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Intl Journal of Public Administration, 28: 909–928, 2005ISSN 0190-0692 print / 1532-4265 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01900690500240939

LPAD0190-06921532-4265Intl Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 28, No. 11-12, August 2005: pp. 0–0Intl Journal of Public AdministrationCritical Imagination in a Postmodern Environment

Critical Imagination in a Postmodern EnvironmentBox Richard C. BoxUniversity of Nebraska at Omaha, School of Public Administration,

Omaha, Nebraska, USA

Abstract: Critical theory has been marginal in public administration, though it offerscritique of public institutions and possibilities for a better future. Among several rea-sons for this, it may be that critical thought has failed to influence public administra-tion theory because its normative vision of social change challenges the status quo andthreatens the economic and political equilibrium. The sections below summarize char-acteristics of critical social theory, note ways it has been used in public administration,and contrast critical theory with postmodern pragmatism to illustrate the differencebetween critical social theory and well-known contemporary thought. It is argued thatcritical theory may be even more valuable today than it was in the past, as one-dimensionalsociety and postmodernism close off description of societal conditions and use ofimagination to create a better future.

Keywords: critical theory, postmodernism, dialectic, imagination, Marcuse

THE APPARENT FAILURE OF CRITICAL THEORY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Public administration is a field of knowledge with uncertain boundaries. Publicadministration scholars are hesitant to call it a discipline, and, for lack of theoriesindigenous to the field, they borrow many of their conceptual frameworksfrom other areas of knowledge (e.g., theories of management, leadership,employee motivation, etc., from business administration; from political scienceand economics, theories about structural arrangements such as representation,accountability, and legitimacy). In such a field, one would think a body of theory

Acknowledgment: This paper is from Richard C. Box, Critical Social Theory in Pub-lic Administration (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004). Copyright © 2004 M. E. Sharpe,Inc. Used with permission.

Address correspondence to Richard C. Box, University of Nebraska at Omaha,School of Public Administration, 6001 Dodge Street, Omaha, Nebraska, 68182-0276,USA; E-mail: rcbox@cox.net

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that offers critique of public institutions plus a vision of a better future wouldappeal to writers. Critical theory does these things, but it appears infrequentlyin the literature of public administration.

Several possible reasons might be suggested for the apparent failure ofcritical theory to have a significant impact in public administration: the theoriesmost commonly used in public administration operate at the micro-level oforganizational management rather than as broad social theory; critical theorytends to surface in public administration during times of social turmoil andchange then fall into obscurity during times of relative stability; an instrumen-tal field of practice does not need abstract thought; and, the times are nowpostmodern, rendering theories based on Enlightenment humanism obsolete.

These are potentially viable reasons for the scarcity of critical theory inpublic administration, but they seem unsatisfying, incomplete. There havebeen opportunities for critical theory to take hold in public administration, asdiscussed below, but it nevertheless appears only in the work of a few. It isargued here that critical thought has failed to influence public administrationtheory because its normative vision of social change challenges the status quoand threatens the economic and political equilibrium. Public administrationtheory and practice operate within the context of intensifying global capital-ism, and the logic of the market permeates private and public life, pushingback bodies of thought that suggest alternative ways of organizing social andgovernmental relationships. As this circumstance becomes dominant, critiqueand discussion of alternative ways to organize relationships between individu-als and institutions fades in perceived importance and relevance, though itmay actually be more pertinent than ever.

The sections below summarize characteristics of critical social theory,note ways it has been used in public administration, and contrast critical the-ory with postmodern pragmatism to illustrate the difference between criticalsocial theory and well-known contemporary thought. The theme is that criticaltheory can be a useful way to conceptualize the place of public administrationin society for theorists and practitioners concerned about social conditions andthe possibilities for meaningful change. This is not an argument that seeks toput critical social theory in a position of primacy by devaluing otherapproaches to public administration—at most, this body of theory will likelyappeal to a niche audience in public administration. The point is to offer it tothat audience in hopes that it may foster constructive change.

CRITICAL SOCIAL THEORY

The term critical theory can be used in a broad, inclusive way, masking signif-icant differences in approach. A number of writers offer critique of societyand some include in their writing elements of what has come to be thought ofas critical theory. People only tangentially familiar with critical theory may

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think of it as an antiquated body of thought based on a crude, discreditedMarxism. For our purposes here, critical theory is associated with the Frank-furt School beginning in the 1920s and extending through the later work ofprincipal members Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse,in the 1960s and 1970s.[1] The term critical theory is also applied to writerswhose work began in the early part of the twentieth century, such as GeorgLukács and Antonio Gramsci, and contributions of later twentieth-centurywriters such as Jürgen Habermas.

