Campbell Live and its Discontents: The Culture Industry, Repressive Desublimation, and Investigative Journalism in New Zealand

It beggars belief that in a liberal democracy there is such a passive acceptance of the inevitability of Campbell Live’s fate—why is a fundamental cornerstone of democracy being eroded away within a system that purports to actively champion it? I aim to offer a dual explanation for the general demise of rigorous news media under late capitalism by application of Theodore Adorno’s culture industry thesis, as well as Freudian psychoanalysis via Herbert Marcuse’s repressive desublimation thesis. These two theories when applied in tandem shed light on why this has not only willingly occurred by suggesting that it is in capital’s interest to orchestrate such a system, but that we accept this system because it caters for our deepest irrational desire for it.

There has been a plethora of media analysis of the situation Campbell Live is facing, and to trawl through all of them to give a comprehensive picture is beyond the theoretical application of this essay. However, I wish to draw attention to Gordon Campbell’s editorial that highlights the inevitable demise of investigative journalism on broadcast television as an inherent, and dangerous, reality in a market orientated environment. Campbell’s paraphrasing of Oscar Wilde to describe the market telling us the “price of everything and the value of nothing” should be to be considered pertinent rather than a mere quip.[1] Lord Darlington was answering the question: “What is a cynic?”[2] The Oxford English Dictionary defines cynical as:

Believing that people are motivated purely by self-interest … concerned only with one’s own interests and typically disregarding accepted standards in order to achieve them.[3]

Pay particular attention to these definitions in relation to the market—and both Campbell’s application of Wilde to the market, and how this relates to Adorno’s thesis (as well as Marcuse’s). Keep in mind that under capitalism producers and consumers are self-interested. The disjunction between intrinsic and exchange value touches at one of the contradictions of capitalism, both with regards to the aesthetic of culture highlighted by Adorno, as well as, more troublingly, the fundamental principles of democracy. While journalism can be said to have use value in terms of information content for consumers, at a higher level its relationship to maintaining a functioning democracy and distributing knowledge could be considered intrinsic.

                  The original aim of Adorno’s thesis was to show what we would perceive of as artistic culture—film, music, literature, radio, television—is being standardised in such a way as to increase its market value and well as undermine its critical element, all to the benefit of capital.[4] The underlying causal mechanisms that he exposed in doing so can be discerned, explicably, in every facet of late capitalist societies, including journalism. By using a more encompassing definition of culture within Adorno’s theory, investigative journalism (in this case within the context of broadcast television), has also become subject to the same marketability and standardisation that has subsumed artistic culture.^[5] The archetypal measure of success in business is sales volume, and in turn, repetition of the formula of success. The product is worthy only insofar as it can be sold to the largest possible market. It is beyond belief that Television New Zealand’s pseudo-journalistic venture Seven Sharp consistently has substantively higher viewer ratings than Campbell Live, nevertheless, the show has found a formula that guarantees higher advertising revenue than a more qualitative editorial enterprise. The show’s less contentious and predictable content appeals to a larger public and appeases advertisers. It is little wonder then that MediaWorks, Campbell Live’s producers, wishes to replicate this formula for its own commercial imperatives. Profit will always trump any higher value offered by journalism. This fusion of entertainment and information produces a muted critical thinking in its viewers that will feedback into supporting the capitalist media enterprise.

                  Surely within a highly educated society consumers would see this apparatus at face value and demand otherwise? It seems not. In order to understand this we must engage with Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and Marcuse’s Marxist application of it. Freud suggests our deepest irrational desires for instant pleasurable gratification (the pleasure principle) is regulated by normative rules in our social sphere that we internalise (the reality principle).[6] Freud refers to the process of transformation of these desires into useful activity as sublimation. In addition to claiming civilization is driven by the process of sublimation, Freud argues that art as an end is a principle manifestation of sublimation. Marcuse, however, has suggested that late capitalism has reversed this notion. High culture, he claims, was originally a subversive dimension of society as the result of sublimation. However, the culture industry under late capitalism has flattened out any subversive element that it once had.[7]

While journalism does not explicitly fit the mould of art, and it can nevertheless be considered within high culture, as there is something to be said for the subversive element it can contain, namely, the critique of power. It is the changes in the mode of production under late capitalism that is rendering some forms of television journalism less antagonistic by blurring the distinction between its critical discourse, and trivialised news snippets and puff-piece journalism that satisfies instant gratification. This desublimation in turn generates the market demand that cynically demands this easy-to-digest and less subversive news content that capital, seeking to return a profit, is more than happy to supply.

