From the culture industry to the society of the spectacle: Critical theory and the situationist international

SPEP Co-director's Address: Progress, Philosophical and Otherwise

The Politics of Unreason: The Frankfurt School and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism

Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. —Marshall McLuhan. What is visible and tangible in things represents our possible action upon them. —Henri Bergson. Introduction: Subjective Maps as ‘Contact Zones’ Maps feature heavily in a variety of media; they appear in textbooks, on television, in print, and on the screens of our handheld devices. The production of cartographic texts is a process that is imbued with power relations and bound up with the production and reproduction of social life (Pinder 405). Mapping involves choices as to what information is and is not included. In their organisation, categorisation, modeling, and representation maps show and they hide. Thus “the idea that a small number of maps or even a single (and singular) map might be sufficient can only apply in a spatialised area of study whose own self-affirmation depends on isolation from its context” (Lefebvre 85–86). These isolations determine the way we interpret the physical, biological, and social worlds. The map can be thought of as a schematic for political systems within a confined set of spatial relations, or as a container for political discourse. Mapping contributes equally to the construction of experiential realities as to the representation of physical space, which also contains the potential to incorporate representations of temporality and rhythm to spatial schemata. Thus maps construct realities as much as they represent them and coproduce space as much as the political identities of people who inhabit them. Maps are active texts and have the ability to promote social change (Pickles 146). It is no wonder, then, that artists, theorists and activists alike readily engage in the conflicted praxis of mapping. This critical engagement “becomes a method to track the past, embody memories, explain the unexplainable” and manifest the latent (Ibarra 66). In this paper I present a short case study of Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies a new media art project that aims to model a citizen driven effort to participate in a critical form of cartography, which challenges dominant representations of the city-space. I present a critical textual analysis of the maps produced in the workshops, the artist statements relating to these works used in the exhibition setting, and statements made by the participants on the project’s blog. This “praxis-logical” approach allows for a focus on the project as a space of aggregation and the communicative processes set in motion within them. In analysing such projects we could (and should) be asking questions about the functions served by the experimental concepts under study—who has put it forward? Who is utilising it and under what circumstances? Where and how has it come into being? How does discourse circulate within it? How do these spaces as sites of emergent forms of resistance within global capitalism challenge traditional social movements? How do they create self-reflexive systems?—as opposed to focusing on ontological and technical aspects of digital mapping (Renzi 73). In de-emphasising the technology of digital cartography and honing in on social relations embedded within the text(s), this study attempts to complement other studies on digital mapping (see Strom) by presenting a case from the field of politically oriented tactical media. Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies has been selected for analysis, in this exploration of media as “zone.” It goes some way to incorporating subjective narratives into spatial texts. This is a three-step process where participants tapped into spatial subjectivities by data collection or environmental sensing led by personal reflection or ethnographic enquiry, documenting and geo-tagging their findings in the map. Finally they engaged an imaginative or ludic process of synthesising their data in ways not inherent within the traditional conventions of cartography, such as the use of sound and distortion to explicate the intensity of invisible phenomena at various coordinates in the city-space. In what follows I address the “zone” theme by suggesting that if we apply McLuhan’s notion of media as environment together with Henri Bergson’s assertion that visibility and tangibility constitutes the potential for action to digital maps, projects such as Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies constitute a “contact zone.” A type of zone where groups come together at the local level and flows of discourse about art, information communication, media, technology, and environment intersect with local histories and cultures within the cartographic text. A “contact zone,” then, is a site where latent subjectivities are manifested and made potentially politically potent. “Contact zones,” however, need not be spaces for the aggrieved or excluded (Renzi 82), as they may well foster the ongoing cumulative politics of the mundane capable of developing into liminal spaces where dominant orders may be perforated. A “contact zone” is also not limitless and it must be made clear that the breaking of cartographic convention, as is the case with the project under study here, need not be viewed as resistances per se. It could equally represent thresholds for public versus private life, the city-as-text and the city-as-social space, or the zone where representations of space and representational spaces interface (Lefebvre 233), and culture flows between the mediated and ideated (Appadurai 33–36). I argue that a project like Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies demonstrates that maps as urban text form said “contact zones,” where not only are media forms such as image, text, sound, and video are juxtaposed in a singular spatial schematic, but narratives of individual and collective subjectivities (which challenge dominant orders of space and time, and city-rhythm) are contested. Such a “contact zone” in turn may not only act as a resource for citizens in the struggle of urban design reform and a democratisation of the facilities it produces, but may also serve as a heuristic device for researchers of new media spatiotemporalities and their social implications. Critical Cartography and Media Tactility Before presenting this brief illustrative study something needs to be said of the context from which Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies has arisen. Although a number of Web 2.0 applications have come into existence since the introduction of Google Maps and map application program interfaces, which generate a great deal of geo-tagged user generated content aimed at reconceptualising the mapped city-space (see historypin for example), few have exhibited great significance for researchers of media and communications from the perspective of building critical theories relating to political potential in mediated spaces. The expression of power through mapping can be understood from two perspectives. The first—attributed largely to the Frankfurt School—seeks to uncover the potential of a society that is repressed by capitalist co-opting of the cultural realm. This perspective sees maps as a potential challenge to, and means of providing emancipation from, existing power structures. The second, less concerned with dispelling false ideologies, deals with the politics of epistemology (Crampton and Krygier 14). According to Foucault, power was not applied from the top down but manifested laterally in a highly diffused manner (Foucault 117; Crampton and Krygier 14). Foucault’s privileging of the spatial and epistemological aspects of power and resistance complements the Frankfurt School’s resistance to oppression in the local. Together the two perspectives orient power relative to spatial and temporal subjectivities, and thus fit congruently into cartographic conventions. In order to make sense of these practices the post-oppositional character of tactical media maps should be located within an economy of power relations where resistance is never outside of the field of forces but rather is its indispensable element (Renzi 72). Such exercises in critical cartography are strongly informed by the critical politico-aesthetic praxis of political/art collective The Situationist International, whose maps of Paris were inherently political. The Situationist International incorporated appropriated texts into, and manipulated, existing maps to explicate city-rhythms and intensities to construct imaginative and alternate representations of the city. Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies adopts a similar approach. The artists’ statement reads: We build our subjective maps by combining different methods: photography, film, and sound recording; […] to explore the visible and invisible […] city; […] we adopt psycho-geographical approaches in exploring territory, defined as the study of the precise effects of the geographical environment, consciously developed or not, acting directly on the emotional behaviour of individuals. The project proposals put forth by workshop participants also draw heavily from the Situationists’s A New Theatre of Operations for Culture. A number of Situationist theories and practices feature in the rationale for the maps created in the Bangalore Subjective Cartographies workshop. For example, the Situationists took as their base a general notion of experimental behaviour and permanent play where rationality was approached on the basis of whether or not something interesting could be created out of it (Wark 12). The dérive is the rapid passage through various ambiences with a playful-constructive awareness of the psychographic contours of a specific section of space-time (Debord). The dérive can be thought of as an exploration of an environment without preconceptions about the contours of its geography, but rather a focus on the reality of inhabiting a place. Détournement involves the re-use of elements from recognised media to create a new work with meaning often opposed

