Let me begin by considering two distinctions central to Habermas’s social — theoretical categorical framework. The first of these is the distinction between the symbolic and the material reproduction of societies. On the one hand, claims Habermas, societies must reproduce themselves materially; they must
successfully regulate the metabolic exchange of groups of biological individuals with a nonhuman, physical environment and with other social systems. On the other hand, societies must reproduce themselves symbolically; they must maintain and transmit to new members the linguistically elaborated norms and patterns of interpretation which are constitutive of social identities. Habermas claims that material reproduction comprises what he calls “social labor.” Symbolic reproduction, on the other hand, comprises the socialization of the young, the cementing of group solidarity, and the transmission and extension of cultural traditions.4
This distinction between symbolic and material reproduction is in the first instance a functional one: it distinguishes two different functions which must be fulfilled more or less successfully if a society is to survive. At the same time, however, the distinction is used by Habermas to classify actual social practices and activities. These are distinguished according to which one of the two functions they are held to serve exclusively or primarily. Thus, according to Habermas, in capitalist societies, the activities and practices which make up the sphere of paid work count as material reproduction activities since, in his view, they are “social labor” and serve the function of material reproduction. On the other hand, the childrearing activities and practices that in our society are performed without pay by women in the domestic sphere—let us call them “women’s unpaid childrearing work”—count as symbolic reproduction activities since, in Habermas’s view, they serve socialization and the function of symbolic reproduction.5
It is worth noting, I think, that Habermas’s distinction between symbolic and material reproduction is susceptible to two different interpretations. The first of these takes the two functions as two objectively distinct “natural kinds” to which both actual social practices and the actual organization of activities in any given society may correspond more or less faithfully. Thus, childrearing practices would in themselves be symbolic reproduction practices, while the practices which produce food and objects would in themselves be material reproduction practices. And modern capitalist social organization, unlike, say, that of archaic societies, would be a faithful mirror of the distinction between the two natural kinds, since it separates these practices institutionally. This “natural kinds” interpretation is at odds with another possible interpretation, which I shall call the “pragmatic-contextual” interpretation. It would not take childrearing practices to be in themselves symbolic reproduction practices but would allow for the possibility that, under certain circumstances and given certain purposes, it could be useful to consider them from the standpoint of symbolic reproduction—for example, if one wished to contest the dominant view, in a sexist political culture, according to which this traditionally female occupation is merely instinctual, natural, and ahistorical.
Now I want to argue that the natural kinds interpretation is conceptually
inadequate and potentially ideological. I claim that it is not the case that childrearing practices serve symbolic as opposed to material reproduction. Granted, they comprise language-teaching and initiation into social mores— but they also include feeding, bathing, and protection from physical harm. Granted, they regulate children’s interactions with other people, but also their interactions with physical nature (in the form, for example, of milk, germs, dirt, excrement, weather, and animals). In short, not just the construction of children’s social identities but also their biological survival is at stake. And so, therefore, is the biological survival of the societies they belong to. Thus, childrearing is not per se symbolic reproduction activity; it is equally and at the same time material reproduction activity. It is what we might call a “dual-aspect” activity.6
But the same is true of the activities institutionalized in modern capitalist paid work. Granted, the production of food and objects contributes to the biological survival of members of society. But it also, and at the same time, reproduces social identities. Not just nourishment and shelter simpliciter are produced, but culturally elaborated forms of nourishment and shelter that have symbolically mediated social meanings. Moreover, such production occurs via culturally elaborated social relations and symbolically mediated, norm-governed social practices. The contents of these practices as well as the results serve to form, maintain, and modify the social identities of persons directly involved and indirectly affected. One need only think of an activity like computer programming for a wage in the U. S. pharmaceutical industry to appreciate the thoroughly symbolic character of “social labor.” Thus, such labor, like unpaid childrearing work, is a “dual-aspect” activity.7
Thus, the distinction between women’s unpaid childrearing work and other forms of work from the standpoint of reproduction functions cannot be a distinction of natural kinds. If it is to be drawn at all, it must be drawn as a pragmatic-contextual distinction for the sake of focalizing what is in each case actually only one aspect of a dual-aspect phenomenon. And this, in turn, must find its warrant in relation to specific purposes of analysis and description, purposes which are themselves susceptible to analysis and evaluation and which need, therefore, to be justified through argument.
But if this is so, then the natural kinds classification of childrearing as symbolic reproduction and of other work as material reproduction is potentially ideological. It could be used, for example, to legitimize the institutional separation of childrearing from paid work, a separation which many feminists, myself including, consider a linchpin of modern forms of women’s subordination. It could be used, in combination with other assumptions, to legitimate the confinement of women to a “separate sphere.” Whether Habermas so uses it will be considered shortly.
