The locus of social management in the context of interrelations and tensions between the lifeworld (lebenswelt) and system

Abstract

In this essay we question and rethink the loci of social management in the context of interrelations and tensions between the lifeworld and the system in light of Jürgen Habermas and his critical reception. From a reconstruction, the concepts of lifeworld-and system represent a sociological and epistemological key reading of the locus of the actions and practices of social management. This view allows discuss various strains of social management that materialize between State, market and civil society; communicative action and strategic action; public and private; coercion and public speech space; conflict and consensus; domination and emancipation; technical, practical and emancipatory interests. We suggest that the locus of social management is understood from the intersubjective processes between the lifeworld and the system – only possible via a constructed view of tensions (and possibilities of complementarity, juxtapositions, dialectical moments, fluid borders, exchange and logical conflicts). Thus, we aim to overcome the dichotomous compression that situates management epistemologically and socially in exclusive poles, and, as appropriate, through epistemic reconstructions, be able to provide more coherent, critical and reflective and fallible diagnoses of instrumental and emancipatory forces present in everyday life and shared inter-subjectively.

Keywords
Social management; Life-world; System; Locus; Tension