1. 1.2 SOCIAL THEORY: DEFINITION, CONCERNS AND DIRECTIONS

"The Internet" defines the setting of this study; "Social Theory" defines the type of inquiry. To provide the inquiry the status of an analytical type a clear definition must be provided, as well as noting the central concerns and displaying sensitivity to contemporary schools of thought. From the outside however, a definition must take into account the philosophical foundations and academic history in order to provide a theoretically rigorous definition. The working hypothesis here is that social theory can and should be distinguished from, yet connected to, scientific theory and aesthetic theory. However, these distinctions and connections have only been recently succesfully grounded – and certainly with further elaboration required – through Habermas' typology of formal pragmatics and the theory of communicative action.

Following this definitional stage, it is possible to examine the central concerns of social theory. These have been eloquenty summised by Anthony Giddens as the persistant problems of agency versus structure, consensus and conflict, the characteristics of modernity, and the issues of sex and age. As mentioned in the previous subsection, these particular problems will be examined primarily to the social theory of Habermas and the political thought of Arendt as these are provide the most fruitful means of analyses for the general orientation of this study from a social theoretical perspective. The reason for this choice will become increasingly evident, but can be summised as follows: no other social theorists place such emphasis on the theoretical and practical causes of the disintergration and transformation of society due to the devolution of the public sphere and the formation of political convictions than these two.

[Anthony Giddens, (1979)., Central Problems in Social Theory. Action, Structure and Communication In Social Analysis., Macmillan., London]

In terms of contemporary orientations and directions the social and political theory derived from Habermas and Arendt are compared with the social and cultural theory of post-structuralism (e.g., Michel Foucault) and the political theory of neoliberalism (e.g., Milton Friedmann). Both of these are applied to the contemporary setting widely described as 'postmodernism' in accordance to the central concerns proposed by Giddens. Further, this analysis is supplemented by the theories of cybernetics (e.g., Niklas Luhmann) and neofunctionalism (e.g., Jeffrey Alexander). The overall purpose of the subsection can be articulated as to develop an social and political theory to study the Internet that meets the central concerns within a contemporary context and also develops the highest possible standards of analysis.

[

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. A. M. Sheridan Smith, translator. New York: Pantheon, 1972.

and

Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Colin Gordon, Ed. New York: Pantheon, 1980.

and

Friedman, Milton. 1962. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jeffrey Alexander, Neofunctionalism. Beverly Hills : Sage Publications, 1985

an

Niklas Luhmann, Essays on Self-Reference, New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.

and

The Differentiation of Society, Columbia University Press, 1982.

]

Whilst Immanual Kant's Critiques posited three types of thinking (pure reason, practical reason and judgement), they were bound in a radical subjectivity that was unrealistic in terms of the physical world. Thus, the academic world has traditionally viewed it's orientation in terms of 'arts' and 'sciences'. This two-level split has been popularised with conventional wisdom holding that the knowledge is either objective or subjective and belonging to two distinct and incommensurable cultures, according C.P. Snow, with the supposition that the technical and scientific was engaging in objective advances whilst the humanities was static in it's intepretative schema. An interesting recent example of this divide is the famous hoax by physicist Alan Sokal on the postmodernist literary journal, Social Text. Interestingly in their response, the editors of Social Text conflate social science and humanities academics on one side, and physical scientifists on the other.

[Immanual Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Judgement, FP ]

[Charles Percy Snow, The Two Cultures, Cambridge University Press 1993, FP 1959]

[Alan Sokal,

`Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,'' in Social Text, #46/47, 1996 also at:

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html

and “A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies”, Lingua Franca at http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html]

Bruce Robbins, Andrew Ross, Editorial response to Alan Sokal at: http://www.nyu.edu/pubs/socialtext//sokal.html]

It is interesting to compare this current supposed divide to the social inquiries from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when science became independent of religious censorship. This independence led to a fesitishization of science, evident in the determinism of Thomas Hobbes, Auguste Comte, and to a much lesser extent, Karl Marx's (including however 'scientific' laws of history, the comparison between “utopian socialism” and “scientific socialism” and particularly the historical role of the proletariat). The latter seems particularly important – the interest in describing social theory as a science seems to have collapsed simultaneously with the loss of political legitimacy in Marxism and justified accusations of totalitarianism, enhanced precision in the scientific method (through Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feryabend) and the gradual removal of the debate of values in the objectivating social studies, such as economics, political science and law, each of which became primarily studies of their relavant subsystems rather than competing studies of the values that the social system as whole uses to incorporate these disciplines.