Because of differences in approach between authors and changes in thework of individual authors over time, it is difficult to construct a unitary narrativeof critical theory. It will be helpful to identify a few common characteristics inthis body of work, recognizing that not all authors treat them the same, or evenagree on their status within critical theory. In broadest context, critical theoryis grounded in the Enlightenment; eighteenth-century thought in Europe andAmerica that used science, reason, and individual self-determination to castoff religious and governmental authority. History came to be seen as linear,progressive, and leading to human improvement as people would conquernature and overcome the limitations of resource scarcity. The nineteenth-century writing of Karl Marx was a reaction against the effects of capitalism,the social and economic form society had taken since the Enlightenment, andcritical theory can be described as a “category of sociological thought” thatdeveloped from the work of Marx.[2] Though critical theory has in importantways moved beyond Marx as times have changed and problems have beenidentified in his work, it includes the three characteristics discussed below.

Contradiction, Dialectic, And Change

A primary characteristic of critical theory is the idea that social systemschange over time because of built-in tensions, or contradictions, between howthey are and how they could be. Examples include the contrasting preferencesof capitalists and workers, bureaucrats and citizens, land developers and peo-ple concerned about the living environment, people pleased with the currentdistribution of income and wealth in society and those who would change it,and so on. Each such systemic contradiction is “inherent in and cannot besolved without modifying, or ‘moving beyond,’ the basic structure in which itoccurs.”[3] The current “basic structure,” or status quo, is the surface reality“given” to us by sense perception. It is this surface reality that is most fre-quently studied by scientists and scholars and accepted as “the way it is.”

Horkheimer called the exercise of documenting the given “traditionaltheory.”[4] Beyond the static knowledge of traditional theory and inherent inthe characteristics of all things is the potential for transformation of the giveninto something different. Critical theory explores this potential, as it “showsthe relationships between ideas and theoretical positions and their social

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environment, and thus attempts to contextualize, or historicize, ideas in terms oftheir roots in social processes.”[5] Because it studies way the given may bechanged to the benefit of humankind, critical theory “is oppositional and involvedin a struggle for social change and the unification of theory and practice.”[6]

The process of acquiring knowledge of alternatives to the status quo andencouraging constructive change is dialectical. Frankfurt use of the Hegelianconcept of dialectic is not conceptually foundational and does not involve a pre-determined outcome. In agreement with writers such as Lukács, Korsch, andGramsci, Frankfurt theorists rejected “objectivistic Marxism,” a type of Marxistthought that emphasized “economic laws and objective social conditions.”[7]

Their version of dialectic “stressed instead complex, contradictory sets of socialrelations and struggles in a specific historical era, whose trajectory could not bedetermined with certainty in advance.”[8] According to Kellner, Marcuse’s useof the dialectical method regarded its object of study as part of a historical pro-cess; it is a method that perceives, quoting Marcuse, “every developing form inthe river of movement…it considers its object as being in a state of becomingand passing away, as necessarily arising from a determinate historical situation,related to human existence rooted in this situation.”[9]

Critical Reason and Imagination

One might think “reason” to be a good thing; in everyday speech it is complimen-tary to say a person is reasonable and uncomplimentary to say they are unreason-able. However, reason has become a negative idea in much scholarly writing, asymbol of the way the Enlightenment project of creating a better world with ratio-nal thought has been twisted into means-end instrumental reason, used to maintainsocial conditions that benefit a few at the expense of others.

Martin Jay notes that Frankfurt theorists stressed reason and gave theterm a specific meaning derived from Kant and Hegel. This meaning contrastsreason with “understanding,” which is the common-sense perception of theworld. “To the understanding, the world consisted of finite entities identicalonly with themselves and totally opposed to all other things. It thus failed topenetrate immediacy to grasp the dialectical relations beneath the surface.” Incontrast, reason “signified a faculty that went beyond mere appearances,”exploring “a deeper reality,”[10] knowledge of the contradictory opposite(s) ofthings, people, and situations, into which they may change over time.

