the validity
>claims *after* they have been redeemed. Like Kant, the
>substance is not prior to the procedure (ie. the moral law). But
>this places Habermas is the same problematic position. In
>Kant, the highest good (the fulfilment of the law) and diabolical
>evil (evil for the sake of evil alone) become indistinguishable.
>So the validity claim that has passed, or the validity claim
>that was never raised, are identical. Benhabib's corrective
>here is to establish procedures openely as substantive, which
>is why she relies on an anticipatory utopia - a hope that these
>procedures are reflexive enough...
then what make you of the quotes from moral consciousness and communicative action? don't get it? this ethical death bizzo is goofy if'n ya ask me. but it's your thang so go tuit.
the rest cut off from browser for some reason.
later gator
____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com.