[

Karl Popper (1972)., Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach., Oxford University Press

Lakatos, Imre and Paul Feyerabend, For and Against Method. Edited by Matteo Motterlini. University of Chicago Press, 1999

]

Under these circumstances it is not surprising then that social theory is usually academic shorthand for 'sociological theory'. As other systemic social inquiries have become objectivated only sociology has mainatined an interest in the real and potential crises of social systems. Thus sociology has maintained the closest relationship to social philosophy, the study of the axiomatic assumptions of what actually constitutes social inquiry. This represents a change in sociology itself. Whilst contemporary conventional wisdom places the social theorists Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim as the three most important figures in sociological history, Immanuel Wallerstein points out:

“It is interesting in this regard to look at the Introduction that George E. G. Catlin wrote to the first English edition of The Rules of Sociological Method. In 1938, writing for a U.S. audience, Catlin pleaded for Durkheim's importance by classifying him in the same league as Charles Booth, Flexner, and W.I. Thomas”

[Immanuel Wallerstein, The Heritage of Sociology, The Promise of Social Science, Presidential Address, XIVth World Congress of Sociology, Montreal, July 26, 1998 also found at:

http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwpradfp.htm]

Nevertheless sociology has hitherto had difficulties in differentiating itself from cultural anthropology, as both disciplines seek to understand society as a whole. The interpretative schema however differs substantially. Sociology draws much more heavily upon the empirical evidence generated from political and economic susbsystems, whilst cultural anthropology provides more of a literary and interpretative critique of institutional and group behaviour. It only relatively recently that any sort of theoretical foundations have been provided that can differentiate the disciplines related to social inquiry and those from the humanities and therefore the differences between sociology and cultural anthropology.

The solution lies in the linguistic turn in philosophy which has transcended the radical objectivist and subjectivist approaches to the problem of consciousness. When utilized by Habermas, the nascent origins are two-fold. On one side, there are the ordinary language philosophers, in particular the latter works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Austin and John Searle. On the other hand, the symbolic-interactionist school in sociology represented by George Herbert Mead and the notion of society as moral force by Emile Durkheim.

[Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action Vol II: A Critique of Functionalist Rationality]

[Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. trans. by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953.

EDIT

]

To express simply, the argument can be summerised as follows. The logical positivist attempt to explain reality, and thus consciousness, as purely scientific fails along with a correspondence or picture theory of language, as neither can explain how the signs that represent signifers are related to the signified (cf., de Saussere). Likewise, a radical subjectivist approach to explain reality inevitably leaves one as a rampaging monster of the id and thoroughly psychopathological. The only way around to apply a consensus model of language, that is to understand signs and signifiers (but certainly not the signified!) as something that is generated through a mutual (i.e., social) recognition, thus forming the basis of language and culture. As Wittgenstein put it, there is no such thing as a private language.

[

Ferdinand de Saussure, (1913). Cours de Linguistique Generale. Paris: Payot. English edition Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Wade Baskin. London: Peter Owen, 1974.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. trans. by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953. paragraphs 243-264.

]

Whilst this transcends the limitations of the objectivist and subjectivist interpretations of the problem of consciousness, the utility of linguistic philosophy doesn't end there. As is obvious, meaning and interpersonal agreements do not just apply to the passive world of actors coming to agreement of the terms used to describe the physical world. They also apply to interpersonal actions and social integration – and this is where Durkheim and Mead become important. Because neither the strict objectivist approach nor the strict subjectivist approach have any means of grounding moral behaviour whatsoever. Indeed, they both the same conclusion – that morality is a meaningless concept that is an emotional state ('emotivism' in logical positivism) or a force of will (Nietzche).

[

Frederich Nietzche, Beyond Good and Evil, FP 1886

]

However in a reality where meaning is defined insubjectively, this can longer be the case. Durkehim understood this early on – that even the most horrendous crimes have no means of being proved analytically 'wrong'. 'Rightness' and 'wrongness' was something that had be derived socially and, according to Durkheim this collective consciousness was initially channelled through religion institutions and the distinction between the sacred and the profane. Of course, 'rightness' and 'wrongness' of a course of action is not something that is derived metaphysically, despite the claims of some fundamentalist theologians. Socrates' rhetorical question to Euthypro illustrated this quite succinctly.

[

Socrates, who meets with Euthypro outside the courtroom (where he himself will soon be sentenced to death), questions him on the nature of impiety. It becomes clear that the young man has no real notion of why the gods decree certain actions to be moral and others immoral. Socrates asks the vital question: is an action right because the gods say it is, or do the gods concur with it because it is right? For instance, if the gods were to suddenly decree that all left-handed people should be slaughtered, would it be right to slaughter them?