The problem was that modern reason was enlightenment gone bad—reason that had once served the goal of freedom had become a force forprotecting the damaging features of advanced capitalism. Horkheimer andAdorno wrote in 1944 in Dialectic of Enlightenment they remained“convinced … that social freedom is inseparable from enlightenedthought.”[11] People must be free to reason for themselves, and reasoning forthemselves is the path to freedom. But, reason and enlightenment had become

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instruments of oppression. Horkheimer concluded Eclipse of Reason in 1947by writing, “If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeingof man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blindfate—in short, the emancipation from fear—then denunciation of what iscurrently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.”[12]

Despite this depressing view of the contemporary use of reason as avehicle of constructive social change, Marcuse wished to rescue reason andwith it the possibility that people could consciously choose the future. Part ofthis attempt involved an attack on common sense and positivism as examplesof instrumental reason that preserves the given reality, obscuring the potentialfor change. Common sense and positivism contain and neutralize critique asthey induce “thought to be satisfied with the facts, to renounce any transgres-sion beyond them, and to bow to the given state of affairs.”[13] However, “ifthe task of theoretical analysis is more and other than a descriptive one—if thetask is to comprehend, to recognize the facts for what they are, what they“mean” for those who have been given them as facts and who have to livewith them…” then, “recognition of facts is critique of facts.”[14]

The central issue is, should current structures, institutions, and practicesin society be perceived as given, fixed, value free, or virtually inevitable, orshould they be considered malleable material to work with in reshaping real-ity? From the Enlightenment concept of conceptualizing change, reason hasbecome instead a narrative told by those who want things to stay as they are.As Ben Agger writes, “Marcuse suggests that what is an apparently value-freerationality of purposiveness, pragmatism, technique, and efficiency actuallycontains the substantive ethos of profit maximization and domination.”[15]

Though critical theorists believe that reason has been used in support ofsystems of domination and control, some also think people can use reason toimagine a different future. The status of reason, especially in what may be con-sidered a condition of “postmodernity,” remains an open question, but criticaltheorists who understand the “dialectic of enlightenment” and are committed toa nonfoundational, historically based process of change may seek to reconstructcritical reason as a counter to contemporary instrumental rationality. AsMarcuse put it, “technical reason is the social reason ruling a given society andcan be changed in its very structure.”[16] Critical reason in practice involves thedialectical use of imagination and fantasy to envision a better future.[17]

Emancipation and Self-Determination

Today, philosophical postmodernism questions the existence of “the subject,”the self-aware, self-reflective, thinking, feeling individual, substituting insteada person who is a product of larger patterns and forces in society, a frag-mented individual “with a disparate personality and a potentially confusedidentity.”[18] The fading of the subject is not a new thought, but may be traced

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back at least to the nineteenth-century writing of Nietzsche. A weakenedsubject can be found in the work of Jürgen Habermas, who turned from theFrankfurt emphasis on consciousness to the characteristics of communicationin discourse settings,[19] and it can be found within the original Frankfurtgroup. According to Agger, Adorno suggested the subject had been largelyobliterated by the dominant ideology of society, becoming “nearly impotent,voiceless…a trivial and forgotten moment.”[20] Marcuse hoped the subjectcould be reinvigorated, but given the nature of contemporary industrial societyhe was pessimistic. The same corporations that dictate the characteristics ofthe workplace shape the individual’s leisure time, which becomes a reflectionof “the qualities, attitudes, values, behavior belonging to his station in hissociety,” so that “his leisure activity or passivity will simply be a prolongationor recreation of his social performance.”[21] This “ingression” of market soci-ety “into all spheres of the individual existence” makes it difficult to imagineindividuals as freely choosing, autonomous subjects.

The view within critical theory that humans are “socially constructed” canbe found in Marx’s writing from the mid-ninteenth century: “the human being isin the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, butan animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.”[22] Thesocial construction perspective is reflected in the work of Frankfurt theoristssuch as Marcuse.[23] Frankfurt critical theory recognizes the concrete temporaland cultural specificity of the individual consciousness—that values and percep-tions are shaped by the time and society in which we live—but ultimately themeasure of society is, as it has been since the Enlightenment, its effect on peo-ple, on their happiness and their sense of freedom to determine the future.

Critical theorists tend to be wary of describing utopian visions of a soci-ety freed from economic domination and inequalities of power, wealth, andclass. They recognize that the Marxian moment of a possible uprising of theworkers to create a new society has long passed. One view of what has taken itsplace (a view considered extreme by some [24]) is Marcuse’s “one-dimensional”society, [25] a capitalist system based on destruction of natural resources inpursuit of profit, supported by hostile behavior toward supposed enemies whowould threaten the consumer culture and its benefits for the controllingclass.[26] This system is reinforced by corporate-delivered entertainmentproviding the distraction of meaningless “sport, fun, and fad,”[27] while thenation finds, and if necessary, kills, those who endanger the comfortablesystem.[28]

Faced with these circumstances, it would be understandable for criticaltheorists to abandon the idea of radical change in societal institutions andpractices that would allow for greater human freedom and self-determination.Jürgen Habermas, a student of the first-generation Frankfurt theorists, hasgiven up social analysis based on economic contradiction, critique of ideology,and utopian vision.[29] The earlier Frankfurt theorists became pessimisticabout the possibilities for meaningful change, but retained hope for “something

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that might be attained, an object to be strived for.”[30] Marcuse never com-pletely lost hope in the future, which for him would be a nonrepressive civili-zation that would include use of technology that reduces the amount of timedevoted to work required for obtaining the necessities of life, thus freeinghuman creative capacities.[31] Society would be peaceful rather than aggres-sive, careful with use of nature and resources, and governance would takeplace in a setting of decentralization and decision making by the people, a“libertarian socialism.”[32] Interestingly, this latter concept finds parallels incontemporary democratic and discourse theory.

