Abstract systems do not colonise the life-world but interact dialectically with it
Evidence
Does this mean that, as Habermas puts it, abstract systems “colonise” a pre-existing “life-world,” subordinating personal decisions to technical expertise? It does not. The reasons are twofold. One is that modern institutions do not just implant themselves into a “life-world,” the residues of which remain much the same as they always were. Changes in the nature of day-to-day life also affect the dis-embedding mechanisms, in a dialectical interplay. The second reason is that technical expertise is continuously reappropriated by lay agents as part of their routine dealings with abstract systems. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 347
Categorization
- XREF: This challenges Luhmann’s stronger claim of total system self-reproduction; for Ishiguro, Stevens models the failure to reappropriate expertise — he never reskills, only defers. — connects to: Knowledge of the social world makes that world inherently unstable — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 115; Traveling via abstract systems requires no technical mastery, only filtered lay knowledge — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 268; Impersonal modern systems paradoxically enable reembedding of local personal life — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 342 (+20 more)
- QUESTION: Does Stevens’s total deference falsify Giddens’s claim that lay agents always reappropriate expertise, or simply show a pathological non-example?
Related
- Impersonal modern systems paradoxically enable reembedding of local personal life (similarity 0.82)
- Intellectual systems fuse first in lived reality, only later in thought (similarity 0.81)
- Knowledge of the social world makes that world inherently unstable (similarity 0.80)
- Modern expert systems allow no one to opt out of their influence. (similarity 0.79)
- Habermas’ colonization metaphor is undeveloped and presumes a false system-lifeworld split (similarity 0.78)
- Large-scale systems enable rather than merely threaten individual self-actualisation (similarity 0.78)
- Biology and abstract reason never united humans; concrete thought did (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Full autonomy of social levels cannot capture a social formation’s complex unity
#corroborates(0.70) - Ideas and practical life mutually influence each other in a reciprocal interaction
#expands(0.65) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2169 - Large-scale systems enable rather than merely threaten individual self-actualisation
#expands(0.60) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 371