]

The phrase 'collective consciousness' shows how close Durkheim was to transcending the philosophical problems of the objectivist and subjectivist models. George Herbert Mead, through the “Generalized Other” made a similar contribution. The intellectual development of the self and social integration is formed through the socialization stages of preparatory, play and game. The first stage represents random imitation and copying significant others, the second stage, roleplaying, value formation and the building of language. The third stage, roletaking and understanding and imagining multiple roles. This applies not just to social integration and the division of labour, but to moral and value formations as well.

[

Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, FP 1912

George Herbet Mead, Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist, edited by Charles W. Morris, Universiy of Chicago Press, 1934

}

Thus language, values and meaning are all generated socially, as are integrative roles. However not all statements, or for that matter actions, are equal. They also require justifications. Here is where Austin can be introduced. With a concern of defining the validity of a statement and the idea of words doing rather than representing, Austin described words according to the truth of the statement (constantives) or the sincerity of the statement (performatives) and described any statement in terms of what is being said (locutinary), what is being done with the statement (illocutinary) and what is being done by the statement (prelocutionary). Searle further elaborated this perpective with the introduction of expressive speech acts along with assertives, directives, declaratives, commissives and so forth

[

John Austin, How to Do Things With Words, Harvard University Press, 1962

John Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge University Press, 1969

Searle, J. R., Vanderveken, D. (1985). Foundations of Illocutionary Logic, Cambridge University Press.

]

When Habermas applied the theory of communicative action to generate formal pragmatics, many of the types of speech that are elaborated by linguistic philosophers are substantially simplified. The interest is to compile orientations with actions and world relations, that is, 'the' world of objective facticity, 'our' world of intersubjective relations and 'my' (or 'your') world of subjective feeling. It presupposes intentionalist semantics (e.g., Grice, that communication is about expressing a state of affairs), formal semantics (e.g., Frege, that a sentence has a logical structure and comprehensible utterances) and the previously described socially generated theory of meaning. The following table elucidates the relationship between speech acts, their validity claims and world relations.

1. Linguistically Mediated Communicative Action

[Derived from Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol I, p329]

Whilst this schema may be sufficient to describe speech acts, it is thoroughly insufficient to describe the entire body of rationality and knowledge. After all, there such things as objective social facts, and whilst moral exists through personal world, it exists as regulative speech act. To overcome these limitations. Habermas completes formal pragmatics by elaborating the value-spheres of Weber. The result is the rational complexes of formal pragmatics, where world-relations and orientations can be fully described. Technology and systems equate with the sphere of instrumental rationality. Law and morality equate with practical rationality, and eroticism and art with aesthetic rationality.

2. Complexes of Formal Pragmatics

[derived from Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, pp237-240]

The opportunity is taken here to elaborate these complexes, both those which are described by Habermas as rational and those “irrationalisable complexes” in formal pragmatics. After all, if there is a claim that there is such a thing as rational and irrational statements – and it follows that there are valid and invalid speech acts - then it is certainly necessary to describe the difference. It is important to note that irrationalizable complexes are no less real that rational ones - it is just beyond the human capacity to validity their claims and therefore acts which which seek justification through irrationalizable complexes are invalidated. Rational complexes on the other hand, because they raise assertions that can be falsified, are capable of improvement and development. Finally, all complexes have points of connection and fragmentation with adjoining (in the table above through horizontal and vertical connections – with table wrapping) complexes that provide resources, yet also can distort, the development of the complex.

Each complex can be briefly described as follows:

Constantive/Objective: By taking a constantive approach to the objective world one is raising assertions of truth concerning the relationship of matter or energy within space and time. As a rational complex this represents the knowledge of science and the application in technology.

Constantive/Intersubjective: A constantive approach to the intersubjective raises truth statements concerning formal institutions, their internal formal and procedural systems and their relationship their relationship with other formal institutions. As a rational complex this represents the knowledges of political and economic science and the application of bureaucratic administration.

Constantive/Subjective: To raise assertions of quantity towards the internal mental states of the subjective world seems to be beyond human rational capacity. The literal claim of psychology (“the science of the mind”) is thus with very suspect foundations – although it is a promising multidisciplinary project in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. This is an irrationalizable complex, but one that can be idealised through ther term “personality”.

Regulative/Objective: Attempts to resolve validity claims about the rightness or wrongness of the objective world and the morality of its processes do not seem to be resolvable within human knowledge (despite the number of claims that are made). This complex is irrationalizable, although it can be idealized as “metaphysics”.

Regulative/Intersubjective: A regulative approach to the intersubjective raise normative claims of social relationships which are embodied as a rational complex in the formal legal code as knowledge and the associated procedures (legislation, jurisdiction, execution) as practise.

Regulative/Subjective: When the subjective world takes a regulative approach it is engaging in raising the validity claims of rightness or wrongness of it's principles and convictions and of the subjective actions. As a knowledge this rationalisable complex can be defined as moral principles. As a practise, it represents situational ethics.