Critical media theory can be traced back to the development of critical theory by thinkers associated with the so-called Frankfurt School in the 1920s and 1930s. The critical theory of the Frankfurt School was generally neo-Marxist and Hegelian, and established powerful critiques of positivist, mainstream forms of social science and philosophy. The Frankfurt School’s approach to theorizing the emergent 20th century “mass media” therefore founded a powerful critique of mainstream, positivist, “administrative” mass communication research that became dominant in the early decades of the discipline. Arguably the most direct theoretical descendants of Frankfurt School critical theory (via the latter’s critique of industrialized culture) are the forms of political economy of the media that emerged in their wake. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, competing Marxist analyses began to challenge what they took to be the economism, reductionism, and determinism of Frankfurt School and political economy approaches. The most important movement in these respects came out of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. The so-called Birmingham School developed forms of structural and cultural Marxism that drew heavily on the work of Althusser and Gramsci in particular. Additionally, the CCCS developed semiotic and ethnographic approaches to critical media studies that drew upon thinkers such as Barthes and Geertz, and thus gave rise to theories of media audiences that differed sharply from those of the Frankfurt School and political economists. During the late-1970s and throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the critical media theory of the Birmingham School engaged closely with feminist theory and politics, and with critical race theory; it also engaged in dialogues and debates with poststructuralism, postmodernism, post-Marxism and postcolonialism, and spread internationally under the stripped-down heading of “Cultural Studies.” Though not unrelated, critical media theory can be differentiated from film theory: many film theorists reject the characterization of cinema as a “communication medium,” and equally rejected (for many years, at least) the engagement with television that spurred the development of a great deal of critical media theory and that helped give rise to the field of television studies in the 1970s and 1980s. Critical media theory in general, and television studies in particular, have incorporated some forms of psychoanalysis to one degree or another, but neither has been anywhere near as absorbed by psychoanalytic approaches as film theory was for many years (arguably as primarily a consequence of the specificity of the cinematic apparatus). In more recent years, new media theory in particular has been central to the continuing development and concerns of critical media theory more generally.

