Suchergebnisse

Affinities between the ideas of Jurgen Habermas & those of the French poststructuralists -- including Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, & Felix Guattari -- are examined. Three common features are stressed: their common debt to G. W. F. Hegel's concept of the master-slave dialectic; their dismissal of the Wc as an agent of emancipatory social change; & their emphasis on agency over structure. The failure of both to support substantive rights grows partially out of their stress on agency. These writers can be seen as having strong affinity to the counterculture, the New Left, & their successor movements. Both Habermas & the poststructuralists are part of a postmodern culture. W. H. Stoddard.

Centring around the 2016 American election, this thesis explores how Reddit and its subreddits actualize Habermas' notion of the public sphere and communicative rationality. It compares and contrasts two of the largest and most popular political subreddits, /r/Politics and /r/The_Donald, to analyze how political groups contextualize political issues, and the discourse that manifests regarding them. The purpose is not to study all the ways in which individuals use Reddit to discuss general politics, but the ways in which consensus and majority opinions are reached and perpetuated through these subreddits. This thesis seeks to examine the extent to which political discussion on the social news aggregate website Reddit facilitates the conditions of a public sphere, and fosters democratic communicative characteristics.

English
The renewal of local democracy was quickly established as a key priority by the Labour government in the UK following their election in May 1997, and this is seen as requiring an extension of democratic practice to foster more direct forms of participation. Traditional perspectives on the policy process embody a 'technocratic' conception of decision making which disempowers citizens. The expansion of 'instrumental rationality' in modern society has had profoundly anti-democratic implications, creating obstacles to citizen participation through the bureaucratisation of authority, professional and managerial power and expertise. 'Communicative rationality' provides an alternative basis for an institutional framework to promote effective citizen participation but genuine citizen empowerment is likely to require a radical approach which goes beyond institutional reform.

Contrary to much research that describe governance problems in African universities within lenses of positivism, this paper takes a critical theory approach. Based on insights from in-depth interviews with university administrators, academics and student union leaders, the paper reveals tensions among these university actors, which stem from the neopatrimonial aspect of the big-man syndrome. The big-man syndrome poses as the taken-for-granted aspect that facilitates misuse of power among university actors. Thus, this paper demonstrates that in Malawian universities most governance problems result from misuse of power among actors facilitated by the big-man syndrome. A proposal presented is for actors to contain the big-man syndrome and allow for democratic governance by employing dialectical reasoning and the Habermasian theory of communicative rationality. Keywords: university governance, critical theory, the big-man syndrome, democratic governance, dialectical reasoning, communicative rationality

This paper intends to observe in a preliminary way the intimaterelationship that exists between the notion of a state of exception, democracy and communication. The gamble focuses on showing the conceptual elements that, initially, would allow the argumentative plot to be constructed with respect to the communicative rationality of the exception, considering the agonal character of democracy. Finally, a brief reflection on the discourse and the media as possible devices of the exception is presented. ; El presente escrito pretende observar de manera preliminar laíntima relación que existe entre la noción de estado de excepción,democracia y comunicación. La apuesta se enfoca en mostrar loselementos conceptuales que -inicialmente- permitirían construirla trama argumentativa respecto a la racionalidad comunicativade la excepción, considerando el carácter agonal de la democracia.Por último, se presenta una breve reflexión respecto al discursoy los medios de comunicación como posibles dispositivosde la excepción.