CRITICAL THEORY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

It may be argued that “administrative neutrality” is the foundational myth ofpublic administration. Despite the fact that public professionals often signifi-cantly influence the public policy making process and policy implementation,there remains a societal expectation that public administrators receive already-created policy direction and implement it while exercising relatively littlediscretion. In keeping with the preferences of some economic and politicalelites, “New public management” reinforces this myth by narrowing the scopeof public practice to cost-efficient implementation; simultaneously, positivistresearch methodologies encourage a static view of the public sphere.

A continuum may be described of public administrator involvement inshaping the creation and implementation of public policy. At one end is unin-volvement, the “ideal” of administrative neutrality. At the other end is theadministrator as fully involved policy actor seeking to influence the knowl-edge, opinions, and decisions of citizens, elected officials, and peers. Criticaltheory provides an opening for conceptualization and practice that acknowl-edges the value-based, normative character of public administration. The pub-lic professional who perceives contradiction between current public practicesand a future with reduced inequity and oppression may use critical theory as aguide for taking action to create social change.

Traditional “classical liberals” (today, “neoliberals”) object to involvementby public professionals in the policy process. Nostalgically, they envision avery small government from an imagined earlier era when pluralist politicscould be relied upon to protect the individual from abuse by the rich andpowerful. If this era ever existed, it has long since disappeared. Like thecommunitarian’s imagined past of solidarity and community, the pioneer soci-ety of rugged individuals protected by a set of “negative rights” has given wayto large-scale urban, industrial, technological interrelatedness with almostunimaginable inequalities of wealth and power. Now, to assume that neutral-ity is possible is to fail to understand that neutrality itself is a value-ladenchoice. To fail to consciously choose a role in social change is to relinquish

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initiative to those with the energy and sense of purpose to maintain or shapesociety as they think it should be.

Public administration writing is often focused on specific areas of practicesuch as budgeting, facilitating citizen involvement in decision making, and soon. It often does not make explicit the historical/political/economic contextthat frames and constrains action. However, as John Kirlin[33] has argued, the“big questions” of the societal environment of public adminstration are acrucial part of theory and practice. Critical theory suggests it is useful tounderstand the societal surroundings in relation to, at least, the three elementsnoted in the section above. What is the observed contradiction between exist-ing circumstances and the potential alternatives, especially as considered fromthe perspective of historical values of the society and its culture? Within adialectical process of change, movement from what is to what could be, whatchoices are most appropriate to serve valued ends such as emancipation andself-determination?

Within the category of public administration literature that goes beyonddescribing the status quo, much of what is found advocates moderate, incre-mental reform rather than dramatic changes in institutions or practices. Thereis an implicit assumption that the current legal, political, and economic frame-work is acceptable in broad terms, that perceived needs for change are limitedto incremental adjustments that, so to speak, “shave the rough edges” off liberal-capitalist society, meliorating abuses that many if not most people wouldagree are too extreme. A good example is the shift in governmental posturetoward labor-management relations in the first half of the twentieth century,from protecting the profits of capitalists by using armed officers to attack pro-testing laborers, to allowing workers to organize for collective bargaining.

Reformist writing in public administration often urges change thatencourages emancipation and self-determination, though it operates within thegiven system. The “new public administration” of the 1960s and 1970s (not tobe confused with new public management) suggested that public professionalsencourage greater “social equity,” a goal requiring some redistribution ofwealth and power in society. In H. George Frederickson’s[34] narrativedescribing the conceptual basis of new public administration, it is recognizedthat government is controlled by the powerful and discriminates against thosewho lack power and money to resist.[35] Public administrators should seek toalleviate these conditions to some extent because they create “anger and mili-tancy” and public employees may be called upon “to oppress the deprived.”[36]

The theoretical backdrop of this view is John Rawls’ “theory of justice,” ameliorist ethical approach based on “welfare state liberalism.”[37] Pushed onlya bit further, new public administration could be framed within an analysis ofcontradiction between existing political/economic systems and systemslargely devoid of the abuses found within the liberal welfare state. This, how-ever, would be a thoroughly radical thought in the current environment ofinstitutions and practices. Even in the atmosphere of transformation in the

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1960s and 1970s, the new public administration premise that public employeescould promote change within the political/economic order was “far out” inrelation to mainstream practice.

