4 - From World to Emancipation

Summary

This chapter reconstructs JŸrgen Habermas's critical theory of domination and uses it to examine the relationship between welfare institutions and democratic social movements. While most scholars approach Habermas as a normative theorist who identifies the moral basis for political critique and democracy in the universal features of human communication, the chapter focuses on another aspect of Habermas's thought: his analysis of the practices through which domination is sustained as well as overcome. The chapter develops two concepts from Habermas's early thought: the causality of fate and the dialectic of moral life. The first term refers to the peculiar manner in which individuals who exist within a structure of domination come to understand themselves as participants in that structure; while the second refers to the political dynamic through which that recognition propels the potential transformation of that structure. The chapter then turns to the critique of gender domination in the Sweden to show how Habermas's categories can help illuminate concrete struggles in the welfare state.