Abstract
The chapter introduces Jürgen Habermas’s concepts that can be made operative when we analyze the themes of Death Café “death talk” in Chapter 4. The concepts are primarily derived from Habermas’s classic two-volume work, The Theory of Communicative Action as well as from his other publications. The chapter discusses Habermas’s contention that democracy need not be embodied by macro-level institutional mechanisms that promote elections, a process that is dependent on bureaucratic mechanisms that operate only during election cycles. He contends that attributes of democracy can be unearthed in a potentially free communication that can exist in the lifeworld, a world of everyday activities, and its corresponding communication content to facilitate these activities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Alexy, Robert. 1996. “Jurgen Habermas’s Theory of Legal Discourse.” Cardozo Law Review 17(4–5): 1027–1034.
Calhoun, Craig. 1994. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Chriss, James J. 1998. “Review Essay of Jürgen Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms.” Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications. Paper 100.
Frank, Arthur. 2000. “Notes on Habermas: Lifeworld and System.” University of Calgary, Dept. of Sociology. WEBSITE accessed on June 11, 2014. http://people.ucalgary.ca/~frank/habermas.html.
Fromm, Erich. 2012. To Have or To Be. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1971. Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1975. Legitimation Crisis. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1981. “New Social Movement.” Telos 49: 33–37.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functional Reason. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1994. Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1996. Between Facts and Norms. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Jütten, Timo. 2013. “Habermas and Markets.” Constellations 20(4): 587–603.
Kemmis, Stephen, and McTaggart Robin. 2007. “Participatory Action Research: Communicative Action and the Public Sphere..” In Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry, edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 271–330. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Kim, Hesook Suzie, and Inger Margrethe Holter. 1995. “Critical Theory for Science of Nursing Practice.” In In Search of Nursing Science, edited by A. Omery, C. E. Kasper, and G. Page, 205–219. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Krey, Peter. 2002. “The Life-World and the Two Systems.” Scholardarity. WEBSITE accessed on November 28, 2015. http://www.scholardarity.com/?s=krey+life-world+two+systems.
Mezirow, Jack. 2003. “Transformative Learning as Discourse.” Journal of Transformative Education 1(1): 58–63.
Miles, Lizzy, and Charles A. Corr. 2017. “Death Café: What Is It and What We Can Learn from It.” Omega—Journal of Death and Dying. 75(2):151–165.
Niemi, Jari I. 2005. “Habermas and Validity Claims.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 12(2): 227–244.
Oldenburg, Ray. 1999. The Great Good Place. New York: Marlowe & Company.
Reay, Diane. 2013. “Universities and the Reproduction of Inequality.” In A Manifesto for the Public University, edited by J. Holmwood, 112–126. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Slaughter, Shiela, and Gary Rhoades. 2004. Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press.
Stahl, Titus. 2013. “Habermas and the Project of Immanent Critique.” Constellations 20(4): 533–552.
Szczelkun, Stefan. 1999. “Summary of the Theory of Communicative Action.” Royal College of Art, London. WEBSITE accessed on June 8, 2016. http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/publsbm01.htm.
Warren, Mark E. 1993. “Can Participatory Democracy Produce Better Selves? Psychological Dimensions of Habermas’s Discursive Model of Democracy.” Political Sociology 14(2): 209–234.
Yetim, Fahri. 2005. “A Discourse-Based Meta-Communication Model for Collective Sense-Making.” Paper presented at The Language Acton Perspective on Communication Modelling, Kiruna, Sweden, June 19–20, 2005.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fong, J. (2017). Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action and the Colonization of the Lifeworld. In: The Death Café Movement. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54256-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54256-0_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-54255-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-54256-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)