A common critique of the trivialisation of television media suggests that the sphere of interactive discourse has shifted to the medium of the internet. While somewhat true, the desublimation hypothesis still suggests a required critical thought to actively engage with this sphere; a concerted effort is required to seek out and critically analyse news media and editorialised writing. However, a desublimated consumer will defer this critical thought via various modes of instant gratification: referring to websites of television news media such as TVNZ or 3 News; corporate dominated print media websites such as the New Zealand Herald or Fairfax; social media feeds such as Facebook or Twitter; or in an unfortunately increasing number of consumers, even the need for trivalised journalism is trumped by less critical forms of entertainment of which the internet offers an almost bottomless pit of. Any engagement with news media is still taken at face value uncritically, whether in agreement or not, instant gratification is satisfied and the matter is seldom engaged further than satisfactorily necessary.

Both Adorno and Marcuse had something important to say in the critique of late capitalism, and no doubt features of their theory are seen not just in artistic culture, but all culture. 'I don't want to think; I want to feel' is the epitome of the consumer under late capitalism. What Adorno and Marcuse have shown us is that the passive acceptance of this system, because of capital's manipulation of it, is destroying the 'think' supplied by investigative journalism, and exacerbating the 'feel' supplied by predictable and formulaic infotainment. The market becomes the measure of everything and offers the (intrinsic) value of nothing. We have become astonishingly self-interested and cynical as a consequence.

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[1] Gordon Campbell, "Gordon Campbell on the Demise of Campbell Live," Scoop Media, last modified April 10, 2015, http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2015/04/10/gordon-campbell-on-the-demise-of-campbell-live/.

[2] Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (Cambridge: ProQuest LLC, 1996), 95.

[3] Oxford Dictionary of English, Third Edition, 2013, s.v. “cynical”.

[4] Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (London: Verso, 2010), 120-167.

[5] Precise definitions of culture are numerous and debatable, and vary between sociological and anthropological disciplines. I intend to utilise Ian Buchanan’s definition of culture as a “set of beliefs, practices, rituals, and traditions shared by a group of people”, which within a democratic society would include journalism as valued for its contribution to political accountability. Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), s.v. “culture”.

[6] Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, trans. David McLintock (London: Penguin, 2004), 16-20.

[7] Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (London: Routledge, 2002), 59-86.

———————————————————————————————————————— "... we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever in peace." —W. M. Hicks.

A (Somewhat Brief) Critique of Historical Materialism

If one surveys the political landscape of the Anglosphere (United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand) one thing become apparent: all these governments operate from some form of capitalist, and indeed fiscally conservative, ideology. Even the Obama Administration in the United States is just capitalism-lite (or naïvely labeled socialism by far-right decriers) in contrast to its Republican critics. Nevertheless, any interventionist economic policy during the remaining years of Obama’s Presidency have been hampered by the Republican Party gaining control of the legislature in the 2014 mid-term elections. This turn in history could not surely be put down to mere coincidence? Despite what Karl Marx argued, capitalism seems destined to stay for the foreseeable future. Regardless of a brief Keynesian respite between the 1930s and 1960s, capitalism has become cemented as our mode of political economy. Even centrist labour parties have conformed to capitalism such as Britain under Tony Blair by adopting the acquiescent Third Way. So was Marx wrong about emergence of socialism and in turn communism? To answer this it is pertinent to understand historical materialism, Marx’s theoretical exposition of how we came to be in our present circumstances.

