CRITICAL THEORYadvanced industrial society, technical forms of
control are no longer guided by consensually de-
rived societal values. Democratic decision making
is diminished under circumstances in which tech-
nical experts manipulate an objectified world, in
which citizens are displaced from political deci-
sion making, and in which ‘‘reason’’—identified
exclusively with the ‘‘value free’’ prediction of
isolated ‘‘facts’’—is disqualified from reflection
about the ends of social life.
More recently, Habermas (1987) has restated
this theory sociologically to describe an uneven
process of institutional development governed by
opposing principles of ‘‘system’’ and ‘‘lifeworld.’’
In this formulation, the cultural lifeworld—the
source of cultural meanings, social solidarity, and
personal identity—is increasingly subject to ‘‘colo-
nization’’ by the objectivistic ‘‘steering mechanisms’’
of the marketplace (money) and bureaucracy (pow-
er). On the levels of culture, society, and personali-
ty, such colonization tends to produce political
crises resulting from the loss of meaning, increase
of anomie, and loss of motivation. At the same
time, however, objectivistic steering mechanisms
remain indispensable because large-scale social
systems cannot be guided by the face-to-face inter-
actions that characterize the lifeworld. Thus, the
state becomes a battleground for struggles involv-
ing the balance between the structuring principles
of systems and lifeworlds. Habermas contends
that it is in response to such crises that the forces of
conservatism and the ‘‘new social movements’’
such as feminism and ecology are embattled and
that it is here that the struggle for human libera-
tion at present is being contested most directly. As
formulated by Habermas, a critical theory of socie-
ty aims at clarifying such struggles in order to
contribute to the progressive democratization of
modern society.
CURRENT DEBATES: CRITICAL THEORY
AND POSTSTRUCTURALISMIn the late 1980s and early 1990s, the heightened
influence of poststructuralism sparked intense de-
bate between critical theorists and poststructuralists.
Theorists staked out positions that tended to col-
lapse distinct theories into oppositional categories
(critical theory or poststructuralism) yet they agreed
on several points. Both critical and poststructural
theorists critiqued the transcendental claims of
Enlightenment thought (e.g., that truth transcends
the particular and exists ‘‘out there’’ in its univer-
sality), understood knowledge and consciousness
to be shaped by culture and history, and attacked
disciplinary boundaries by calling for supra-disci-
plinary approaches to knowledge construction.
Polarization, nonetheless, worked to emphasize
differences, underplay points of agreement, and
restrict awareness of how these approaches might
complement one another (Best and Kellner 1991;
Fraser 1997).Because critical theory aspires to understand
semiautonomous social systems (e.g., capital, sci-
ence and technology, the state, and the family)
as interconnected in an overarching matrix of
domination (Best and Kellner 1991, p. 220),
poststructuralists charge that it is a ‘‘grand theory’’
still mired in Enlightenment traditions that seek to
understand society as a totality. In viewing the
path to emancipation as the recovery of reason
through a critical analysis of instrumentalism,
scientism, and late capitalism, critical theory is
seen as promoting a centralized view of power as
emitting from a macro-system of domination. That
is, by promoting a view of social subjects as
overdetermined by class, critical theory is said to
reduce subjectivity to social relations of domina-
tion that hover in an orbit of capitalist imperatives.
By theorizing that subjectivity is formed through
social interaction (e.g., intersubjectivity), Habermas
departs from Horkheimer and Adorno’s view of
the social subject as ego centered—as a self-reflex-
ive critical subject (Best and Kellner 1991). None-
theless, poststructuralists contend that Habermas,
like his predecessors, essentializes knowledge. In
other words, the capacity to recover reason either
through critical reflexivity (Horkheimer, Adorno,
and Marcuse) or through a form of communica-
tive action that appeals to a normative order
(Habermas) promotes a false understanding of
subjectivity as ‘‘quasi-transcendental.’’In rebuttal, critical theorists argue that
poststructuralist views of power as decentralized
and diffuse uncouple power from systems of domi-
nation (Best and Kellner 1991). Poststructuralists
view social subjectivity as a cultural construction
that is formed in, and through, multiple and dif-
fuse webs of language and power. Critics charge
that such a diffuse understanding of power pro-
motes a vision of society as a ‘‘view from every-
where’’ (Bordo 1993). Social identities are seen as