Critical theories

Question 1

administered world

Answer 1

bureaucratic-state regulation and control diminishing the political autonomy of individuals and the public sphere.

Question 2

celebrity

Answer 2

mass media celebration of the public legitimacy and influence of actors and other media personalities irre- spective of their credentials.

Question 3

colonization of the lifeworld

Answer 3

the idea that the state and economic corporations (including mass media) increasingly penetrate and dominate all aspects of everyday life.

Question 4

communicative action

Answer 4

the idea that social action should be determined by a rationally argued consensus driven by rationally argued ethical norms rather than strategic partisan interests.

Question 5

communicative rationality

Answer 5

back-and-forth reasoning and reflexive examination of the claims made in a given communicative exchange. The reasonableness of the arguments articulated rather than the power or status of the communication partners determines the communicative outcome

Question 6

critical theory

Answer 6

critique of the one-sided, instrumental, strategic or technical use of reason in democratic capitalist societies to advance economic, political, and cultural power, and suppress critique of social institutions and social processes, rather than to increase freedom, social equality, and democratic participation. critical theory highlights the irrational character of what society presents as rational; this perspective is most closely associated with Frankfurt School theorists.

Question 7

cultural totalitarianism

Answer 7

the repression of diversity in the expression of individual needs and opinions; accomplished by the restricted sameness of content and choices available in the economic, political, and cultural marketplace.

Question 8

culture industry

Answer 8

corporate economic control of the mass media and its emphasis on advertising and business rather than providing cultural content (e.g., ideas, story plots) that would challenge rather than bolster the status quo.

Question 9

dialectic of Enlightenment

Answer 9

the thesis that the ideas affirmed by the Enlightenment (e.g., the use of reason in the advancement of freedom, knowledge, and democracy) have been turned into their opposite (reason in the service of control, inequality, political passivity) by the instrumentally rational domination exerted by capitalist institutions (e.g., the state, economic and media corporations).

Question 10

distorted communication

Answer 10

ways in which current social, economic and political arrangements and cultural assumptions (e.g., free markets; hierarchical authority; individual self-reliance) impede communicative rationality.

Question 11

emancipated society

Answer 11

when previously marginalized individuals and groups are free to fully participate across all spheres of society; one in which freedom rather than domination is evident in social and institutional practices.

Question 12

Enlightenment

Answer 12

eighteenth-century philosophical movement emphasizing the centrality of individual reason, human equality, and scientific rationality over against non-rational beliefs and forms of social organization (e.g., monarchy).

Question 13

false needs

Answer 13

the fabrication or imposition of consumer wants (needs) as determined by mass media, advertising, and economic corporations in the promotion of particular consumer lifestyles; and which consumers (falsely) feel as authentically theirs.

Question 14

hegemony

Answer 14

process by which the institutions (e.g., mass media) and culture in capitalist society are orchestrated to produce consent to the status quo, the dominant ideology (Gramsci).

Question 15

homogenization

Answer 15

standardization of products, content, and choices in consumption and politics driven by the mass orientation (sameness) most profitable or advantageous to the culture industry, and other corporate and political actors.

Question 16

ideal speech situation

Answer 16

when communication partners use reason (communicative rationality) to seek a common understanding of a question at issue, and to embark on rationally justified, mutually agreed, future action.

Question 17

instrumental domination

Answer 17

strategic use of reason (knowledge, science, technology) to control others.

Question 18

legitimation crisis

Answer 18

when national or other collectivities lose trust in the ability of the state (or other institutions) to adequately respond to systemic disruptions in the execution of institutional tasks (e.g., the effective functioning of the banking system).

Question 19

lifeworld

Answer 19

from the German word Lebenswelt; the world of everyday life and its taken-for-granted routines, customs, habits, and knowledge.

Question 20

mass culture

Answer 20

advertising and other mass mediated content delivered by a technologically sophisticated, profit-driven, corporate culture industry.

Question 21

mystique of science

Answer 21

unquestioned presumption that the accumulation, application, and everyday use of scientific data and scientific advances are invariably good and that they should be automatically welcomed as evidence of social progress.

Question 22

normative rationality

Answer 22

evaluative use of reason to advance values (or prescriptive norms) of equality and freedom.

Question 23

one-dimensionality

Answer 23

sameness, homogenization, or standardization; lack of meaningful alternatives in mass culture and politics.

Question 24

political dependency

Answer 24

dependence of citizens and economic and other institutions on the state to resolve problems and crises created, by and large, by the state and economic institutions.

Question 25

promotional culture

Answer 25

constant stream of consumer advertising dominating mass media content and public space (e.g., highways).

Question 26

public sphere

Answer 26

public, relatively informal spaces (e.g., coffee shops, public squares) and non-state-controlled institutional settings (e.g., mass media, voluntary and non-profit organizations) where individuals and groups freely assemble and discuss political and social issues; produces “public opinion.” See also civil society.

Question 27

reification

Answer 27

from the Latin word res, “thing”; process whereby we think of social structures (e.g., capitalism), social institutions and other socially created things (e.g., language, technology, “Wall Street,” “The city”) as things independent of human construction rather than as social creations that can be modified and changed to meet a soci- ety’s changing needs and interests and to accomplish particular normative or strategic goals.

Question 28

scientific management

Answer 28

industrial method introduced in the early twentieth century by Frederick Taylor to increase worker efficiency and productivity by controlling workers’ physical movements/techniques. social control method- ical regulation curtailing the freedom of individuals, groups, and society as a whole.

Question 29

standardization

Answer 29

imposition of sameness or homogenization in culture and politics.

Question 30

steering problems

Answer 30

emerge when economic and political institutions do not work as functionally intended and as ideologically assumed (e.g., the market’s “invisible hand” working to produce economic growth and social integration), thus causing problems (e.g., recession) whose resolution demands state intervention in the system (e.g., federal monetary policy).

Question 31

systems of domination

Answer 31

penetration of the regulatory control of the state and other bureaucratic and corporate entities into everyday life.

Question 32

technical rationality

Answer 32

calculated procedures and techniques used in the strategic implementation of instrumental goals typically in the service of economic profit and/or social control.

Question 33

technological determinism

Answer 33

the assumption that the use of a particular technology is determined by features of the technology itself rather than by the dominant economic, political, and cultural interests in society.