Expressive/Objective: When the validity claim of the sincerity of an expression is taken up towards the objective world the claim consists of the human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, distort or even contradict the medium natural object and the spatio-temporal natural location. This is rationalisable as the knowledge of aesthetics as implemented in the practise of art.

Expressive/Intersubjective: An expressive assertion to the intersubjective world is a claim that that is possible to determine the sincerity of a shared expression. However as expression originate from a subject and the shared symbolic meaning is derived from a social consensus this is not possible – as it would breach even formal semantics. It would require an entire language to be built on contradictory meanings or, conversely, perfect meaning. Thus, the complex arising from an expressive approach to the intersubjective world is not rationalizable. However, it may be idealized as “Culture”.

Expressive/Subjective: An expressive orientation to the subjective world raises the validity claim of whether an individual subject is sincere in reference to their own world. Ultimately this requires the subject to determine relative their spontaneous sensual experiences pleasure and pain throught their sensory system. This complex is rationalisable as knowledge as the subject's sense of eroticism and in practise as their sensuality.

Having established how one determines how differentiate between rational and irrationalisable complexes doesn't of determine in itself the relative validity of a rationalible statement. It does determine however that in principle, through the act of communicative action, that improvements can be found. However – and this is where the issue becomes political – the reality of rational complexes is that the theory is constrained by disconnection between those that can contribute and the practical content is distorted by ideology, deception, and power. So rather than provide a content-perscriptive approach to rational complexes in formal pragmatics, Habermas claims that content itself can only be derived from an “ideal speech situation” located in the “public sphere”.

The problem arises because communicative action is not the only type of action. Again drawing upon Max Weber, Habermas compares communicative action to instrumental and strategic action. These action types, rather than seeking understanding, are orientated towards 'success' within non-social and social situations. Obviously there is nothing wrong with these action orientations themselves. The efficiency systematic functionalism requires strategic action, whereby discourse is screened out of established procedure. Likewise, instrumental actions are required in order to achieve goals. Indeed, a world that existed only of communicative actions would soon find itself quite hungry. All action types has particular relevance for particular tasks.

3. Types of Action

[Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol I, p285]

An action type that is not described by Habermas and that originates in this study is the notion of “mediative action”. Whilst this has the stylistic element of completing the action-types table the content is of course more important. It claims that there is a special type of action whose implemention is not judged by success, but rather by the enhanced capacity to reach understanding. However, unlike communicative action, mediative action does not exist in a social situation. Rather, it exists in a thoroughly non-social one as implementation a communicative and democratic procudures within institutions and technologies and the means by which the political and economic system may remain connected to the cultural and linguistic lifeworld. In terms of a functional sociological method, Instrumental Action equates with Goal Attainment, Mediative Action with Adaptability, Strategic Action with Latency, and Communicative Action with Integration.

It is opportune at this point to revise the preceeding discussion and return to the original aim – a definition of social theory. Social theory derives it's origins from studies from the metatheory of philosophy from which it can derives analytical typology, mathematical logic (insofar that mathematics is not about numbers but values) and existential relations. It is neither a science (constantive orientation) nor an art (expressives orientation) but an inquiry into regulative behaviour, (which is a moot claim for a new type of degree, different to a B.A or a B.Sc – a B.Inq), that also concerns itself with the effects of social change firstly on the institutional system and cultural expressions. It can be differentiated from cultural anthropology whose concerns incorporate more from the irrationalisable (but data rich) complex of culture, and whose orientation is more towards the expressive rather than the constantive. Directly related to social theory is the discipline of sociology which seeks to examine the real and potential crisis within a particular set of social circumstances.

As mentioned previously, the central concerns of social theory can be defined as the issues of agency versus structure, consensus and conflict, the characteristics of modernity, and the issues of sex and age. In looking at these central concerns the general sense and specific example of the Internet is discussed, along with the main schools of thought in contemporary social theory. Overall, the social theory used in this study is mainly derived from Habermas' research and synthesis, but also heavily supplemented by the neofunctionalist and cybernetic approaches whilst maintaining comparison with post-structuralist interpretations of the same concerns. Examining these particular concerns, chosen because of their persistance in problemetising in social theory serves to contribte to the final concern of this subsection, that is the politically more explicit description of future directions.

