Colonization of the life world

Colonization of the Life World


1. Theoretical Significance and Implications

The conflict between instrumental or strategic rationality and communicative rationality has been a recurrent one as modern capitalist society has developed. What has intensified the debate and has impacted human society profoundly is the rise of organizations for capitalist production and bureaucracies for governance often resulting in complete subversion of communicative rationality and all norms inherent therein.

According to Jurgen Habermas of the Frankfurt School all social systems consist of two worlds: a life world and a systems world. The term life world refers to the whole horizon or backdrop of human existence represented by community values, culture, and norms and shared beliefs evolved through a process of interaction, communication and consensus building among people. The system world consists of the institutional structures, policies, rules, and management systems that become necessary initially to preserve and reproduce the life world as human society moves from primitive tribal existence to modern capitalist organization. As society evolves, with the deepening of capitalism, the system world (Weber’s capitalist and bureaucratic institutions) meant to protect and reproduce the life world values starts to influence, reshape and determine these very values. Habermas describes this as one of the fundamental malaises of the late capitalist world: namely the “colonization of the life world by the systems world” via system imperatives (Theory of Communicative Action, Beacon Press 1984). Thus even an area like school education in India is today highly commercialized being perceived as a profitable area in metro cities especially if the medium of instruction is English. While the life world determines how students interact with their teachers and amongst themselves, admission to the school is a highly competitive and expensive rat race among parents especially if the school turns out so called high performers. This pressure in turn makes the systems world of rules, policies and bureaucracy very important in this school as if it were a factory! (David Stader: ibid)

The system world values of profit and efficiency, backed by money and power (Habermas calls it the media of money and power) start subverting the life world values of truth, rightness and mutual cooperation. Democratic communication and communicative rationality is ‘colonized” by strategic or instrumental rationality where efficient attainment of ends is the highest form of rationality. “Distinctly human patterns of communication and interaction are under threat, progressively squeezed to the margins of communal life by the more instrumental or manipulative model of interactions appropriate to technology or to impersonal systems.” (Paul Lukeland: http://www.rosscurrents.org/lakeland2.htm ). The question that the situation begs is what happens when people are thrown from their life world spheres into system world organizations guided by solely instrumentalist norms seeking to steer them to their goals whether in terms of profit making or maintaining public order. As Habermas says “Persons are as members, (of such system world institutions which are legally legitimized) stripped of personality structures and neutralized into bearers of certain performances.” (Theory of Communicative Action: Habermas 1984) The challenge is in trying to disentangle and solve questions in which both rationales seem to be operative, by working between life world and system world imperatives. (Ron Rowe: ibid) According to Habermas, the process cannot be reversed completely as capitalist logic constantly reproduces system world imperatives. However human beings can partially restore communicative value oriented spaces through democratic action and mobilization and understanding and retrieving cultural values in the midst of imperatives of profit and power..


2. Role of Mass Media in Colonization of the Life World

This “Habermasian” struggle is best played out when it comes to the public sphere of mass media. In this struggle between strategic and communicative action, mass media plays a role that belies its expected performance as an institution of communicative action and consensus building. The increased utilization of media as vehicles of strategic action hides their natural function as vehicles for communicative action or action for understanding. As Habermas analyzes, media also itself gets colonized and subordinated by the strategic or functionalist reason of “market and administrative forces through exposure to capitalist system imperatives.” (Ron Rowe: Between System and Life World: Purdue University, 2003). Media messages and products are no longer determined by democratic consensus but by the motives of profit and accumulation of power by the few. Therefore mass media itself becomes an intrinsic part and an ally of the system world that colonizes the life world. The complete subjugation of electronic media by business interests propagating unbridled consumerism is something people have almost become blasé about. The manipulation of media by political interests to snuff out democratic dissent is also an all too frequent occurrence. While the Iraq war and post 9/11 are times when all this became too brazen, across countries and culture, this is an everyday reality and its blind acceptance an everyday casualty.



Culture Jamming and other Forms of Protest

Fortunately, however, media itself is one of those potential spaces, Habermas spoke about which can be freed up for democratic discourse and retrieval of communicative values. Journalistic ethics and integrity and public broadcasting have been known to rise up in challenge time and again. Interactive media, viz., cyberspace is a gift of technology that offers one of the best tools to resist the tyranny of technology and money power. Ron Rowe describes Napster and different list serves and discussion groups as amongst those Habermasian spaces for communicative action challenging the corporate world.

A particular, albeit somewhat extreme, form of protest is known as culture jamming. This is the act of using existing mass media and its communication medium and forms to question the images and messages of the same media. It is a form of activism, also called “ guerilla communication” which seeks to use the same airwaves, billboards, and even corporate logos to propagate an alternative message or ridicule or lampoon the corporate one. It is a sort of witty art form, which parodies adverts to convey a different value. An advertisement I had seen showing the American flag where the Stars have been replaced by corporate logos is a particularly telling example of this art form.

Personal Experiences: Examples of Resistance

For me as I reflect, the shift from life world imperatives to system world imperatives have happened, primarily in the sphere of education. As a child in a school in the Eastern part of India, I was taught on values of goodness, integrity, love, compassion and truth, which were constantly reinforced by my family at home. As I moved into adolescence, I changed into a high performance high school in a prosperous Delhi neighborhood and before I knew, the discourse in school was focusing on professional careers and competitive examinations. My school even boasted of an “Ability Section” which comprised top performers being groomed for professional excellence. The school had a management system, which was quite elaborate and distant from the students. All this affected interaction between students: I remember animated discussions amongst us regarding the number of cars our parents had and their respective models! The purpose of education as I was taught and brought up to understand, as a child, seems to have been completely lost somewhere along the way. I won’t say there are no islands of resistance. In that very school we began class singing the national anthem, our friendships have sustained physical distances and, sometimes, different levels of performance and differing stations in life. However, I am not sure if this can be ascribed to the lingering life world values of school life or to the strong life world values inculcated within our families. When I look at the content of college curriculum, whether in politics or economics, I find attempts to present a balanced worldview and to question the stranglehold of corporate America. I read two books called “If the Gods .Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates” and “ Another Turn of the Crank” both refreshingly questioning and iconoclastic. The answer to the Habermasian struggle is not to lose perspective and the way to do it is to develop our faculties of critical thinking and democratic values so that we don’t fall into the trap of blind acceptance.


References:
Jurgen Habermas: Theory of Communicative Action, Beacon Press 1984
Ron Rowe: Between System and Life World: Purdue University, 2003
Paul Lukeland: http://www.rosscurrents.org/lakeland2.htm
http://www.quinon.com/words
David Cox: Notes on Culture Jamming: http://www.sniggle.net
Notes on Habermas: http://www.ucalgary.ca
David Stader: Life World and System: http://www.ncacasi.org