Social rationalization means cordoning off one sphere from organizational advance so autonomy can develop.

Evidence

The first of these was the topic of the peculiar character of social rationalization as a practical and rationalist corrective to technological progressa theme already mentioned in his critique of Heidegger: Have the sciences dealing with man not just proved that technological and economic organization in large industrial concerns has to be restricted in order to leave scope for natural, social faculties to develop? The proposal for social rationalization is initially a restrictive one: to bracket out one area from the progressive advance of organization in order to leave scope for what develops autonomously and not automatically. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 568

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Habermas’s early notion of “social rationalization” as a restrictive bracketing-off, not an extension of organization.