Before engaging in these central concerns however, two important concepts, both from Habermas, need to be explained. First is the distinction between social systems and cultural lifeworlds. Second is the “ideal speech situation”. The first is a conceptual difference, derived from Habermas' encounter with functionalist thought. Functionalism assumed that societies progressed along four dimensions, namely Goal-Attainment, Adaptability, Latency (or Pattern-Maintenance) and Integration. Habermas agrees, but combines the functionalist approach with that of the phenomenological tradition in sociology. The main concern of that tradition was the spatiotemporal and organizational experience of the individual in society – a sort of materialist eqiuvalent of the hermenutic idealist approach to history – and evolved in to a sociology of everyday life.

[Alfred Schutz, A., & Thomas Luckmann (1973). The Structures of the Life-World. Northwestern University Press]

In Habermas however, utilising the intersubjective rather than subjective approach to questions of consciousness the lifeworld has a different meaning. The “everyday” aspect is retained, as the “background consensus” to existence. However as an analytic category, it assumes that the incursions of the social system are temporarily screened out and thus, cultural lifeworlds are perceived as being responsible for integration and pattern-maintenance. Conversely, and resting upon the lifeworld which provides the system legitimacy, social systems are instuitutionally embedded with the functionally responsibility of a society's capacity of steering mechanisms (goal attainment) and the scope of contingency (adaptability).

Of course, in the reality of everyday existence this conceptual model is distorted. The social system colonizes the lifeworld through the administration of life processes where it is actually dysfunctional, there are also the contingencies incurred by objective circumstances and inevitably, the irrationalisable demands of self-censorship to meet group and status approval. To take into account these distortions, Habermas posits an “ideal speech situation” where communication would be completely unfettered. Such a speech situation makes absolutely no demands on what the content arising from such a situation would be, but rather sets out the pragmatic conditions for it to exist. These are as follows:

1. Every subject with the competence to speak and act is allowed to take part in a discourse.

2a. Everyone is allowed to question any assertion whatever.

2b. Everyone is allowed to introduce any assertion whatever into the discourse.

2c. Everyone is allowed to express their attitudes, desires and needs.

3. No speaker may be prevented, by internal or external coercion, from exercising their rights as laid down in (1) and (2).

[Jurgen Habermas, "Discourse Ethics: Notes on Philosophical Justification." in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action . Trans. Christian Lenhart and Shierry Weber Nicholson. M.I.T. Press, 1980.]

The general assesment of agency and structure concerns acknowledges that societies are premade, constrainting and directional. It is countered by the recognition that agents make and remake society through everyday activities and expressions. The capac ity of structure depends on the integrative capacity of the lifeworld, and the contingency ability of the system. The capacity for agency depends the systemtic satisfaction of requirements, and the motivational resources available to the actor.

Within the Marxist tradition, the split between the the individual and society becomes embedded in the systematic class structures they find themselves born into, reaching it's most extreme form in Louis Althusser who saw classes as agents of social transformation to classes as “bearers of structures”. Within the structural-functionalist tradition, individual agency seems not to matter at all in Emile Durkheim and Claude Levi-Strauss. In Talcott Parsons however, a voluntaritistic nature of the self is assumed, thus providing justification for existence structures and their stability. In post-structuralism agency – seemingly inspired by the French existentialist tradition – is heavily promoted and society becomes conceptually demarcated between those who unthinkingly follows it's structural norms and those wilful intellects with free agency.

[Louis Althusser, For Marx, EDIT]

The specific assesment of agency and structure on the Internet unique restrictions and enhancements. The access to communicative and information tools is restricted by the structures of technical capacity, local system administra tion, and technical competence. Specific agency enhancements include the collection and transmission of data beyond normal constaints of space-time, freedom in dramaturgical presentation, and the potential of equal discourse chances. The key feature is the possibility that the Internet provides a higher level of communicative agency and a reduced level of distortion in communication. Nevertheless, the questions of prior restrictions on agency and the effects of structure must also be incorporated and compared as well as noting how consciousness formation on the Internet affects agent behaviour and structural formations outside it.

The general assesment of consensus and conflict concerns the degree of rationality of society's interdependent parts, and the degree of rationality in the allocation of social resources. If consensus is reached or is reachable, in the social system or the cultural lifeworld, the society (or its component) is functional. However, if a society is dysfunctional the requisite capacity for change will determine the form and degree of resultant conflict, which is unavoidable if there are competing incommensurable organizational claims . Conflict tendancies in advanced modernity includes potential failures to provide requisite consumerables, to make rational decisions in administration, to provide general motivations, or to provide motivational meaning.

In the Marxist tradition, economic conflict arising from class stratification, the law of the falling rate of profit and the growing disjunction between use-value and exchange value is considered inevitable. Modern capitalism however, mainatins mass loyalty through social welfare benefits and democratic legitimation and thus, along with streering performances arising from the taxation base defers economic crises. The structural-functional tradition posited consensus as both a means and an end, whereas neofunctionalism gives some beneficial to crisis resolution as being the means to overcome uneven structural development and to overcome axiomatic problems. The post-structuralist interpretation views social crisis in an pleasurable aesthetic light – full of spirit, with the richness of the casbah and the bewildering sensual array of a Mardi Gras. To the post-structuralist, the greatest problem with the consensus orientation is that it is fundamentally dull.