The communication theory of Habermas is the most commonly used versionof critical theory in public administration today. Habermas writes that publicdiscourse is distorted by unequal power relationships introduced into dis-course by the nature of the surrounding liberal-capitalist welfare state. Exam-ples of distorted communication can be found in areas such as mass media andissues of social welfare.[38] Habermas believes that consensual, distortion-freecommunication would be a progressive step toward reviving Enlightenmentrationality in defense of democracy.[39] These ideas have been influential, butquestions have arisen about the efficacy of distortion-free communication as away to change society as a whole. Also, as Chantal Mouffe argues, democracyis not a search for distortion-free consensus, but is instead a matter of contes-tation and dispute, “a vibrant clash of democratic political positions”[40] that isongoing, dynamic, unresolvable. In later work Habermas has moved awayfrom critical theory toward reformist liberalism,[41] but the idea of undistortedcommunication as a critical tool for social change has been important inpublic administration.

Robert Denhardt[42] suggested that a critical approach to organizationaltheory would be useful in public administration. Denhardt reviewed theorigins of critical theory, from Hegel and Marx to Frankfurt, but focused onHabermas. He emphasized the Habermasian concern about supposedly value-free science and efficiency and urged attention to the “larger historical andnormative context”[43] of public organizations as part of a critical examinationof bureaucracy and its relationships with clients. In an article in the Journal ofthe American Planning Association, John Forester applied Habermasianconcepts to planning practice, identifying four “norms of pragmatic communi-cation” which are “usually taken for granted”: to speak comprehensively; tospeak sincerely; to speak legitimately, in context; and to speak the truth.[44]

When planners violate these norms with distorted communication, the resultcan be community residents who exhibit “puzzlement, mistrust, anger, anddisbelief.”[45]

Turning from Habermas to critical theory more broadly, Jay White andGuy Adams argued for greater attention to critical research approaches in thepreface to their 1994 book on research in public administration[46] Relativelyfew people have done so, though examples may be noted. Denhardt’s book Inthe Shadow of Organization[47] used a critical approach to imagine organiza-tions better suited to the creative, human needs of employees. Guy Adams,Priscilla Bowerman, Kenneth Dolbeare, and Camilla Stivers criticized theemphasis in American democracy on procedural justice and the correspondinginattention to substantive matters of economic justice. They hoped to: “restoreand develop the socially revealing, integrated political-economic perspective;to recapture the full version of democracy that is consistent with such a view

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of the social world; and to seek its realization in practice.”[48] Richard Box[49]

used critical concepts from Marcuse, Habermas, Harvey Molotch’s neo-Marxist“growth machine” theory of urban politics,[50;51] and case examples to constructa discourse-facilitative model of public professional practice; this theme wasdeveloped further in the book Citizen Governance.[52] Lisa Zanetti and AdrianCarr[53] wrote that critical theory “provides an ethical impulse toward substantiveequality and democracy.” They believed that “critical theory has much to offerthe field of public administration” and its intent “is to create self-reflectiveconsciousness such that theory and practice become one.” Drawing from anumber of critical theorists and in particular Antonio Gramsci’s notion of“organic intellectuals,” Zanetti[54] offered a model of public administrationresearchers and practitioners as transformative change agents.

A number of articles and books in public administration and related fieldshave used concepts with critical elements though they are not explicitly builtupon critical theory. Richard Box and Cheryl Simrell King[55] identified suchworks in the historical study of public affairs, for example Camilla Stivers’Bureau Men and Settlement Women: Constructing Public Administration inthe Progressive Era[56] and Gordon Wood’s The Creation of the AmericanRepublic 1776—1787.[57]

THE NEED FOR CRITICAL THEORY TODAY

Since critical theory has occupied only a small niche in public administration,it is appropriate to question why it now deserves additional attention. Thiscould be difficult to answer in a time of prosperous, globalized liberal-capitalistsociety. Because critical theory threatens the status quo by focusing on discordant,troubling aspects of society and how they might be changed, people may findit unattractive and not especially useful. Two aspects of the contemporarycondition, postmodernism and one-dimensionality, may contribute to thisperception of critical theory.