Marx developed his materialist conception of history not in a single work but gradually over several works, which makes it difficult to understand, and it can seemingly appear to be lacking coherence.[1] To find Marx’s roots for historical materialism we need to consider one of his forebears, Georg Hegel. In the Phenomenology of Spirit (as well as other works) Hegel developed a speculative logical system that served as the basis for his metaphysical and political thinking.[2] Hegel’s thinking was based on a dialectical methodology whereby successive categories are implicitly self-contradictory and give rise to a hierarchical evolution of categories: an initial thesis is contrary to its antithesis, and the two are united in a synthesis by the positive outcomes of each by avoiding both their self-contradictions.[3] Marx uses Hegel’s dialectical methodology but uses it within the circumstances of material conditions, not as an agent for history, but as a story of class struggle as defined by those material conditions. Marx’s history is therefore regarded as “materialist” in contrast to Hegel’s “idealist” history guided by the human spirit (Geist) that is directed towards freedom. In The German Ideology Marx elucidates how stages of material and productive development give rise to certain social arrangements related to division of labour and ownership of the means of production.[4] Certain antagonisms between modes of production have brought us from hunter-gatherer societies to primitive communal ownership, to feudal societies, and finally to capitalism. Capitalism however, has simplified class antagonism into two simple camps: the owners of production, the bourgeoisie, and those who must sell their labour to subsist, the proletariat.[5] When class is reduced to this definition it clarifies any grey areas that might suggest a fluidity between classes that is often the cornerstone of liberalism. This antagonism is still axiomatic in the same sense that aristocratic privilege was the defining feature of pre-revolutionary France. The repulsive aspects of capitalism’s contradictions would eventually create its collapse and give birth by way of revolution to a socialist society where the proletariat retain common ownership of the means of production.[6]

Class conflict because of material circumstances is inevitable; one class will always attempt to dominate the other whatever the historical circumstances.[7] Marx recognises this, however, the desire to overcome this relationship is tentative, especially in a world dominated by capital's hegemony. Marx's interpretation of class conflict suggests to the casual reader it is aimed at a specific end point: communism, or, a classless society. While idealistic, there is nothing to suggest that one system will triumph over another, and history will be drawn to an ideological terminus. Ideas will always arise from present material circumstances. But understanding Marx is more about the possible rather than the inevitable. Historical materialism is often misinterpreted or misappropriated as a historiographical methodology, as pointed out by Terry Eagleton, to explain the unfolding of history, especially in terms of class conflict.[8] What should be taken from Marx is a general theory of social change. Marx is not suggesting an internal determinist mechanism for history’s unfolding as well as its future, but putting forward an economic and well as technological argument for historical development of social formations. Humans are conditioned to execute a development in their productive relationships.[9]

The picture Marx paints however is not exempt from criticism: while Marx's explanation of the transition from primitive societies, to feudalism, and then to capitalism is plausible and well understood, his theory seems hollow when contrasted with the history of the twentieth century. The establishment of the Soviet Union after the 1917 Russian Revolution failed to follow the development of socialism according to historical materialism because it was a largely feudal society (in the loosest sense, especially in contrast to the industrialised capitalist economies of Germany, Britain, and the United States). The Soviet Union only heavily industrialised after transition to socialism, undermining Marx's logical development of communism. The collectivisation of agriculture and the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin cost millions of lives and failed to produce the means to create a classless society. Even China’s ruling communist party is gradually reforming its economy to what appears to be more capitalistic. This has led some commentators such as Francis Fukuyama, to suggest the inevitability of liberal democracy (and implicitly capitalism). Fukuyama has suggested the collapse of the Soviet Union has proved capitalism as the natural condition of human affairs and therefore the end of history.[10] Fukuyama is very much influenced in this regard by Hegel in an explanation for the unfolding of History. Marx also could not have foreseen to ideological power of the fusion of capital and technology to exacerbate what Fredrich Engles described as a false consciousness in the proletariat.[11] The ability of media corporations to distract and disseminate ideas that work in favour of capital is incredibly powerful.

Postmodern interpretations of history are dismissive of grand historical narratives whether they be materialist or otherwise.[12] However, the scepticism expressed by postmodernism towards any form of teleological inevitability need not undermine the theoretical basis for socialism or even the impetus to make all human lives better. A critique of Marx's historical materialism does not necessarily mean an outright rejection of all Marxist theory or socialism as a viable economic alternative to capitalism, but this also does not mean embracing Fukuyama's End of History thesis, which is teleological in itself being a derivative of Hegel.[13] There is nothing to suggest the present ideological epoch will not be undermined by some catastrophic event—say, anthropogenic climate change, or a dramatic financial collapse worse than the Great Depression, or a nuclear war—that will cause some regressive state of affairs to arise: one of the many flavours of anarchism or potentially a totalitarian government that derives its power from control of what little post-apocalyptic resources exist. So that leaves us with the question: if the historical march to communism is not inevitable, how does society overcome the vicissitudinous nature of capitalism? One can either wallow in the nihilism that Marx was wrong and we are all doomed to capitalism’s negativities, or we can use Marx as a theoretical impetus to critique capitalism without being locked into the dogmatism of inevitability. To quote Marx himself, "philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it".[14]