The specific assesment of consensus and conflict for the Internet suggests a community with a high level of consensus and crisis functionality but is vulnerable to the introduction of dysfunctional incursions. The technical design assures an extroadrinary efficient and productive allocation of resources. Where shared resources exist, (e.g., usenet) a remarkably democratic model is consistently implemented. This is tempered by the capacity of individual hosts to introduce, sometimes on a grand scale, interests foreign to the social functionality of the Internet (e.g., 'spam'). The systematic indifference, and practise of implicit support, by system administration to the Internet's cultural traditions provide motivation for continued participation. Finally, the capacity to provide meaning is ideally stronger than external society.

The general concern of modernity refers to elucidating the qualitative structural content of social formations, that is; their organising principles, the systematic means of social differentiation, the institutional, the means of production, the means of communication, the mode of consciousness, and suseptibility to crises. Furthermore the general concern also includes hypotheses of the dynamics and trends. This is particularly important for the long term functionality of modernity.

Social Structures

Within the Marxist tradition the mode of production – a combination of system differentiation and means of production – is the mechanism by which social formations and all other structures are determined – and is formed by the results of class struggle. The traditional Marxist conception of history proposed the existence of primitive communism (subdivided into 'savagery' and 'barbarism'), the traditional societies of 'slavery' and 'feudalism' and the modern societies of 'capitalism' and 'socialism' and with the teleological conclusion of 'communism'. In comparison, whilst structural-functionalism seems to have grounded societies within particular historical stage, the reasons form transformation – particularly rapid transformation were less than clear. The neofunctionalist orientation provides greater explanation through analysis of axial civilizations and Max Weber's contribution to the effects in the change of consciousness also stands in contrast to the Marxist interpretation. Post-structuralist history emphasizes radically different ways of viewing the world, but never with the sort of typology as given above. There is a particular concern in post-structuralism with a hypothetical – or the already existing – postmodern society.

The specific concern of modernity to the Internet is usually referred in the context of the prospect of a 'postmodern' society. The claim of transformation from modernity to postmodernity is strengthened by the adoption of a 'computerised' means of production, and a 'decentered' mode of consciousness. Changes in the organising principles, institutional foci, and crisis potential are less clear. The existence of a strong communicative element and weak system requirements questions exactly what postmodern “mode of production” can be ascertained. For a postmodern society to transpire the external modern society class society itself however would have to be transcended. In terms of instutional base the main example for the Internet is the domain, whether it is represented as a state or corporate entity. The hypothesised crisis tendancy (suggested by Habermas, Jameson and Lyotard et. al.) is that of fragmentation.

The general concerns of sex and age can be seen as the result of biological differences leading to social differences, and the maintanence of social restrictions when biological differences are potentially overcome. Physical differences between sex and age groups suggests different social requirements and capacities. Systematic exclusion on the basis of sex and age leads to conflict as dysfunction if enforced on irrelevant or inappliciable criteria. The cultural adoption of gender codes assigned to sex is traditionally used to reinforce exclusion in the social system. The requisite sexual difference in consciousness seems overrated, although this is not so on the basis of age. In this case, development of physical attributes and cognitive skills suggest a staggered development with dileanated boundaries.

The Marxist approach incorporated gender relations as part of it's economic analysis and provided significant input to the political emancipation of women. Structural functionalist approaches varied according the social formation being analyzed. In regards to modern society, there is implicit and voluntaristic support for formal sexual equality, but with a functional view of family and gendered relations. In post-structuralism there is significant bifurcation – one side of post-structuralist feminist analysis actively promotes the political demarcation of men and women through 'identity politics' that places the sexual locus as the essence of one's being, whereas the other overcomes gender distinctions through agent perfomativity.

With regards to age, social theoretical perspectives are almost entirely absent. In the field of sociology, concern is orientated towards adolescence as a troubled period with Marxist analysis concentrating on the class location and structural-functionalist approaches on the dysfunctional (i.e., non-nuclear) family arrangements. Only symbolic-interactionist theories, such as Mead, which noted the development of self and role formation as part of development is there an attempt to describe the childhood and adolescence in social theoretical terms. Further, a social theory that places the crisis of adolescence on the biological facticity that young adults are denied political rights available to other citizens seems entirely absent. Thus it is not in social theory, but in developmental psychology that the effective resources can be drawn that provide the following typology of the transition from child to adult.