Postmodernism provides a corrective to modernist thought that ignores dif-ferences, marginalizing certain people and practices as “other.”[58] In publicadministration, it draws attention to the lack of foundational concepts to groundtheory, encouraging theorists to confront the assumptions inherent in theirwork.[59] Useful features of postmodern thought such as anti-foundationalismcan also make it difficult to formulate coherent theories. Postmodernism resistslarge-scale, holistic social thought (metanarratives), complicating description ofthe societal backdrop to administrative practice. Postmodern skepticism aboutfoundationalism and metanarratives makes critical theory unappealing, espe-cially for those who think of it in caricature, as crude Marxism from the earlytwentieth century. The issue becomes whether critical theory remains viable in alate modern or postmodern world and whether it can be adapted to the present.

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Descriptions of contemporary society rendered by critical theorists havechanged over several decades as circumstances have changed, though thecentral concern continues to be the impact of the capitalist economic systemon human life and the physical environment. The Frankfurt theorists wrotefrom their observations of fascism, authoritarian communism, and capitalismbeginning in the period between World Wars I and II. As hope for revolution-ary change in dominant systems faded in mid-century, critical descriptions ofeconomics, politics, and culture reflected a sense of resignation in the face ofpowerful and pervasive conditions that overwhelmed the minority whoseprogressive ideals were out of step with the times.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Marcuse worked to keep alive a sense of thepotential for change despite what he called the one-dimensional nature ofsociety. This concept is exactly the sort of totalizing metanarrative postmod-ernism rejects; it describes a society so completely structured around advancedconsumerist capitalism that virtually no one is aware of or can envision alterna-tives. One-dimensionality may seem paradoxical or self-contradictory, sincewe, or at least the “we” who live in advanced Western democracies, thinkthere is complete freedom to contemplate alternatives and advocate forchange. However, a critical examination of contemporary conditions mightsuggest that Marcuse is correct, that the economic and political system hasrepressed both knowledge of alternatives and the impulse to think in dialecticalform of possible change.

Steven Best and Douglas Kellner offer an interesting description of thetimes in The Postmodern Adventure.[60] They characterize recent decades as a“great transformation,” an “upheaval in an era marked by technological revo-lution and the global restructuring of capitalism.” This “globalization hasproduced a world economic system and trade laws that protect transnationalcorporations at the expense of human life, biodiversity, and the environment,”and its effects include “heightened exploitation of labor, corporate downsiz-ing, and greater levels of unemployment, inequality, and insecurity.” DavidHarvey describes the environmental consequences of the global economicsystem as quantitative shifts in: “scientific knowledge and engineering capaci-ties, industrial output, waste generation, invention of new chemical com-pounds, urbanization, population growth, international trade, fossil fuelconsumption, resource extraction, habitat modification,” resulting in “massiveenvironmental changes…some distinctly harmful to us and others unnecessarilyharmful to other species.”[61]

This is not a postmodern condition different from advanced capitalism, itis the mature, pervasive, globalized form of advanced capitalism. The resultingpsychological effect is that “the world we experience appears to us to exhaustall possible worlds.”[62] This sounds like a fully realized form of Marcuse’sone-dimensionality.

The situation today presents an odd contrast with the times that generatedcritical social theory in past decades. The world is peaceful in comparison to

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the upheaval of world war, but there is instability and violence in many places.People in “developed” nations with stable institutions lead safe and prosperouslives, reflected in their public sector theory and practice. They have the luxuryof concentrating on cost-efficiency of service delivery in public organizationsin the (presumed) absence of pressing substantive matters from earlier times,such as poverty, racism, and environmental degradation. It is important toconsider whether the developed Western democracies have in fact achievedsuch an advanced state of being, and equally important to ask about conditionsin the rest of the world while the rich nations enjoy their wealth.

PRAGMATISM AND “PHANTASY”

For the Frankfurt theorists, much contemporary scholarly research is questionablebecause of its positivist fixation on the extant, the given, the compilation ofalleged “facts” documenting the socio-economic status quo. Though earlyscientific method served as a means to critique superstition and dogma[63], itdeveloped later into “positivism, the philosophy of common sense,” whichrejected thinking beyond existing facts.[64] Frankfurt critical theorists used thephilosophy of American pragmatism as an example of thinking that fails to gobeyond instrumental implementation of the status quo. According to Horkhe-imer,[65] pragmatism rejects theory as guide to practice, so that no goal isinherently better than another except to the extent it can be proved by experi-ment to be useful. This “reduction of reason to a mere instrument”[54] resultsin “a doctrine that holds not that our expectations are fulfilled and our actionssuccessful because our ideas are true, but rather that our ideas are true becauseour expectations are fulfilled and our actions successful.”[42]