Traditional theories are concerned with understanding and explaining what is happening so their agenda goes no further than discussion. Critical Theory, however, is different because it not only critiques but it seeks to make changes. It is political. Critical Theory seeks to emancipate and transform those who are oppressed and marginalized through functional steps:Critical theory is politically committed in the sense that it aims to achieve emancipation and transformation of individuals and society through human action. Theory and practice form a single process and philosophy is 'put to work' to provide analysis and critique of society and leading to social change (Jessop 2010: 3).It was Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School who initially coined the term Critical Theory. The Frankfurt School which was also known as the Institute for Social Research, was originally located in Germany but then moved to New York when the Nazis forced its closure and exiled its Jewish members (McLaughlin 1999: 110). Key developers of Critical Theory include Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and later Habermas who formed the second generation. Critical Theory emerged from a group of men who saw the atrocities inflicted by humans on humans. The scholars from the Frankfurt School wanted to understand how people could act the way they did but also how such behaviour could be stopped. Although the scholars were Jewish, Kellner (n.d.) states:The Frankfurt School had a highly ambivalent relation to Judais . . . They were also, for the most part, secular Jews who did not support any organized religion, or practice religious or cultural Judaism. In this sense, they were in the tradition of Heine, Marx, and Freud for whom Judaism was neither a constitutive feature of their life or work, nor a significant aspect of their self-image and identity.Despite the Frankfurt scholars being religiously detached, their focus in developing Critical Theory was 'nothing less than the discovery of why mankind, instead of entering a truly human condition, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism' (Adorno & Horkheimer 1997: xi). The function of Critical Theory is empowerment, it seeks to encourage transformation for those 'whose voices are silenced or marginalised' (Bercaw & Stooksberry 2004). After critiquing society and understanding 'what is', it then asks 'what should be' to create a 'better life' (How 2003: 9). Developers of Critical Theory saw how mass media or the culture industry 'played a highly manipulative role in modern society and served to control or subvert oppositional consciousness, thus removing any threat to the dominant capitalist class' (Strauss: 2012). The demonization of the Muslim masses is a good example of subverting 'oppositional consciousness'.According to Habermas, 'critical knowledge was conceptualized as knowledge that enabled human beings to emancipate themselves from forms of domination through self-reflection and took psychoanalysis as the paradigm of critical knowledge' (Huttunen 2011). Habermas developed the theory of communicative action. This was a way that people could work together and produce positive social transformation. The theory of communicative action refers to interpersonal communication geared towards mutual understanding. Mutual understanding leads to mutual civility and this works to exclude barbarity. I will discuss the Islamic equivalent of this theoretical perspective later in my introduction to Islamic critical theory:Actors do not primarily aim at their own success but want to harmonize their action plans with the other participants. Opposite to communicative action is the concept of strategic action, which means calculative exploitation, or manipulation, of others. An actor who acts strategically seeks primarily his or her own ends and manipulates other people either openly or tacitly (Habermas 1984: 285).Critical PedagogyCritical pedagogy was initially based on Marxist theory (Lyles 2008: 38). …

The aim of this contribution is to critically introduce and assess the Frankfurt School’s theory of late capitalism as it emerged in the 1970s, when a combined crisis of inflation and stagnation began to unravel the Keynesian orthodoxies of state-organised capitalism. In the process, Frankfurt theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and Claus Offe developed powerful critiques of commodification and juridification. The origins of their theory of late capitalism are first traced to the interwar debates on the Weimar Constitution – Germany’s first experiment in both constitutional and economic democracy. The rest of the Article takes a closer look at the Frankfurt School’s changing posture towards economic democracy in the 1970s. Accordingly, I first reiterate how the theory of late capitalism converged with that of the other major crisis theory of the time – the neo-conservative theory of ‘ungovernability’. In diagnosing the ‘governability crisis’ as a crisis of democracy, the Frankfurt School’s increasing pessimism about democracy’s economic reach becomes apparent. Secondly, by looking at the way the Frankfurt School perceived the emergence of the ‘neoliberal’ alternative in the early 1980s, I also argue that the theory of late capitalism had, and did, little to resist the de-democratisation of the economy through the rise of economic constitutionalism in the 1980s. As the welfare state was caught between the two logics of commodification and juridification, economic democracy was its unwitting victim.