4. Rational Domains of Developmental Psychology

The specific concerns of sex and age for the Internet are profoundly different. In terms of sex, the current community is numerically male-dominated from all available evidence. In terms of age groups, a certain cognitive ability is necessary for technical and communicative participation. Furthermore, the mass introduction of the Internet to contemporary society is dileanated according to pedagogical and vocational opportunity and expectation (age groups and gender). Within the Internet however, the concerns of sex and age are lessened. The weak ontological status of community members potentially reduces cultural prejudices and allows a higher level of inclusiveness. This is further enhanced by high levels of dramaturgical freedom and emancipation of the internal self (which can, and does, include expressions of prejudice). External systematic attempts to limit access according to age groups have limited potential.

The specific concern of the Internet to future directions of society, is whether or not this 'virtual community' can perform the functions of an technically mediated and enhanced 'public sphere'. This would be an environment where parties may engage with equal discourse chances and in an undistorted setting, for the general good. If this is so, the benefits of such a public sphere suggest mediation by external social systems. The critical question, as Anita Thorton has put it quite bluntly, is “Does The Internet Create Democracy?”

[Anita Thorton, (1996) Masters Thesis, University of Technology, Sydney. Available at: http://www.zip.com.au/~athornto/index.htm]

The idead of a public sphere in Habermas is a part of society, independent of political institutions and the economy sub-system, where participants can engage in discursive will formation. That is, through free and open debate, with equal rights for all participants and in a co-operative search for the truth, individuals can overcome their own subjective prejudice and instead form considered convictions. Habermas provides the historical example of 17^th and 18^th century coffee houses, salons and societies as an example of a public sphere, where the media “was for the first time established as a genuinely critical organ of a pubilc engaged in critical political debate: as the fourth estate”

[Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p60]

The media however has changed significantly since then. It is now a body that is less interested in analyzing political controversy with a view to the public good, to the control, determination and commodification of news, the support and destruction of politicians and political perspectives. Even whilst many of the old settings for the public sphere exist, the mass media as an information, rather than a communication technology, has succesfully isolated people from one another. Rather than reporting on political debates, the media sets the political agenda and packages events for maximum sensationalist effect.

In Hannah Arendt there is also a concern for the public sphere and discursive will formation with a very strong political imperative. Arendt's analysis of totalitarian regimes included many facets – their dynamicism, their use of total terror, their overriding ideological principle – but one particularly important feature was the alienation of people from the institutions of civic debate (i.e., the public sphere of discursive will formation) and their retreat into private, uncritical, unthinking lives. Arendt is at constant pains throughout this analysis to show how this avoidance of political involvement, of not taking a personal interest in protecting institutionalized freedom and democracy paved the way for totalitarian regimes. Indeed, as the example of Eichmann showed, ignoring and not thinking about politics can lead rather ordinary people to participate in the murder of millions.

[Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Harcourt Brace and Co, 1951

Hannah Arednt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Viking Press, 1963

]

This deeply considered conviction to political involvement is further elaborated in The Human Condition with the principle of human freedom, the antithesis of totaliitarianism, being the overwhelming priority. Whilst it is possible to experience extraordinary freedoms, even well beyond the legal and accepted norms of society in private life, this does not, in Arendt's view constitute real freedom. This is an ersatz freedom, based on deception and subterfuge. It lacks the social solidarity of ensuring that the freedoms enjoyed can be experienced by others and furthermore, lacking a civic guarantee, it is easily shattered.

In The Human Condition, Arendt develops the material activity of human beings into a three level hierarchy, namely labor, work and activity. Labor is defined as those activities carried out by necessity, work by those for utility (and for the human species, usually within the economic subsystem), but action is free pursuits carried out as a matter of principled conviction – indeed politics would be meaningless, even impossible to conceive of without the conviction of freedom. It includes scientific endeavour when conducted in it's own right, artistic pursuits carried out for nothing but the art itself, and with a normative orientation, the activity of political action which does not concern itself with politics as a vocation (although this may included with politics as an action).

[Hannah Arednt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, 1958, 205]

Arendt further proposes that within the construction of the human world, that a specific space – which is termed the “public space” - where human action through it's own free action constructs and ultimately enforces. Here, the art and skill of politics is directed not towards any particular monetary gain or institutionalized power but, in the style of the classic Athenians, the caring and preserving of the immortal memory of the polis. It is what is termed authentic politics. Apart from it's independence from the structures of money and power, authentic politics does not include artistic pursuits with a political meaning, it does not include political theory and observation. It does include speech as well as activity, and may even include protective violence, to ensure the preconditons of freedom of deliberation and debate. In Arendt's view it must also seek be to memorable, it must aspire to greatness.

