Following the recent practice turn in privacy research, informational privacy is increasingly analyzed with regard to the “appropriate flow of information” within a given practice, which preserves the “contextual integrity” of that practice (Nissenbaum, 2010, p. 149; 2015). Such a practice-theoretical take on privacy emphasizes the normative structure of practices as well as its structural injustices and power asymmetries, rather than focusing on the intentions and moral considerations of individual or institutional actors. Since privacy norms are seen to be institutionalized (...) via the role obligations of the practice's participants, this approach can analyze structural and systematic privacy infringements in terms of “defective role performances and defective social relations” (Roessler & Mokrosinska, 2013, p. 780). -/- Unfortunately, it is still often somewhat unclear what this exactly means within the context of informational privacy, why these performances and relations are defective and for whom. This raises the common objection of a so-called “practice positivism” (Applbaum, 1999, p. 51), that is, the difficulty of practice–theoretical accounts to take a practice-independent standpoint, from which to normatively evaluate the existing practice norms themselves. For example, Nissenbaum herself initially argues for a “presumption in favor of the status quo” with respect to the appropriateness and flow of privacy norms within a practice (Nissenbaum, 2004, p. 127). Such a “practice conservatism” (Nissenbaum, 2010, p. 169) comes dangerously close to committing a naturalistic fallacy, if not undergirded by practice-external criteria (which is ultimately what she does). -/- Merely resorting to existing practice norms to assess what defective role performances amount to, only shifts the question from how to recognize an appropriate flow of information to the question of how to recognize those defective role performances and social relations. Against this backdrop, the central aim of this article is to shed light on this question without resorting to practice-independent first principles or far-reaching universalistic anthropological assumptions. For this, I will analyze the notion of “defective role performances and social relations” in terms of social pathologies.1 Doing so has two advantages: First of all, it can draw on already existing concepts and distinctions, which help to categorize the different levels of analysis that exist in informational privacy research and situate the notion of “defective role performances” within them (Section 1). Second, those concepts and distinctions can serve as a basis for establishing a typology of phenomena with regard to deficient practices of informational privacy (Section 4). (shrink)

False consciousness requires a general explanation for why, and how, oppressed individuals believe propositions against, as opposed to aligned with, their own well-being in virtue of their oppressed status. This involves four explanatory desiderata: belief acquisition, content prevalence, limitation, and systematicity. A social constructionist approach satisfies these by understanding the concept of false consciousness as regulating social research rather than as determining the exact mechanisms for all instances: the concept attunes us to a complex of mechanisms conducing oppressed individuals to (...) mistake social understandings of themselves as natural self-understandings—the limits lie where these overlap (sometimes), or are entirely absent. (shrink)

According to the received view, Marxian (ideology) critique and Foucaultian (genealogical) critique constitute two divergent approaches of critical theory that have remarkably different goals and little in common. In this article, however, we identify a guiding thread that connects the Marxian and Foucaultian traditions and motivates a distinctive approach within critical theory we call the ‘critique of constitution’. The problem of restricted consciousness, we show, is the core problem in common between Michel Foucault's critical history of thought and Georg Lukács's (...) theory of reification which underlies the tradition of Western Marxism and Frankfurt School critical theory. The problem concerns the limits of intelligibility and, by the same token, the apparent inevitability of the given social ontology. Our sense of what is possible depends on what we are able to think. But we know from the history of sciences that the limits of intelligibility change, thereby also altering our sense of what is possible. This becomes a political problem in connection with the intelligibility of social reality, because our restricted consciousness limits the alternatives we can so much as consider and seek to bring about. The critique of constitution, then, aims to expand the scope of possibility by revealing the contingent formation of the given limits of intelligibility. We argue that this is the paramount political task for Foucault and Lukács alike, other important differences notwithstanding. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to reconsider Habermas’ discourse approach in terms of its usefulness in the realm of public healthcare where, on a microscale, intersubjective communicative situations arise between defined participants, i.e., patients and healthcare providers, patients’ family members, and further eligible contributors to patient-related decision making. A need for more “communicative interaction,” and explicative and practical discourse, is illustrated by two empirical examples of medical decision making which reveal both communicative and discursive deficits. To empower and enable (...) the patient as a rational and autonomous speaker and discourse participant, a Habermasian emancipatory argument and ‘the power of the better argument’ is recalled. The possibility of equal communicative and discursive rights in the light of real inequalities is discussed in the context of a ‘competence gap’ between participants. Further sections focus on the importance of informed consent on the side of the patient and the communicative competences as an important factor of healthcare system. (shrink)