Critical theory, in contrast, projects beyond the present, because “in thetheoretical reconstruction of the social process, the critique of current condi-tions and the analysis of their tendencies necessarily include future-orientedcomponents.”[66] In so doing, it engages the imagination, the use of “phan-tasy” (Marcuse’s spelling). However, “owing to its unique capacity to ‘intuit’an object though the latter be not present and to create something new out ofgiven material of cognition, imagination denotes a considerable degree ofindependence from the given, of freedom amid a world of unfreedom.”[67]

This does not mean unlimited, foundational, idealistic, or pointless thought,but thought that searches for alternatives to the present within the historicalpossibilities available to people in specific, material circumstances. To searchfor “a more beautiful and happier world” requires, as Marcuse wrote, “inde-pendence from the given”; thus, it will not appeal to everyone and may belooked upon as “the prerogative of children and fools.”[68]

A more recent threat to critical theory and practice, postmodernism,makes it difficult to identify societal trends, resist dominance, and envision abetter future. Postmodern thought may find inequity, oppressive power, and

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the false appearances of hyperreal media and culture to be inevitable charac-teristics of society, while critical theory would describe them as the results ofactions taken by those with money and power. If people regard such things asbeyond their control, they are likely to regress into a passivity resembling thehuman condition the Enlightenment arose to reverse, a condition of supersti-tious fatalism in the face of poorly understood forces. Such passivity is incontrast to dialectical thought, critical reason, and emancipation/self-determination; though critical theorists recognize the magnitude of the chal-lenge of social change in contemporary conditions, they choose not to “fallprey to a nihilistic skepticism.”

In the scholarly study of public administration, a concern may be raisedthat academicians are settling into acceptance of one-dimensionality inresearch, a kind of “conceptual cleansing” in which critical thought about therole of the public sector in the broader society is vanishing. Though Frankfurttheorists used pragmatism to critique common-sensical, positivist thinking,Frankfurt critical theory and contemporary postmodern pragmatism share aconcern for human freedom from the cruelty and oppression that often resultsfrom inequalities of wealth and power. Pragmatist Richard Rorty’s work maybe used to illustrate the similarities and differences in Frankfurt and so-called“postmodern” theorizing, highlighting a concern that today’s theory has diffi-culty moving beyond the given.

Rorty’s approaches to philosophy, politics, and social analysis areintensely controversial. He has been dismissed and ridiculed for his allegedsimplifications, errors of fact, and irrationalist positions; despite, or perhapsbecause of this, he is one of the best-known American intellectuals of the day.Though Rorty doesn’t like the term “postmodern,” calling it “exasperating”[69]

and noting that it can be used to “refer to an attitude of political hopeless-ness,”[70], his attack on philosophical foundationalism has made him an iconof postmodern thought.

Contemporary critical theorist Ben Agger would like to deal with what hecalls “the failure of the Enlightenment” by rebuilding “the goal of modernity,”which is: “social, political, and economic institutions that serve humanneeds.”[71] Critical theorist Douglas Kellner believes that socialism anddemocracy are compatible and that corrective action in liberal-capitalistsociety can be taken in areas such as consumer protection, education, andpeace.[72] Rorty, though, has no use for critique of the capitalist socioeco-nomic system. For him, capitalism is not the problem, so that, “unless somenew metanarrative eventually replaces the Marxist one, we shall have to char-acterize the source of human misery in such untheoretical and banal ways as‘greed,’ ‘selfishness,’ and ‘hatred.’”[73]

This use of words is interesting. Marcuse described the capitalist eco-nomic system as creating “misery, cruelty, and repression”[74]—not identical,but close in meaning. To avoid following the trail of evidence to the source ofsuch conditions, Rorty relies on observed, but unexplained, human behavior.

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It is observed because it permeates human practices, but unexplained becausea postmodernist cannot attribute such behavior to a causal factor such as cul-tural conditioning or human nature, much less the economic-political system.

Rather than link Enlightenment philosophy to Enlightenment politicalends, Rorty would split them apart, so that the philosophical project of, “find-ing a new, comprehensive, world-view which would replace God with Natureand Reason,” would be scrapped, while the political project of creating whatRorty calls “a heaven on earth; a world without caste, class, or cruelty,”[75]

would be retained, not because it is “true” in a universal sense, but becausepeople from a certain historical-political culture find this project worthwhile.Rorty acknowledges that “the Marxists were right about at least one thing: thecentral political questions are those about the relations between rich andpoor.”[77] He writes that human nature is a social construction rather thangiven by nature,[77;78] but nevertheless: “the people who have already got theirhands on money and power will lie, cheat and steal in order to make sure thatthey and their descendants monopolize both for ever.”[79] How “natural” mustsomething be to continue “for ever”? If such behavior is shaped by society andis not hard-wired in the human brain by evolution, what sort of societalchange must take place to produce more desirable behavior?

