Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
philosophers, Habermas has long maintained that unconstrained communications
are mandatory to broader processes of consensus construction, in which people of
all backgrounds partake in public, positive and normative interpretations of their
worlds. In what is essentially a pragmatist defense of Enlightenment ideals, his
notion of communicative rationality, which is central to his critical theory, refers
to the procedures of open debate and criticism, which he holds became increas-
ingly widespread with the growth of modern bourgeois society. The ''ideal speech
situation'' is vital to the operation of civil society in which social life is suc-
cessfully reproduced and transformed. The ideal speech situation never exists in
reality, but functions as a Weberian ideal type, a counterfactual yardstick by which
to judge real-life contexts and the obstacles that generate distorted communication.
In a situation in which all power relations constraining debate have been removed,
all participants are free to provide input into the norms of truth production. As
Luhmann (
1996
, p. 885) notes,
Habermas does not locate the problem at the level of actually occurring communications.
… Instead, he employs a theory of how the reasonable coordination of actions can take
place if assured of the freely rendered agreement of all involved.
Thus, in this conception, reason, truth, logic, and self-reflexivity are not located
in some abstract transcendental realm but are grounded in praxis. The only cri-
terion that remains for resolving contesting claims is their truth-value, which rests
on the ''force of a better argument,'' leading to a consensus theory of truth that
rejects absolute foundations for knowledge in favor of procedural ones. Impor-
tantly, ''the participants in an ideal speech situation [must] be motivated solely by
the desire to reach a consensus about the truth of statements and the validity of
norms'' (Bernstein
1995
, p. 50). Later, in The Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere (Habermas
1989
), he argued that civil society, located between the
state and everyday life, which arose with the growth of industrial capitalism and
the Enlightenment, had become thoroughly dominated by large corporations,
reducing citizens to spectators and consumers of goods (see Kellner
1979
,
1990
).
Habermas's critics have argued that his view exaggerates the power of reason to
obtain consensus and that he obfuscates inequalities in access to public discourse
such as class, gender, and ethnicity. Thus, Habermas holds up an ideal that can
never be realized in practice (Hohendahl
1979
; Calhoun
1992
). Despite these
objections, it is worth noting that the ideal free speech situation remains the
prevailing normative standard against most contemporary conceptions of the
political economy of unfettered access to and production of knowledge are com-
pared, particularly with regard to the legitimacy of legal institutions (Froomkin
2003
).
Cyberspace in all its diverse forms—chat rooms, blogs, and email, as well as
neogeographic practices such as wiki-webs—arguably exemplifies the Haberm-
asian vision of diverse groups engaging in practical discourse more than any other
realm today. Enhanced access to information empowers citizens, facilitates debate,
and may alter political outcomes. In particular, the internet allows communities of
shared interests to form around common discourses that express identities and
