Rationalization (sociology)

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In sociology, rationalization is understood as the comprehensive process in which all social phenomena are subjected to reason .

Random and haphazard forms of action as well as those that are based on traditions , customs and religious justifications are being replaced by systematic planning and a transparent purpose-means orientation . The aim of social rationalization is to clarify the goals of human action and to optimize the ways to achieve them. Since then, goals of human action have always been subject to a justification: All arguments that speak for or against an action can always be critically questioned. For the description and interpretation of the world, religion and myths are no longer responsible, but science . The ongoing rationalization is judged to be twofold.

The German sociologist and political economist Max Weber (1864–1920) recognized in the increasing rationalization since the Renaissance the development of a separate world-historical cultural type , Occidental rationalism . He saw modern capitalism as its ideal type . Rationalization and the associated processes such as bureaucratization , legalization , industrialization , intellectualization , specialization , secularization , and even “dehumanization” are the “fate of our time”. It permeates all areas of life: in science, rational proof, experiment and systematic specialist research prevail; in art, laws of aesthetics have been found, the state acts as a political institution, giving itself a rational constitution and rational law that the administration is bound by laws and is carried out by specialist officials . Weber named losses of meaning and freedom as the downsides, for which he found two much-cited metaphors: the “ disenchantment of the world ” and the “brazen housing of bondage”, which has crystallized out of the general striving for precision, efficiency and predictability. The factory is considered to be the model of such a brazen case .

The British sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) made a distinction between functional and substantial rationality: the former concerned the end-means systematics, the latter the ends themselves. In modern societies only the realization of ends is rationalized, the ends themselves are not judged rationally. In this respect he spoke of a "halved rationality".

Following on from this, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas (* 1929) stated a “colonization of the lifeworld ” that goes hand in hand with progressive rationalization. In his theory of communicative action in 1981 he distinguished the communicatively structured “lifeworld” of the individual and his small social networks, and the “system”, i.e. the bureaucratic apparatuses of the state and the economy. For them, instrumental and strategic action (according to Mannheim: “functional rationality”) is always a priority. It penetrates more and more into the world of life through the supply offers that the system makes to individuals, through bureaucratic constraints and legal processes; individuals are pushed into the roles of consumers and clients of state and other services.

The Dutch sociologists Hans van der Loo (* 1954) and Willem van Reijen (1938–2012) describe rationalization as one of the four typical processes that make up modernization . The others are: domestication of inner and outer nature, differentiation of social structure and individualization of the person.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Günter Hartfiel and Karl-Heinz Hillmann : Dictionary of Sociology. 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Kröner, Stuttgart 1982, p. 624 f.
  2. ^ Wolfgang Zapf : Change, social. In: Bernhard Schäfers : (Ed.): Basic concepts of sociology . 8th updated edition, UTB 1416, Opladen 2003, p. 427.
  3. ↑ Martin Endress : Sociological Theories compact . 2nd, updated edition, Oldenbourg, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-73508-6 , pp. 53-66 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  4. ↑ Burkhardt Wolf: Rationality, rationalization. In: the same and Joseph Vogl (eds.): Handbuch Literatur & Ökonomie. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2019, ISBN 978-3-11-050056-1 , pp. 253-256, here pp. 254 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  5. ^ Hans van der Loo and Willem van Reijen: Modernization. Project and paradox. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1992, p. 146.
  6. ^ Hans van der Loo and Willem van Reijen: Modernization. Project and paradox. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1992, p. 159 f.
  7. ^ Hans van der Loo and Willem van Reijen: Modernization. Project and paradox. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1992, pp. 30–36 and passim.