Domination, social norms, and the idea of an emancipatory interest

Preface and Acknowledgements. Part 1: Theory, Politics, and History: 1. 1. Critical Theory and Modernity. 1. 2. Critical Theory and the Crisis of Marxism. 1. 3. The Institute for Social Research. Part 2: From Supradisciplinary Materialism to Critical Theory: 2. 1. Supradisciplinary Materialism. 2. 2. Toward a Materialist Social Psychology. 2. 3. Traditional and Critical Theory. Part 3: State, Society, Economy: New Theories of Capitalism and Fascism: 3. 1. Political Sociology and Political Economy. 3. 2. From Market to Monopoly / State Capitalism. 3. 3. Fascism. 3. 4. Fragments of a Theory of Society. Part 4: From Dialectic of Enlightenment to the Authoritarian Personality: Critical Theory in the 1940s: 4. 1 Science, Reason and Dialectic of Enlightenment. 4. 2. Eclipse of Reason. 4. 3. Critical Theory, the Proletariat and Politics. 4. 4. Studies in Prejudice and the Return to Germany. Part 5: From 'Authentic Art' to the Culture of Industries: Critical Theory and the Dialectics of Culture: 5. 1. Dialectics of Culture. 5. 2. Critical Theory and the Culture Industry. 5. 3. New Critical Perspectives on Commodities, Needs and Consumption. Part 6: From the Consumer Society to Postmodernism: Critical Theory and the Vicissitudes of Capitalism: 6. 1. Critical Theory and the Consumer Society. 6. 2. New Critical Perspectives on Commodities, Needs and Consumption. 6. 3. Critical Theory, Modernity and Post-Modernity. Part 7: Techno-Capitalism: 7. 1. Technology, Capitalism and Domination. 7. 2. The Capitalist State. 7. 3. Toward a New Crisis Theory: Habermas and Offe. Part 8: Theory and Practice: The Politics of Critical Theory: 8. 1. Critical Theory and Radical Politics. 8. 2. Techno-Capitalism, Crisis and Social Transformation. 8. 3. New Social Movements and Socialist Politics. 8. 4. For Supradisciplinary Radical Social Theory with a Practical Intent. Notes. Index.

