Fortunes of Feminism (5 page)

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.
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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.
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Likewise, he asserts that he takes the action-context distinction to mark a difference in degree, not an absolute difference.
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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.
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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.
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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 fairness.
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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 pre-reflective or because it is 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, while women do more “interaction work,” like asking questions and providing verbal support.
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Research also reveals differences in men's and women's uses of the bodily and gestural dimensions of speech, differences which confirm men's dominance and women's subordination.
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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. Critical theorists 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.

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 which 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 categorial divide between system and lifeworld institutions, and hence between (among other things) 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 claims that there is an asymmetry between symbolic and material reproduction with respect to system-integration. 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.
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It follows that women's unpaid childrearing work could not be incorporated into the (official) economic system without “pathological” results. At the same time, Habermas also 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.”
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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 not be non-pathologically incorporated into the (official) economic system, and if the (official) economic system could not be non-regressively dedifferentiated, then the continued separation of childrearing from paid work would be required.

Effectively, then, Habermas's framework is primed to defend at least 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 defends, therefore, an institutional arrangement that is 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. Even were he to endorse the elimination of private ownership, profit-orientation, and hierarchical command in paid work, this 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 versus material reproduction distinction. But since, as I have argued, childrearing is a dual-aspect activity, and since it is not categorially different in this respect from other work, there is no warrant for the claim of an asymmetry vis-à-vis system integration. That is, there is no warrant for assuming that the system-integrated organization of childrearing would be any more (or less) pathological than that of other work. Second, this reasoning assumes the absolute differences interpretation of the social versus system integration distinction. But since, as I have argued, the modern, male-headed, nuclear family is a mélange of (normatively secured) consensuality, normativity, and strategicality, and since it is in this respect not categorially different from the paid workplace, then privatized childrearing is already, to a not insignificant extent, permeated by the media of money and power. Moreover, there is no empirical evidence 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 professions that system complexity is only one measure of “progress” among others.
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More importantly, it is at odds with any reasonable standard of justice.