The Fortunes of Feminism. Nancy Fraser
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and power. This “absolute differences” interpretation is at odds with a second possibility, which takes the contrast rather as a difference in degree. According to this second interpretation, system-integrated contexts would involve some consensuality and reference to moral norms and values, but less than socially integrated contexts; in the same way, socially integrated contexts would involve some strategic calculations in the media of money and power, but less than system-integrated contexts.
I want to argue that the absolute differences interpretation is too extreme to be useful for social theory and that, in addition, it is potentially ideological. In few, if any, human action contexts are actions coordinated absolutely non-consensually and absolutely non-normatively. However morally dubious the consensus, and however problematic the content and status of the norms, virtually every human action context involves some form of both of them. In the capitalist marketplace, for example, strategic, utility-maximizing exchanges occur against a horizon of intersubjectively shared meanings and norms; agents normally subscribe at least tacitly to some commonly held notions of reciprocity and to some shared conceptions about the social meanings of objects, including about what sorts of things are exchangeable. Similarly, in the capitalist workplace, managers and subordinates, as well as coworkers, normally coordinate their actions to some extent consensually and with some explicit or implicit reference to normative assumptions, though the consensus may be arrived at unfairly and the norms may be incapable of withstanding critical scrutiny.10 Thus, the capitalist economic system has a moral-cultural dimension.
Similarly, few if any human action contexts are wholly devoid of strategic calculation. Gift rituals in noncapitalist societies, for example, once seen as veritable crucibles of solidarity, are now widely understood to have a significant strategic, calculative dimension, one enacted in the medium of power, if not in that of money.11 And, as I shall argue in more detail later, the modern, restricted, nuclear family is not devoid of individual, self-interested, strategic calculations in either medium. These action contexts, then, while not officially counted as economic, have a strategic, economic dimension.
Thus, the absolute differences interpretation is not of much use in social theory. It fails to distinguish the capitalist economy—let us call it “the official economy”—from the modern, restricted, nuclear family. In reality, both of these institutions are mélanges of consensuality, normativity, and strategicality. If they are to be distinguished with respect to mode of action-integration, the distinction must be drawn as a difference of degree. It must turn on the place, proportions, and interactions of the three elements within each.
But if this is so, then the absolute differences classification of the official economy as a system-integrated action context and of the modern family as a socially integrated action context is potentially ideological. It could be used, for example, to exaggerate the differences and occlude the similarities between the two institutions. It could be used to construct an ideological opposition which posits the family as the “negative,” the complementary “other,” of the (official) economic sphere, a “haven in a heartless world.”
Which of these possible interpretations of the two distinctions are the operative ones in Habermas’s social theory? He asserts that he understands the reproduction distinction according to the pragmatic-contextual interpretation and not the natural kinds one.12 Likewise, he asserts that he takes the action-context distinction to mark a difference in degree, not an absolute difference.13 However, I propose to bracket these assertions and to examine what Habermas actually does with these distinctions.
Habermas maps the distinction between action contexts onto the distinction between reproduction functions in order to arrive at a definition of societal modernization and at a picture of the institutional structure of modern societies. He holds that modern societies differ from premodern societies in that they split off some material reproduction functions from symbolic ones and hand over the former to two specialized institutions—the (official) economy and the administrative state—which are system-integrated. At the same time, modern societies situate these “subsystems” in the larger social environment by developing two other institutions that specialize in symbolic reproduction and are socially integrated: the modern, restricted, nuclear family or “private sphere,” and the space of political participation, debate, and opinion formation or “public sphere,” which together constitute the two “institutional orders of the modern lifeworld.” Thus, modern societies “uncouple” or separate what Habermas takes to be two distinct but previously undifferentiated aspects of society: “system” and “lifeworld.” And so, in his view, the institutional structure of modern societies is dualistic. On one side stand the institutional orders of the modern lifeworld: the socially integrated domains specializing in symbolic reproduction (that is, in socialization, solidarity formation, and cultural transmission). On the other side stand the systems: the system-integrated domains specializing in material reproduction. On one side, the nuclear family and the public sphere. On the other side, the (official) capitalist economy and the modern administrative state.14
What are the critical insights and blind spots of this model? Attending first to the question of its empirical adequacy, let us focus, for now, on the contrast between “the private sphere of the lifeworld” and the (official) economic system. Consider that this aspect of Habermas’s categorial divide between system and lifeworld institutions faithfully mirrors the institutional separation of family and official economy, household and paid workplace, in male-dominated, capitalist societies. It thus has some prima facie purchase on empirical social reality. But consider, too, that the characterization of the family as a socially integrated, symbolic reproduction domain and of the paid workplace as a system-integrated, material reproduction domain tends to exaggerate the differences and occlude the similarities between them. Among other things, it directs attention away from the fact that the household, like the paid workplace, is a site of labor, albeit of unremunerated and often unrecognized labor. Likewise, it occults the fact that in the paid workplace, as in the household, women are assigned to, indeed ghettoized in, distinctively feminine, service-oriented, and often sexualized occupations. Finally, it fails to focus on the fact that in both spheres women are subordinated to men.
Moreover, this characterization presents the male-headed, nuclear family, qua socially integrated institutional order of the modern lifeworld, as having only an extrinsic and incidental relation to money and power. These “media” are taken as definitive of interactions in the official economy and state administration but as only incidental to intrafamilial ones. But this assumption is counterfactual. Feminists have shown via empirical analyses of contemporary familial decision-making, handling of finances, and wife-battering that families are thoroughly permeated by money and power. Sites of egocentric, strategic, and instrumental calculation, households are also loci of (usually exploitative) exchanges of services, labor, cash, and sex, as well as of coercion and violence.15 But Habermas’s way of contrasting the modern family with the official capitalist economy tends to occlude all this. It overstates the differences between these institutions and blocks the possibility of analyzing families as economic systems—that is, as sites of labor, exchange, calculation, distribution, and exploitation. Or, to the degree that Habermas would acknowledge that families can be seen as economic systems, his framework implies that this is due to the intrusion or invasion of alien forces—to the “colonization” of the family by the (official) economy and the state. This, too, however, is a dubious proposition, which I shall discuss in detail in section three below.
In general, then, Habermas’s model has some empirical deficiencies. It fails to focus on some dimensions of male dominance in modern societies. However, his framework does offer a conceptual resource suitable for understanding other aspects of modern male dominance. Consider that Habermas subdivides the category of socially integrated action-contexts into two further subcategories. One pole comprises “normatively secured” forms of socially integrated action. Such action is coordinated on the basis of a conventional, pre-reflective, taken-for-granted consensus about values and ends, consensus rooted in the pre-critical internalization of socialization and cultural tradition. The other pole of the contrast concerns “communicatively achieved” forms of socially integrated action. Such action is coordinated on the basis of explicit, reflectively achieved understandings, agreement reached by unconstrained discussion under conditions of freedom, equality, and