Communicative Competencies and the Structuration of Expectations: The creative tension between Habermas' critical theory and Luhmann's social systems theory

TL;DR

This paper explores the tension between Habermas's and Luhmann's theories of communication, proposing a language-centered approach that integrates their perspectives through the concept of structuration of expectations.

Contribution

It offers a novel integration of Habermas and Luhmann's theories by emphasizing language as a medium, and introduces a modified Giddens' framework for structuration of expectations.

Findings

Language enables development of symbolic media like truth and love

Distinction between subsystems' self-organization and meaning organization

Mediation as translation among evolving intentions and expectations

Abstract

I elaborate on the tension between Luhmann's social systems theory and Habermas' theory of communicative action, and argue that this tension can be resolved by focusing on language as the interhuman medium of the communication which enables us to develop symbolically generalized media of communication such as truth, love, power, etc. Following Luhmann, the layers of self-organization among the differently codified subsystems of communication versus organization of meaning at contingent interfaces can analytically be distinguished as compatible, yet empirically researchable alternatives to Habermas' distinction between "system" and "lifeworld." Mediation by a facilitator can then be considered as a special case of organizing historically contingent translations among the evolutionarily developing fluxes of intentions and expectations. Accordingly, I suggest modifying Giddens' terminology into "a theory of the structuration of expectations."