It is not surprising given these definitions that Arednt has a particular concern with the authentic politics of modernity, that is the spontaneous revolutionary activities including the ideals of the French revolution, the cooperative federalism of the American, the Paris Commune of 1871, the Russian soviets of 1917, the Hungarian councils of 1956 and the civil rights and protest movements of the 1960s. In each of these cases, Arednt notes how the seperate units that made up these actions of authentic politics sought to form alliances and leagues with the interest of human freedom as a universal human possibility and a disctinction between “direct” and “representative” politics. This is not to suggest that Arednt proposed society is entirely managed without the institutional complexity required for modern societies, rather that such complex, representative, civic institutions are not the locus for freedom, although they may provide a legal definition of it's scope. However the formal political and economic rights which are provided by political and economic subsystems only come into existence because of the forceful and inevitably short-lived, periods of popular involvement in authentic politics.

[Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, Viking Press, 1965 FP 1963

and Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic, Penguin 1973 [FP 1972]

]

To bring the social theory of Habermas and the political theory of Arendt back to the setting of the Internet, this study is formed from a view of what can described as “libertarian democracy”. This two-fold word can be elaborated to it's pragmatic boundaries – personal liberty and social democracy. The proposition stands in stark contrast to the libertarian capitalism proposed by the radical centre of neoliberal political philosophy which, whilst supporting individual freedom in a fairly limited positive sense of self-regarding acts and consensual relations between likewise atomised individuals, also advocates a propertarian perspective and consider existing relationship of ownership within the hierarchy of capital accumulation as a form of “liberty”.

['Democracy' in this sense, deriving from the rule of people “Demos”, “Kratien” is possibily better replaced by Arednt's preferred term 'Isonomia”, An ethical order “nomos” among equals “iso”]

[cf., Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago Univeristy Press 1962]

This particular political philosophy, the “radical centre” (and wrongly described as “the new right” in some circles – who are the neoconservatives) is actually a reinvogoration and extremist version liberalism, now that liberalism as a political philosophy represents, like social democracy, a moderate disposition based on a class compromise between labour and capital rather than a fundamental set of political objectives. Neoliberalism argues that the individual is responsible for their own allocation of resources, with bad choices leading to impoverishment and good choices to wealth. The misfortunes of birth and circumstance may indeed be sad, but certainly nothing there should no intervention in the name of “equality of opportunity” - or one supposes, disaster relief (they should have taken out insurance). The unhampered exercise of the “natural rights” of persons, the law of contract, the right to private property and capital, and the operations of a market economy are the true guarantors of individual freedom and prosperity.

Radical neoliberalism doesn't even take a functionalist approach to the steering benefits of state intervention, opposing government investment and regulation of the medical profession, of education and social security. Friedman claimed that people only had a right to be educated up to the point where they had basic reading and writing skills – at that point they were “free to choose” and that the medical profession should be completely deregulated. Some libertarians have followed the line of though to it's logical conclusion and propose the introduction of a sort of “capitalist anarchy” - a free market in the means of exchange and the protection of prooperty rights by hired mercenaries.

[Nozick, Robert. 1975. Anarchy, the State and Utopia, Basic Books]

Whilst many political and economic commentators give these views little credence, the credibility that they do have is backed by strong indeological conviction and

As Arendt realized quite early, in the post-totalitarian world the prospects of a new totalitarianism was not be underestimated, especially when the majority would come to believe that freedom would be interepreted as freedom from politics (i.e,. the United States perspective, or positive freedom) or freedom merely as social emancipation (i.e., the social welfare systems of the European states, or negative freedom). In both cases the proirity of authentic political action, that is, politics for freedom are weakened by the onesideness of the experience. One system grants moral liberty at the expense of emancipation from labour (the remorseless tasks required for necessity). The other provides freedom from labour within an administrated world. Neither by themeslves are particularly conducive to authentic political action where people come together in the spirit of freedom, but both could be.

Within the limitations of the particular setting of the Internet therefore (but with an interest in further elaboration), the perspective taken is one of the role of the Internet as a location where the public sphere (Habermas) or public space (Arendt) can be regenerated as a place of discourse and in the interest of freedom – which includes ensuring truth in our public institutions, engaging in civil disobediance and revolutionary change. Furthermore, the orientation and critical tasks that lie ahead for the future of the Internet will be the institutional and systematic embodiment of those features – of positive and negative freedom, for a public space in life and public discourse where people – as equals – may to come together to determine matters of a common interest.

Jurgen Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Translation by T Burger with F Lawrence. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Habermas, Jurgen. "Discourse Ethics: Notes on Philosophical Justification." Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action Trans. Christian Lenhart and Shierry Weber Nicholson. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1980. p86]

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