Mundo-da-vida e sistema: o locus da gestão social sob a abordagem habermasiana

Abstract

We aim to inform where the social management within the relationship between the lifeworld (lebenswelt) and system in the society’s conception proposed by Jürgen Habermas lays in. In the first article, “Caminhos e perspectivas de diálogos da gestão social com as obras de Jürgen Habermas”, we showed, that even Habermas has influenced on the conception of social management concept, his theoretical framework is still little approached by the area. Little of his work is explored by the social management area and a range of work makes reference to Habermas by the reading accomplished through other authors. Furthermore, we notice a great lack of reference to authors who talk critically to Habermas, and point out that the author has much more to contribute to the social management area development and consolidation. In the second article, “No mundo- da- vida (Lebenswelt) e no Sistema (System): Refletindo sobre o Locus da Gestão Social e suas Tensões”, we search for situating and questioning the social management locus within the relation between the lifeworld and system established by Habermas. We show that the social management possibilities (institutional locus) are found to be in a continuum between the lifeworld and system. However, we argue that we cannot step away from the lifeworld horizon (epistemological locus) even considering the possibilities from the participant’s and observer’s viewpoint, that is, we shall be able to confront the relationships and views between the lifeworld and system. We reasoned with Habermas that the lifeworld and system concepts (jointly) represent a sociological and epistemological reading key of the locus of dialogic management actions defended by the social management. This view allows us to problematize several social management conflicts which materialize between state, market and civil society; communicative action and strategic action; public and private; coercion and free space for speaking, fact and value; domination and emancipation. Finally, the third article “O Retorno ao mundo-da-vida: um argument comunicativo para a avaliação em gestão social” exemplifies an evaluation process in social management in a locus (sociological and epistemological) that concerns the conflicts between the lifeworld and system. We argue that an evaluation process which overcome the dichotomy between fact and value as it was showed, needs to recover the lifeworld, a dimension undermined for its practices by research developed under the aegis of logical positivism; furthermore, it needs the dimensions of language and communication to be able to establish a dialogue between social actors, facts, values and norms. The social adjectivising and substantivation allow the social management to overcome dialogically the incommunicado between the technical, practical and emancipator interests and the theoretical and relational blanks between the lifeworld and system, only possible with a Janus face.