Technicization of Institutional Practice and the Invisibilization of the Social

Abstract

The article deals with a disturbing, but seemingly inescapable phenomenon: society constantly deceives itself about the rationales underlying much of its everyday conduct, but even where the mechanisms & reasons accounting for such self-deception are well understood, they force themselves upon us because they reflect key properties or characteristics of the very structure of modernity. Modern society is, first & foremost, a functionally differentiated society, & functional differentiation involves the technicization of institutional practice. As a result of such technicization, non-technical aspects of a given social reality -- indeed, "the social" itself -- are constantly invisibilized. Society produces systematically distorted self-descriptions & has no means to overcome them. It thus finds itself trapped in yet another "iron cage" with no key in sight to unlock it. References.