Digital communication now pervades all spheres of life, creating new possibilities for commodification: personal data and communication are the new resources of surplus value. This in turn brings about a totally new category of threats to privacy. With recourse to the culture industry critique of early critical theory, this article seeks to challenge basic theoretical assumptions held within a liberal account of privacy. It draws the attention to the entanglement of technical and socio-economic transformations and aims at elaborating an alternative (...) framing which takes into account that privacy is not in the first place a pre-political space for individual freedom but a constituted sphere in which social power relations are reproduced in a particularly deceitful way. With recourse to positions of critical theory, this article revisits the conceptual ambiguity of liberation and oppression and looks to draft prospects for a socio-theoretical justification and critique of privacy, updated for the digital age. Following the tradition of critical theory, the argument focuses on (new) forms of domination in and by privacy. It aims to prepare the ground for a critique of the social’s increasing commodification as well as an idea of privacy understood as reflexive participation in social practices. (shrink)

Axel Honneth’s philosophical reflections always had significant historical dimensions, but it is only recently, in Recognition. A Chapter in the History of European Ideas, that he has attended to the history of recognition as a concept. This essay examines the cogency and the implications of this turn to intellectual history in the theory of recognition. The first section summarises the main historical claims put forward by Honneth. Section two raises critical doubts regarding three aspects of his narrative: the cultural contexts (...) that are said to have influenced particular conceptions of recognition; the conceptions of recognition that are supposed to be tied to national cultures; and the method of linking particular meanings of recognition to national cultures. The third section broadens the scope and attempts to show why this turn to intellectual history, despite some shortcomings, raises tantalising questions for recognition theory, and beyond it, for critical theory. (shrink)

This paper aims to enrich the idea of the institutionalized sphere of recognition developed by Axel Honneth and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the “social field” by combining them. First, it underlines the characteristics that the two viewpoints share. Second, the paper argues that their combination can be mutually beneficial for overcoming some of their respective theoretical limits: the issue of the determination of the amplitude of the social field and the nature of the power that institutions of recognition exercise on (...) individuals. (shrink)

Resumen: La diferencia entre juicios de hecho y juicios de valor fundamenta, al mismo tiempo, la neutralidad de las descripciones y el inherente compromiso del investigador, y ello sin devaluar la validez de los juicios de valor y del compromiso. Es importante reconocer la diferencia entre aquello que funda un juicio de hecho y aquello que funda un juicio de valor. Lo que es inaceptable -tanto como juicio de hecho como juicio de valor- es la pretensión de derivar recomendaciones neutrales (...) solo desde los hechos, la idea tecnocrática de una intervención que no requiere compromiso. No existe tal cosa como una acción neutral y el reino de la neutralidad se reduce solo a la descripción.: The distinction between facts judgments and value judgments is the basis, at the same time, of both the neutrality of descriptions and the inherent commitment of the researcher, without devaluing the validity of value judgments. It is relevant to acknowledge the difference between what grounds a fact judgment from what grounds a value judgment. What is invalid -as fact judgment and as value judgment- is the attempt to generate neutral recommendations only from facts, the technocratic idea of an intervention that do not involves commitment. There is no such thing as a neutral action, and the real of neutrality is reduce only to description. (shrink)