Emma Jeanes and Tony Huzzard (eds.) Critical Management Research: Reflections from the Field, Sage Press, London, 2014; ix + 246 pp: 9781446257432, 30 [pounds sterling] (pbk) This collections 13 chapters are written by 17 authors. They provide a comprehensive overview of the current stage of critical management research (CMR). The editors have divided CMR into four parts: approaching the field, in the field, out of the field, and reflections on the field. Following the editors' introduction, the chapters discuss 'mystery creation, learning from experience, negotiations, being native, asking until it makes sense, research online, qualitative research, over-interpretations, elusive facticity, what can be said', and finally 'reflexive ethics'. The editors' introduction starts by stating, 'the idea for this book emerged from a number of conversations among colleagues', mentioning ethics, fairness and giving voice (with the voice of workers, for example, being stunningly absent!), equity, autonomy and collective responsibility, as well as 'Jurgen Habermas [who] has termed emancipatory knowledge interests' (p. 3). His key reference (Knowledge and Human Interests 1987) is missing, as is a critical application of Habermas's knowledge-creating interest to CMR. Even though Habermas is initially mentioned, this collection is not written in any understanding of Habermas, nor of Horkheimer's (1937) key writing on 'Traditional and critical theory', nor on the application of Horkheimer and/ or Habermas to CMR (e.g. Morrow 1994). Despite the editor's announcement--'a further antecedent of CMS [Critical Management Studies] is critical theory itself' (p. 5)--and the implied claim that the collection is dedicated to critical theory and Habermas, the CMR collection carries some connotations to advancing Habermas's technical-empirical control and his historical-hermeneutical interest. But CMR seems to avoid Habermas's critical-emancipatory interest that highlights domination with the telos of human emancipation. The Jeanes/ Huzzard collection does none of this (Klikauer 2011). Instead, CMR represents management research with the prefix 'critical' attached to it. For the most part, it appears to stabilise management, rather than challenging the dominant and domineering managerial paradigm. Perhaps it might even be supportive of some aspects of management's key ideology: managerialism (Clegg 2014; Klikauer 2013; Locke & Spender 2011). The objective, not of critical theory but of CMR, is 'to develop new ideas and theoretical contributions' as Alvesson and Sandberg recognise while also mentioning 'Marxism' (p. 25). Perhaps the two references to Marx in the entire collection indicate that management as well as managerialism remain largely unchallenged by CMR. Perhaps the non-challenging character of CMR is exemplified in Alvesson and Sandberg's claim to be attempting 'to make research more interesting and influential' (p. 38). In line with being non-challenging, Jeanes et al. don't contest the UK's 'research excellence framework--REF' (p. 43) but offer 'how to do' advice with no discussion on the fact that managerial instruments like REF have the potential to destroy solidarity by enhancing competition among academics. The political implications of REF as support instruments of neoliberalism 'vanish into thin air', as an old friend of mine would have said. Perhaps equally ground-breaking is Nyberg and Delany's claim that 'we argue that most ethnographies have ... political impacts' (p. 63). Many have known that research has political implications, ever since the Catholic Church showed the instruments of torture to Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) in order to shut him up roughly 400 years ago. Thankfully, research, Enlightenment and modernity are not confined to CMR's 'micro-emancipation' (p. 81, 97) but support full and comprehensive emancipation from religious-ideological asphyxiation. Not surprisingly, for Skrutkowski, 'there is an interpretive bias in the core stream within the CMS research tradition that draws on critical theory and the Frankfurt School' (p. …

Critical Theory

The overall task of this paper is to outline some foundations of a critical theory of digital capitalism. The approach of the Critique of Political Economy is taken as the starting point for theorising (digital) capitalism. First, the paper discusses selected classical definitions of capitalism. Theories of digital capitalism must build on definitions and theories of capitalism. If capitalism is not only an economic order but a societal formation, the analysis of capitalism is the analysis of economic exploitation and non-economic domination phenomena and their interaction. Theories of digital capitalism should also address the question of how class, racism, and patriarchy are related in the context of digitalisation. Second, the author introduces a notion of digital capitalism that is based on Marx’s approach of the Critique of Political Economy. Third, the paper engages with one influential contemporary approach to theorising capitalism, Nancy Fraser’s Cannibal Capitalism. The author discusses what we can learn from Fraser’s approach to theorising digital capitalism. Fourth, the author discusses existing understandings of digital capitalism that can be found in the academic literature. These definitions are compared to the understanding advanced in this article. Fifth, the paper discusses the relationship of the notion of digital capitalism from a Critical Political Economy perspective in comparison to the notions of the network society/informational capitalism (Manuel Castells), surveillance capitalism (Shoshana Zuboff), and platform capitalism (Nick Srnicek). Sixth, the paper reflects on the relationship between digital capitalism and violence as we live in a (digital) age where a new World War is all but uncertain. Finally, some conclusions are drawn.

Critical theory, the legacy of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, is rooted in the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, and in Marx's critique of capitalism which claimed that it exploited and alienated workers, while its ideologies of reason, freedom, and democracy disguised its actual operations. “Critical theorists” integrated Weber's notions of rationality and Freud's theories of character and desire into a theory of capitalism and its culture. They looked at sociology, political science, philosophy, art, literature, and cultural studies, including film theory and popular culture, to fashion a multidisciplinary, multidimensional, dialectical social theory largely concerned with the alienation, domination, and commodification and dehumanization in modern societies (Kellner 1989). Critical theory thus embraced the notion of totality : society was an outcome of a number of not always harmonious parts and levels; contradictions and tensions are seen as inherent. It is critical in the sense of critique as explicating what is not empirically given but apprehended through critical reason. Thus, unlike most social theories, it is very concerned with epistemology. Nor does it attempt “objectivity” because this is assumed both to promote and to hide domination. Rather, as an emancipatory theory , it seeks to foster the freedom, equality, and fraternity promised by the Enlightenment thinkers, these qualities being incompatible with late capitalism and hence undercut by technological logic, consumerism, and mass culture. It promotes a society where people may create democratic communities and realize their creative, unique human potentials.