Despite differences between critical theorists and the leftist-postmodernRorty, their concerns about society are strikingly similar. Rorty’s vision of anegalitarian utopia without class or caste in which people are free to createthemselves as they please shares characteristics of Marcuse’s libertariansocialism in which “reality no longer need be defined by the debilitatingcompetition for social survival and advancement.”[80] Rorty emphasizes hislack of foundational intent as a distinction between his ideas and those of ageneralized group he labels “Marxists.” However, the Frankfurt theoristslocate normative purpose in the concrete historical experience of particularpeoples and cultures, not in timeless assumptions[81]—Rorty’s observation isan overgeneralization.

Rorty takes the position that public matters don’t require theory. Hethinks philosophy spoils public debate, which should consist of what he calls“as plain, blunt, public, easy-to-handle language as possible.”[82] However,stripping ideas out of public discourse is a way of keeping the public spacesafely one-dimensional, denying that people are capable of conceptualizingtheir situation beyond incremental reform.

What’s left in Rorty’s public sphere is a collection of people, for exampleAmericans, who share common commitments and values and make collectivedecisions based on what they feel at the moment is good to do. Unfortunately,this non-reflective decision making, limited to what Rorty describes as “theinterest of a historically conditioned community,”[83] can, as Stephen Kautzput it, “easily slide into the ugly and thuggish self-satisfaction of those whosuppose they already know what they need to know.”[84] Rorty does not wantthis to happen; in his utopia, “nobody will be humiliated by bullies—neither

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by slaveowners, nor by factory owners, nor by husbands. The elimination ofvast social and economic inequalities will help people treat one anotherdecently. Mankind will finally escape from the thuggery of the schoolyard,put away childish things, and be morally mature.”[85] But because he wants toavoid thinking about significant change in institutions and practices, thisvision will likely remain private and ineffectual.

This brief comparison of critical theory and postmodern pragmatism isnot intended to refute or reject Rorty’s work as a whole. His ideas are usedhere as a foil for critical theory to illustrate that describing conditions in soci-ety is different from thinking about social change, and that lack of connectionbetween them can lead to inaction. Limiting scholarly work to documentingthe given and avoiding reflection on contradiction, alternative futures, andintended change, strengthens the one-dimensionality of scholarship. That maybe especially problematic in public administration, a field that focuses atten-tion on issues that can be addressed only through modification of institutionsand practices.

CONCLUSION: A CRITICAL REVIVAL?

A turn in scholarly thought away from social theory and the project of humanfreedom may reflect the materially comfortable situation of some people inadvanced nations. Worldwide, the daily lives of most people are focused onmaking a living and evading domination in the public sphere, the workplace,or in private life based on class, gender, race, ethnic identity, or the whims ofdictators, criminals, abusive bosses, or intrusive government officials. Itremains a material world. The conditions of life for many consist of basic mat-ters of negotiating one’s way through constraints based in no small part on theunequal distribution of material resources and the systems of power that sup-port it. To claim that power and domination simply are, like the wind and thewaves, or that institutional structures, broad patterns of social practice, andmatters of economics and geographic place are not valid objects of concern,can be regarded as expressing the perspective of the privileged and protectedstrata of the developed countries. This is a narrow, ahistorical perspective thatignores recent human history as well as current conditions, in communities, innations, and globally.

Given societal conditions and the nature of research and practice in publicadministration, the conceptual framework of critical social theory (contradic-tion, dialectic, and change; critical reason and imagination; emancipation andself-determination) offers promise for those scholars who wish to critique thestatus quo of professional practice in public organizations, with intent toimagine better options for the future. Much scholarly literature is devoted tostudying behavior in public organizations and suggesting ways it may be con-trolled. This is useful, but it does not offer public administration practitioners

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or theorists ideas for crafting constructive roles in society. Because publicemployees are influential in the processes of creating and implementing pub-lic policy, it seems important to also systematically explore theories aboutsociety and the roles of public administration in social change.

There are people today thinking and writing about the place of criticaltheory in contemporary society, and some who apply critical thought in publicadministration. Some of this work is based in significant part on the ideas ofFrankfurt School writers, and some takes into account the context of postmod-ernism, technological advance, globalization, and so forth. The time may beright for these ideas to be given greater attention in public administration.Though to lapse into passivity and pessimism is understandable, it may behoped that part of the field’s scholarship and practice will run counter to deep-ening one-dimensionality and the confusion about values and ends thataccompanies loss of foundational certainty. As Ben Agger writes, “meaning-lessness need not thwart action if we understand that history, however devoidof millenial telos, is still available to human deliberation and design.”[86]

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