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[1]  Terrence Ball, "History: Critique and irony," in The Cambridge Companion to Marx, ed. Terrell Carver (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

[2] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and J. N. Findlay, Phenomenology of spirit, trans. Arnold V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Allen Wood, "Hegel and Marxism," in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick  C. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

[3] Hegel and Findlay, Phenomenology of Spirit; Michael Forster, "Hegel's dialectical method," in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick  C. Beiser (Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 131-3.

[4]  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, ed. C. J. Arthur (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1970).

[5] Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London: Penguin Books, 2002).

[6] ibid.

[7] ibid.

[8] Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011).

[9] Marx and Engles, The German Ideology, 47.

[10] Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).

[11]  Fredrich Engles, "Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1893," accessed March 27, 2015, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_07_14.htm.

[12]  Jean-François Lyotard et al., The postmodern condition: a report on knowledge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).

[13] Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man.

[14] Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach," in Early Writings. Introduced by Lucio Colletti. trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton, ed. Lucio Colletti. translated by Gregor Benton and Rodney L. Livingstone (Harmondsworth: Penguin, in association with New Left Review, 1975), 423.

———————————————————————————————————————— "... we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever in peace." —W. M. Hicks.

Colonisation of the Lifeworld: The Tragic Consequences of the Bureaucratisation of Social Welfare in New Zealand

On August 2nd 2014 the Ashburton Guardian published an article about local man Russell John Tully's desperate plight to find domestic accommodation despite an overwhelming number of physical, economic, and political factors stacked against him.[1] A month later, on September 1st, he walked into Ashburton's Work and Income New Zealand branch, killed two workers with a shotgun and critically injured a third. He was apprehended later in the day and subsequently charged with the murders.[2] As of writing this essay Tully's defendants are still waiting a psychiatric assessment on his mental state while he is remanded in custody.  However, given the desperate circumstances that led to this event, it would not be implausible to hypothesise they contributed to, or exacerbated existing, psychopathologies. Tully is suffering from a skin disease which has rendered him unable to work, and had "come home to die", so was seeking assistance to live out his untimely fate.[3] In engaging with this event on a deeper level is not an apologist stance towards Tully's actions, but attempting to understand the broader social, political, and economic contexts of why such a tragedy could occur through the lens of what Jürgen Habermas refers to as the colonisation of the lifeworld. I will attempt to discern to what extent Habermas' theory is valid in this specific circumstance. Firstly, I will offer an explanation of Habermas’ work in his Theory of Communicative Action and how this relates to the concept of the lifeworld. Secondly, I will trace the concept of social evolution through to what Habermas refers to as rationalisation of the lifeworld. Thirdly, I will discuss Habermas’ adaptation of systems theory to provide an account for how the lifeworld becomes colonised. Finally, for the remainder of the essay I will provide an application of Habermas’ theory to the circumstances surrounding Tully’s actions within the context of the modernisation and rationalisation of societies.

Habermas' interpretation of critical social theory is grounded in his theory of communicative action: communication between two or more people with the intention of establishing meaningful social relationships.[4] Communicative action, Habermas argues, is a form of action that transcends other instrumental forms of social action in that "actors seek to reach an understanding about the action and their plans of action in order to coordinate their actions by way of agreement".[5] Participants, through language, intersubjectively test each other's claims for validity in order to reach understanding as opposed to reaching success.[6] The process of communicative action "takes place against the background of a culturally ingrained preunderstanding".[7] This background, the lifeworld, a theory initially developed by Edmund Husserl in the phenomenological tradition, and sociologically developed by Alfred Schütz, is what Habermas draws upon for his account of how societies create and sustain themselves.[8] The lifeworld is a background of skills, knowledge, and competences that serves to maintain social relationships, and communicative action is what serves to reproduce the lifeworld "by way of the continuation of valid knowledge, stabilisation of group solidarity, and socialisation of responsible actors".[9]