This article aims to examine the critical theory of the Fraknfurt school, especially those related to its history, concepts, assumptions, and contributions. Historically-geneologically, critical theory was born from the womb of Marxist theory. Although born from the womb of Marxist theory, critical theory is not too satisfied with the analysis of the Marxians who are considered too mechanistic economic determinism in seeing the social reality of Western capitalist society. According to critical theory, the Marxian analysis in viewing and analyzing the inequality of the reality of capitalist society in Europe is too reductionist, that is, it is the economic factor (structure) that determines socio-economic inequality or class conflict in a capitalist society. The critical theory developed by the people who call themselves Neo-Maxians, exists to further develop the classical Marxian analysis, which rests not only on economic factors, but also on other socio-economic factors. The Frankfurt school of critical social theory thought services pioneered by Horkheimer, however, has provided a relatively new (though not very new) theoretical perspective in seeing, understanding and analyzing social reality. This critical social theory perspective has contributed significantly to the development of social theory. One of them is that critical theory has contributed to the development of critical and emancipatory awareness of human practice in seeing social realities that are full of inequality and injustice.Keyword : Critical Theory, Frankfurt School, History, Development of Social Theory

Formed as the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) in 1923, Frankfurt School scholarship is distinctive in its fusion of Freudian psychoanalysis, Marxism, Weberian sociology, and left-Hegelian philosophy. The fundamental insight of Critical Theory is that a complex relationship exists between constitutive power, rationality, consciousness, and desire. As such, from a Critical Theory perspective, any meaningful analysis of society must surrender all pretensions to “objectivity.” All thought, including reflexive scholarly inquiry, retains the inherited form of the sociopolitical system. Critical Theorists appreciate that all research is therefore political, either reinforcing or challenging the social order. Subsequent “critical theories” have emerged in addition to the Frankfurt School’s approach, drawing on these principles; however, many are methodologically and politically divergent from their German forefather. For example, in the early twenty-first century, some consider deconstructionism, post-structuralism, and decolonial thought to be forms of critical theory. This article follows convention, and, in keeping with the capitalized “C” and “T” of the title, refers strictly to “Frankfurt School” Critical Theory. This is not stated as part of a broader territorial dispute, nor as part of a pointed “ground clearing” exercise. Rather, the acknowledged convention of capitalization for Frankfurt School Critical Theory serves to maintain disciplinary coherence. The methodological innovations and political sentiments captured by Michel Foucault’s critical theory, for example, are highly different to those of Theodor Adorno. That stated, one must be careful not to implicitly consider “Frankfurt School Critical Theory” to be a homogenous, harmonious whole. While a reweaving of the tapestry of ideas offered by Marx-Freud-Hegel-Weber provides a loose coherence across the different eras of Critical Theory, Frankfurt School scholarship is formally demarcated into three “generations.” The “first generation” refers to the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and their Frankfurt School contemporaries. First-generation scholarship was united by a Marxian philosophical foundation and an explicitly anti-capitalist politics. “Second-generation” Critical Theory refers to the work of Jürgen Habermas and his embrace of insights from analytic philosophy, linguistics, and formal pragmatics. “Third-generation” Critical Theory focuses on the work of Axel Honneth and the Hegel-inspired Critical Theory of Recognition. There is even sporadic discussion of an emergent “fourth generation” of Critical Theory that orbits Rainer Forst’s theory of judgement. Contemporary Critical Theory is an exceedingly fraught and politically divisive enterprise, with various scholars contending that the research agenda has lost its political potency and become blunted by a philosophically untenable “neo-Idealism.” The defining characteristics of Critical Theory are themselves the subject of a heated contemporary debate.

It is still a relatively open question if and how sustainability fits into a critical theory of society. This paper's aim is to makes a contribution to the critical social theory foundations of sustainability and to reflect on the links between capitalism, class and sustainability. Sustainability has not been a very popular concept in sociological theory. One of the reasons may be that sociology has a strongly critical tradition focusing on the analysis and critique of power structures in modern society. It is therefore often sceptical of ideas coming from the policy world that are susceptible to having an administrative character. The article argues that, although sustainability has a strongly ideological character, a critical theory of society should not simply discard this notion, but aim to sublate it. Some foundations of a way to integrate sustainability into a critical theory of society are presented. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment