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- Title
Culture and Democratic Theory: Toward a Theory of Symbolic Democracy.
- Authors
Lee, Orville
- Abstract
The article proposes to bring a cultural theory of symbolic power into a constructive dialogue with critical democratic theory. Since the late 1970s, a highly productive strand of critical theory has emerged which has largely abandoned the Frankfurt School's critique of cultural domination. Civil society, the public sphere, and the domain of law figure centrally in reconstructive projects aimed at the articulation of institutional remedies for chronic forms of economic and political injustice. It is noteworthy, however, that in the search for post-Marxist foundations for the critique of really existing democracy, critical democratic theory has not adequately taken stock of the fact that the symbolic order of society, which shapes the meaning and status of social identities, is implicated in these forms of injustice. While this emergent strand of critical theory has remained distant from a critique of cultural domination, it does not stand alone in this failure to conceptualize all the significant features of modern relations of power.
- Subjects
CULTURE; DEMOCRACY; CRITICAL theory; FRANKFURT school of sociology; CIVIL society; CRITICISM (Philosophy)
- Publication
Constellations: An International Journal of Critical & Democratic Theory, 1998, Vol 5, Issue 4, p433
- ISSN
1351-0487
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1467-8675.00107