The second component of Habermas’s categorical framework that I want to examine is his distinction between “socially integrated action contexts” and “system-integrated action contexts.” Socially integrated action contexts are those in which different agents coordinate their actions with one another by reference to some form of explicit or implicit intersubjective consensus about norms, values, and ends, consensus predicated on linguistic speech and interpretation. System-integrated action contexts, on the other hand, are those in which the actions of different agents are coordinated with one another by the functional interlacing of unintended consequences, while each individual action is determined by self-interested, utility-maximizing calculations typically entertained in the idioms—or, as Habermas says, in the “media”—of money and power.8 Habermas considers the capitalist economic system to be the paradigm case of a system-integrated action context. By contrast, he takes the modern, restricted, nuclear family to be a case of a socially integrated action context.9
Now this distinction is a rather complex one. As I understand it, it contains six analytically distinct conceptual elements: functionality, inten — tionality, linguisticality, consensuality, normativity, and strategicality. However, I am going to set aside the elements of functionality, intentionality, and linguisticality. Following some arguments developed by Thomas McCarthy in another context, I assume that in both the capitalist workplace and the modern, restricted, nuclear family, the consequences of actions may be functionally interlaced in ways unintended by agents; that, at the same time, in both contexts agents coordinate their actions with one another consciously and intentionally; and that, in both contexts, agents coordinate their actions with one another in and through language.10 I assume, therefore, that Habermas’s distinction effectively turns on the elements of consensuality, normativity, and strategicality.
Once again, I think it useful to distinguish two possible interpretations of Habermas’s position. The first takes the contrast between the two kinds of action contexts as registering an absolute difference. Thus, system-integrated contexts would involve absolutely no consensuality or reference to moral norms and values, whereas socially integrated contexts would involve absolutely no strategic calculations in the media of money and power. This “absolute differences” interpretation is at odds with a second possibility which takes the contrast rather as registering 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.
Now 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 nonconsensually and absolutely nonnormatively. 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. 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 be arrived at unfairly and the norms be incapable of withstanding critical scrutiny.11 Thus, the capitalist economic system has a moral-cultural dimension.
Likewise, few if any human action contexts are wholly devoid of strategic calculation. Gift rituals in noncapitalist societies, for example, previously taken 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.12 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, for example, the capitalist economy—let us call it “the official economy”13—from the modern restricted nuclear family for both of these institutions are melanges of consensuality, normativity and strategically. 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 that posits the family as the “negative,” the complementary other of the (official) economic sphere, a “haven in a heartless world.”
Now 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.14 Likewise, he asserts that he takes the action-context distinction to mark a difference in degree, not an absolute difference.15 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, unlike premodern societies, split off some material reproduction functions from symbolic ones and hand over the former to two specialized institutions—the (official) economy and state— which are system-integrated. At the same time, modern societies situate these institutions in the larger social environment by developing two other institutions which specialize in symbolic reproduction and are socially-integrated. These are the modern, restricted, nuclear family or “private sphere” and the space of political participation, debate, and opinion formation or “public sphere”; and together, they constitute what Habermas calls the two “institutional orders of the modern lifeworld.” Thus, modem societies “uncouple” or separate what Habermas takes to be two distinct but previously undifferentiated aspects of society: “system” and “lifeworld.” Hence, in his view, the institutional structure of modern societies is dualistic. On the 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 the one side is the nuclear family and the public sphere. On the other side is the (official) capitalist economy and the modern administrative state.16
Now what are the critical insights and blind spots of this model? Let us attend first to the question of its empirical adequacy. And let us focus, for the time being, on the contrast between “the private sphere of the lifeworld” and the (official) economic system. Consider that this aspect of Habermas’s categorical divide between system and lifeworld institutions faithfully mirrors the institutional separation in male-dominated, capitalist societies of family and official economy, household and paid workplace. 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 the characterization of the paid workplace, on the other hand, as a system-integrated material reproduction domain tends to exaggerate the differences and occlude the similarities between them. For example, 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 does not make visible 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 focalize 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 through empirical analyses of contemporary familial decision making, handling of finances, and wife-battering that families are thoroughly permeated with, in Habermas’s terms, the media of money and power. They are sites of egocentric, strategic, and instrumental calculation as well as sites of usually exploitative exchanges of services, labor, cash, and sex—and frequently, of coercion and violence.17 But Habermas’s way of contrasting the modern family with the official capitalist economy tends to occlude all this. He 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 they can be seen that way too, his framework would suggest 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, however, is a dubious proposition. I shall discuss it in detail in the third section below.
Thus, Habermas’s model has some empirical deficiencies: it is not easily able to focalize some dimensions of male dominance in modern societies. Yet it 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 subcategories. On the one hand, there are “normatively secured” forms of socially integrated action. These are actions coordinated on the basis of a conventional, prereflective, taken-for-granted consensus about values and ends, consensus rooted in the precritical internalization of socialization and cultural tradition. On the other hand, there are “communicatively achieved” forms of socially integrated action. These involve actions coordinated on the basis of explicit, reflectively achieved consensus, consensus reached by unconstrained discussion under conditions of freedom, equality, and fairness.18 This distinction, which is a subdistinction within the category of socially integrated action, provides Habermas with some critical resources for analyzing the modern, restricted, male-headed, nuclear family. Such families can be understood as normatively secured rather than communicatively achieved action contexts, that is, as contexts where actions are (sometimes)
mediated by consensus and shared values, but where such consensus is suspect because it is prereflective or because achieved through dialogue vitiated by unfairness, coercion, or inequality.
