Our problem can then be stated as one of the relation between technology and democracy; how can the power of technical control be brought within the range of the consensus of acting and transacting citizens? (Habermas, p57)
My topic is the study between the production of human artifacts and the social relations the correlate with the production of those artifacts.
My initial position is that human history is the history of human beings making technology for the purpose of freedom. Human history is also the history of social relation, of individuals and social groups engaged in a conflict to utilise the potential of technology. Technology is production and production is the most central of human activities because human beings need to produce in order to live. Human technology is made to expand our biological, individual or social potentials; in this regard, technology is human freedom.The conflict between the potential of technological artifacts and the social relations of the time is the basis of social conflict. Changes in technology increase the potential for human freedom, as defined in the preceding paragraph. As this potential grows the demand for its availability also grows, necessitating reform of social practices. Technology and social relations thus exist in a dialectical relationship, where technology creates a demand for a change in social relations.
The critical and reflective nature of human beings means that in both the cases of technology and human freedom that the two expand continuously in the long-term and very rarely contract. The recapturing of social interpretation in a world that has become cynical of experts is an exciting a liberating possibility. I do not think that the vast and sudden improvements in personal technology, nor the possibility of technology questioning the foundations of the human psyche through genetic engineering, reproductive technologies and personal computers is necessarily a mere coincidence.
It should be clear then from the proceeding section, that my position is one of a project. I make no concession to any sort of 'objective' study, rather relying on an argument that has intersubjective validity, that is I shall make claims which I feel will correlate with the lived experience of others.
This does not mean that I am writing with a ?emancipatory' theme, such as Harding & Hintikka's ?Discovering Reality?. The collection of essays in that book have the objective of establishing a new epistemology, a position most strongly put in Harding's essay 'Why Has The Sex/Gender System Become Visible Only Now', where she states;
The sex/gender system appears to be a fundamental variable organizing social life throughout most recorded history and in every culture today. Like racism and classism, it is an organic social variable - it is not merely an 'effect' of other, more primary causes
(Harding & Hintikka, p312)
Rather, my topic is particularly concerned with a study of process and structures and the application of the study of process and structures. In particular, my interest in questions of the individual and social has led me to reconsider in the past several months my position regarding many liberal thinkers, in particular John Stuart Mill and the problem of self-regarding versus other-regarding freedoms. In this regard I am particularly interested in suggesting a legal and political framework which satisfies my criteria for freedom, and for a framework that ensures the continuation of that freedom.
It shall begin with positioning itself historically, within a complex and sometimes contradictory world-situation. It shall note an intellectual tradition and will question some fairly universal questions; What is knowledge ?, What is science ?, What is society ?, What is technology ?. The solutions of these questions are important for the establishment of process. I wish to show how traditional social and political theory sought to answer these questions in such a way that they became eternal truths. My objective is to show that they must be structured as part of diverse viewpoints and thus, for purposes of process.
For what is true for process is not so true of structure... (Levi-Strauss, p12)
With regard to the study of knowledge and facts I have become particularly fond of the distinction between knowledge and understanding. If there is a problem with structuralism (and perhaps there is only one), was that despite its rigourous method it tended to convert understanding into knowledge. This can be seen into a number of thinkers, particularly marxist and feminist, who tend to elevate class and gender into biological categories. This fundamental mistake, which I see repeated again and again in even contemporary social science texts (and often, more often so), concerns me greatly.
Thus, when regarding knowledge and facts, my initial position is similar to that of Husserl, insofar that consciousness is consciousness of something. Like Sartre, I follow the similar perspective that this means that the freedom to interpret exists. This does not deny human biology, rather it means that science cannot be fact, as science cannot prove against a conscious interpretation of a subject. Rather the intersubjectivity of scientific knowledge means that it has a convincing value. Truth is a matter of convincing people (i.e., ideology). Language is social. All reality is a social reality, but this a social reality rather than a physical reality which can be only explained as a social reality. ?Objective? reality is non-existent in form but is in practise.
I cannot hold that there is a complete distinction between structure and process, as the structure of a system determines the process that the system will take. However, structures should exist only on the basis of establishing process, and not on the basis of 'rightness' or 'justice'. Such designations must be decided by the participants themselves. It is with this perspective I shall tackle the problem of human rights, freedoms and participatory democracy by suggesting that there are discrete zones of control which are in part, derived from Habermas's three types of science (empirical, hermeneutic and critical).
In a similar fashion, my conception of social and political freedom is built on three 'zones'; the physical zone, which includes human biological requirements, of which no amount of will on the part of an individual or social group will determine the rightness of wrongness of an event., the individual zone, that is the body corpus, which the social cannot determine., and the social zone, which consists of those activities that human beings as a collective undertake. These zones are fairly discrete and are deliberately similar to those propositions that Steven Lukes suggests (Lukes, p182), and can lead to the position of Barry Hindess in 'Actors and Social Relations'.
Undoubtedly my topic requires a broad overview, currently deemed unfashionable academia to those who have been caught in post-political universal abandon. The metanarrative my no longer be fashionable as a structure, but this is not to deny its potential as a process. Rather than establish visions of a good society, or determine what is human nature, the structure must allow such considerations become self-defining.
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