Habermas has drawn upon Niklaus Luhmann's systems theory of sociology to develop a social evolutionary explanation of the rationalisation of the lifeworld (which I will discuss below). As societies evolve they become increasingly complex, however, Habermas is not claiming this is an inevitable process by way of differentiating institutional sub-systems out from the lifeworld, but that humans within societies bring about these changes themselves.[10] What Habermas is attempting to do is engage with, and form a symbiosis of, two different theoretical perspectives to form a more comprehensive analysis of modern societies: systems theory developed by Luhmann and Talcott Parsons, which discerns societies from the outside as a series of component systems, including the lifeworld; and a participant perspective that encompasses a "hermeneutic approach that picks up on members' pre-theoretical knowledge".[11] Habermas is not casting off systems theory but merely advocating it with an understanding that "what [fundametally] binds sociated individuals to one another and secures the integration of society is a web of communicative actions".[12] It becomes important to conceptualise the rationalisation, and subsequent colonisation, of the lifeworld in terms of both the social integration of societies and the systems integration of societies.[13] Social integration conceives of societies as "normatively guaranteed or communicatively achieved", whereas systematically integrated societies use "nonnormative steering of individual decisions [that are] not subjectively coordinated".[14]

Max Weber referred to rationalisation as "the pillar of both the modern State and of the economic life in the West", which has differentiated societal systems so far that they have taken on an autonomy that is no longer grounded in normative moral principles but their own inner workings.[15] These autonomous institutions, although rooted in the lifeworld, "steer a social intercourse that has been largely disconnected from norms and values".[16] This process is referred to by Habermas as the "uncoupling of the system and lifeworld".[17] Because of the increasing demands placed on language in complex societies an overburden occurs that has the effect of differentiating out various modes of exchange between systems: what Habermas refers to as "delinguistified media"—specifically money and power.[18] These institutional economic, bureaucratic, and political systems place demands on society so much so that it becomes almost impossible to avoid conforming to their dictates. This penetration of dehumanised systems, initially a product of humanity's modernisation, into the process of social integration is what Habermas argues is the colonisation of the lifeworld.

I will now turn to an application of Habermas’ theory to the surrounding circumstances of Russell John Tully’s actions on September 1st 2014. Closer inspection of modern society’s rationalistion reveals how institutions have differentiated from the lifeworld what was once the domain of charitable groups and communitarian concern.[19] This is not to say poverty or unfortunate circumstances such as Tully’s did not occur before the modernisation and industrialisation of society, but the channels to ameliorate these circumstances were less institutionalised and relied on the communicative action Harbermas suggests is integral for a socially integrated society. Because of globalisation, increase in complex technological communication, and population growth of the modern era, especially later half of the twentieth century, the role of the socially integrated community has vastly diminished and has been handed over to larger political structures. Almost every facet of modern life adheres in some way or another to larger systems that are devoid of communicative action. In a hypothetical scenario of a socially integrated society one could place Tully in, he might see his plight addressed by family members, friends, local charitable organisations, church groups, even local community political authorities (at least to some extent). With a modest amount of social resources at hand and through a process of communicative action Tully’s needs could be addressed more readily. Where appeals are dealt with through a smaller number of channels that are socially integrated, the face-to-face deliberation would yield at the very least tangible results.

While the emergence of the modern welfare state in New Zealand has meant a greater and more equitable access to social assistance—and this has waxed and waned depending on the ideological perspective of successive governments—it has passed over this to institutions whereby communication is instrumentally orientated rather than orientated toward mutual understanding. Applications for unemployment, disability, or accommodation benefits have to adhere to a strict set of criteria that has the result of very little impetus for providing assistance, empathy, or discretion. Every social welfare client’s needs are complex, yet the system treats them as a number, and fails to address pressing concerns such as health issues or need for affordable accommodation—or even the ability to discern potentially dangerous mental health issues. Social workers at the coalface such as those murdered by Tully no doubt personally share some psychological empathy towards their clients, yet they are ultimately bound by guidelines dictated to them by the machinations of the bureaucracy that stands above them. In the despondent eyes of Work and Income’s clients they are just another part of a dehumanising system that they have no other choice but to adhere to. These extraordinary pathologies may be indicative of a system so far removed from the lifeworld that it is failing to engage and address its needs in a meaningful and socially integrated manner.

