23 October 2007

Mediatization

Habermas: "... a progressively rationalized lifeworld is both uncoupled from and made dependent on increasingly complex, formally organized domains of action, like the economy and the state administration. This dependency, resulting from the mediatization of the lifeworld by system imperatives, assumes the socio-pathological form of an internal colonization when critical disequilibria in material reproduction--that is, systemic crises amenable to systems-theoretical analysis--can be avoided only at the cost of disturbances in the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld--that is, of "subjectively" experienced identity-threatening crises or pathologies." (Dump the functionalism, and one gets either Horkheimer, Marcuse, or Deleuze.)

Example: On 4 October, a pair of Wal-Mart employees in Ohio exchanged marriage vows in the lawn and garden section of their store "amid the retailer's flowers, shrubs, and lawn chairs", so reported the news story.

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