To what extent does the distinction between normatively secured and communicatively achieved action contexts succeed in overcoming the problems discussed earlier? Only partially, I think. On the one hand, this distinction is a morally significant and empirically useful one. The notion of a normatively secured action context fits nicely with recent research on patterns of communication between husbands and wives. This research shows that men tend to control conversations, determining what topics are pursued, whereas women do more “interaction work” like asking questions and providing verbal support.19 Research also reveals differences in men’s and women’s uses of the bodily and gestural dimensions of speech, differences that confirm men’s dominance and women’s subordination.20 Thus, Habermas’s distinction enables us to capture something important about intrafamilial dynamics. What is insufficiently stressed, however, is that actions coordinated by normatively secured consensus in the male-headed, nuclear family are actions regulated by power. It seems to me a grave mistake to restrict the use of the term “power” to bureaucratic contexts. Habermas would do better to distinguish different kinds of power; for example, domestic-patriarchal power on the one hand, and bureaucratic-patriarchal power, on the other, not to mention various other kinds and combinations in — between.
But even that distinction does not by itself suffice to make Habermas’s framework fully adequate to all the empirical forms of male dominance in modern societies, for normative-domestic-patriarchal power is only one of the elements that enforce women’s subordination in the domestic sphere. To capture the others would require a social-theoretical framework capable of analyzing families also as economic systems involving the appropriation of women’s unpaid labor and interlocking in complex ways with other economic systems involving paid work. Because Habermas’s framework draws the major categorical divide between system and lifeworld institutions, and hence between (among other things) the official economy and family, it is not very well suited to that task.
Let me turn now from the question of the empirical adequacy of Habermas’s model to the question of its normative political implications. What sorts of social arrangements and transformations does his modernization conception tend to legitimate? And what sorts does it tend to rule out? Here it will be necessary to reconstruct some implications of the model which are not explicitly thematized by Habermas.
Consider that the conception of modernization as the uncoupling of system and lifeworld institutions tends to legitimate the modern institutional
separation of family and official economy, childrearing and paid work. For Habermas argues that with respect to system integration, symbolic and material reproduction are asymmetrical. Symbolic reproduction activities, he claims, are unlike material reproduction activities in that they cannot be turned over to specialized, system-integrated institutions set apart from the lifeworld; their inherently symbolic character requires that they be socially integrated.21 It follows that women’s unpaid childrearing work could not be incorporated into the (official) economic system without “pathological” results. On the other hand, Habermas holds that it is a mark of societal rationalization that system-integrated institutions be differentiated to handle material reproduction functions. The separation of a specialized (official) economic system enhances a society’s capacity to deal with its natural and social environment. “System complexity,” then, constitutes a “developmental advance.”22 It follows that the (official) economic system of paid work could not be dedifferentiated with respect to, say, childrearing, without societal “regression.” But if childrearing could only be pathologically incorporated into the (official) economic system, and if the (official) economic system could only be regressively dedifferentiated, then the continued separation of childrearing from paid work would be required.
This amounts to a defense of one aspect of what feminists call “the separation of public and private,” namely, the separation of the official economic sphere from the domestic sphere and the enclaving of childrearing from the rest of social labor. It amounts, that is, to a defense of an institutional arrangement widely held to be one—if not the—linchpin of modern women’s subordination. And it should be noted that the fact that Habermas is a socialist does not alter the matter, because the (undeniably desirable) elimination of private ownership, profit-orientation and hierarchical command in paid work would not of itself affect the official — economic/domestic separation.
Now I want to challenge several premises of the reasoning I have just reconstructed. First, this reasoning assumes the natural kinds interpretation of the symbolic vs. material reproduction distinction. But since, as I have argued, childrearing is a dual-aspect activity, and since it is not categorically different in this respect from other work, there is no warrant for the claim of an asymmetry vis-a-vis system integration. That is, there is no warrant for assuming that the system-integrated organization of child — rearing would be any more (or less) pathological than that of other work. Second, this reasoning assumes the absolute differences interpretation of the social vs. system integration distinction. But since, as I have argued, the modern, male-headed, nuclear family is a melange of (normatively secured) consensuality, normativity, and strategicality, and since it is in this respect not categorically different from the paid workplace, then
privatized childrearing is already, to a significant extent, permeated by the media of money and power. Moreover, there is no empirical evidence to suggest that children raised in commercial day-care centers (even profit — based or corporate ones) turn out any more pathological than those raised, say, in suburban homes by full-time mothers. Third, the reasoning just sketched elevates system complexity to the status of an overriding consideration with effective veto power over proposed social transformations aimed at overcoming women’s subordination. But this is at odds with Habermas’s profession that system complexity is only one measure of “progress” among others.23 More importantly, it is at odds with any reasonable standard of justice.
What, then, should we conclude about the normative, political implications of Habermas’s model? If the conception of modernization as the uncoupling of system and lifeworld institutions does indeed have the implications I have just drawn from it, then it is in important respects androcentric and ideological.