The modern welfare state is just one of a myriad of systems “in which the demands of communicative action are relaxed … within legally specified limits”.[20] This characteristic of bureaucracy is also shared by capitalist monetary system, which Harbermas argues not only has the effect of regulating social environments, but also absorbs the state apparatus so that “power becomes assimilated to money”.[21] This is the delinguistified media that Habermas argues has become the new standard of exchange between systems. The state’s bureaucracies become steered by markets as does every day social systems that we interact with. Evidence of this can be seen when we analyse Tully’s circumstances in relation to the market and state bureaucracies. The market determines if his labour will be purchased by capital—which negatively affects the value of labour of those disabled such as his—as well as directing the market-accepted value of welfare assistance. Welfare policy is not determined by a mutual understanding of what is a socially accepted level of socio-economic subsistence, but by autonomously driven market forces (as well as hegemonically prevailing ideological perspectives). Tully was also forced to orientate his actions towards the autonomous real estate market in searching for accommodation; the quality and availability of this was limited by his low income as dictated by the labour market. This penetration and reification of the market system and bureaucracy so far into determining every facet of our lives—both negatively and positively—rather than communicative action is the concern Habermas shows towards the colonisation of the lifeword thesis. In this warning he argues that the rationalisation of the lifeworld “becomes so hypertrophied that it unleashes system imperatives that burst the capacity of the lifeword they instrumentalise”.[22]

Russell John Tully's story is not unfamiliar in our present society and there are numerous examples where a desperate, and often mentally unstable, individual irrationally and violently vents their anger at what they perceive is the system that is the source of their trouble. The vicissitudinous nature of modern institutions are no longer orientated to deal with these negative social pathologies in a holistically constructive manner. Modernity has pulled our social systems so far beyond our grasp we no longer recognise the humanity in them. They have become faceless and alien to our innermost and fundamental needs. It would appear because of our markets and bureaucracies, New Zealand is not exempt from the colonisation of the lifeworld.

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[1] Otago Daily Times Online News, "Interview reveals suspect's desperation," Allied Press Limited, last modified September 1, 2014, http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/314429/interview-reveals-suspects-desperation.

[2] Sophie Ryan et al., "Ashburton Work and Income shooting: Suspect arrested," APN New Zealand Limited, last modified September 1, 2014, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11317243.

[3] Otago Daily Times Online News, "Interview reveals suspect's desperation."

[4] Andrew Edgar, Habermas: The Key Concepts (New York: Routledge, 2006), 21.

[5] Jürgen Habermas, "Social Action and Rationality." In On Society and Politics, ed. Steven Seidman (Boston: Beacon, 1989), 143.

[6] ibid., 153-7.

[7] ibid., 154.

[8] Ian Buchanan, Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 294.

[9] Jürgen Habermas, " The Concept of the Lifeworld and Hermeneutic Idealism." In On Society and Politics, ed. Steven Seidman (Boston: Beacon, 1989), 173.

[10] Edgar, 139.

[11] Habermas, “The Concept of the Lifeworld.” 184-7; Habermas, "The Uncoupling of System and Lifeworld." in On Society and Politics, ed. Steven Seidmam (Boston: Beacon, 1989), 188; For Habermas a hermeneutical approach encompasses an interpretation of the whole social, historical, and psychological world.

[12] Habermas, “The Concept of the Lifeworld.” 184.

[13] James Bohman, and William Regh. "Jürgen Habermas." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Last modified 2014. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/habermas/.

[14] Habermas, “The Concept of the Lifeworld.” 185.

[15] Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons, 2nd ed. (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1976), 16; Habermas, “The Uncoupling of System and Lifeworld.” 189.

[16] Habermas, “The Uncoupling of System and Lifeworld.” 189.

[17] ibid.

[18] ibid., 190, 205.

[19] John Scott and Gordon Marshall, Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 630-1, 803.

[20] Bohman and Regh.

[21] Habermas, “The Uncoupling of System and Lifeworld.” 205.

[22] ibid., 190.

———————————————————————————————————————— "... we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever in peace." —W. M. Hicks.