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became less acute, concern about global pollutants rose As with previous environmental crises, scientists were unsurprisingly unable to deliver definitive cause and effect relationships and, as in the past, decisions were made without'hard' scientific support, British social scientists (not least economists) began to make widely respected contributions on such concepts as sustainable development.
Howard Newby is right to stress the need for a global approach to environmental problems and the need for social scientists to participate in suggesting and evaluating policy measures. Equally, however, the myriad decisions taken at national, regional or local level accumulate to affect the global environment. Decisions are. after al I, taken one by one, and social scientists have an invaluable role in puttingfowardandassessingcriteriaagainstwhich they should be made. Theteare many global research issues to be addressed, for example:
• The use of ambient environmental standards, or ad hoc controls;
• The use of emission standards or tax and other incentives;
• The implementation of integrated pollution control measures;
• The implementation deficit in ail regimes;
• The extension of environmental impact assessment to policies, plans and programmes;
• The delineation of the concept of 'sustainable development';
• The improvement of international environmental diplomacy
Manyol the issues identified by Howard Newby canonlybeaddressed successfully by a strong land useoreconomic planning system, whether operatingat the national, regional, sub-regional or local level. The notion of 'sustainable development' presupposes decisions about where such development should take place and what its nature should be. These issues are the grist of the land use planner, whether they are made in Kenya or in Keighley. Within the pollution field, the role of the planner In determining pollution levels is often as great in the US, where planning controls are relatively weak and pollution controls are relatively strong, as in the UK.
there is much research in the fieldof UK envi ronrnental planning and management to be undertaken, for example, on:
• The efficacy of environmental impact assessment;
• The contribution of land use planning to the implementation of integrated pollution control;
• The levying of compensation to local residents as part of pollution permit fees;
• The practicability of third party appeals against planning decisions affecting the environment;
• The financing of environmental groups to appear at public enquiries;
• The generation of standard criteria against which environmentally sensitive planning decisions can be made.
If Britain istomakeaworthwhiiecontributiontothese issues, then research monies need to be channelled to them. Social scientists—including planners —need to articulate, like Howard Newby. the achievements of their research if the attitude of politicians to their subjects is to be further changed and budgets increased.
[21]
NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS* by Jürgen Habermas
In the last ten to twenty years, conflicts have developed in advanced Western societies that, in many respects, deviate from the welfare-state pattern of institutionalized conflict over distribution. These new conflicts no longer arise in areas of material reproduction; they are no longer channeled through parties and organizations; and they can no longer be alleviated by compensations that conform to the system. Rather, the new conflicts arise in areas of cultural reproduction, social integration, and socialization. They are manifested in sub-institutional, extra-parliamentary forms of protest. The underlying deficits reflect a reification of communicative spheres of action: the media of money and power are not sufficient to circumvent this reification. The question is not one of compensations that the welfare state can provide. Rather, the question is how to defend or reinstate endangered life styles, or how to put reformed life styles into practice. In short, the new conflicts are not sparked by problems ofdiitri button, but concern the grammar of forms of life.
This new type of conflict is an expression of the "silent revolution" in values and attitudes that R. Inglehart has ascertained for entire populations.1 Studies by Hildebrandt, Dalton, Barnes and Kaase?2 verify the thematic change from "old politics,1' which revolve around questions of economic, social, domestic and military security, to "new politics." This entails problems of quality of life, equality, individual self-realization, participation, and human rights. According to social statistics, the "old politics" are supported by entrepreneurs, workers, and the professional middle class. New politics, on the other hand, find more support in the new middle class, the younger generation, and those groups with higher levels of formal education. These phenomena correspond to the hypothesis of internal colonization.
If we can assume that growth in the economic-administrative complex spurs erosive processes in the life-world, then we can expect old conflicts to be overlapped by new ones. A line of conflict arises between, on the one hand, the center composed of strata directly involved in the production process and interested in maintaining capital growth as the basis for the compromise of the welfare state and, on the other hand, a colorful mixture of groups
♦The following a taken from "Taslu for a Critical Theory öl Society," the last chapter of my new book. Thü chapter address« the question as to how the iuuet raised by critical theory in the 19301 can be made relevant again today under different circumstanced. This explain* the Objectified, descriptive nature of my remark*. They are not intended to sublimit for a political analytU. Had I wanted to provide the latter, of course, I would have had to write from the vantage point of an active participant.
1. R. Inglehart. "Wenwandel und politisches Verhalten," Sozialer Wandel in Westeuropa ed. J. Matthe« (New York. 1979).
8. K. HildebraDdt, R.J. Dalton, "Die neue Politik." PVS 18 (1977); S.H. Barne* M Kaue *t al, PaUtiad Action (Beverly HUI* and London. 197&).
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34 1LL0S
on the periphery. Among the latter are those groups that are farther removed from the "produetivist core" of performance"5 in late capitalist societies, those who are more sensitive to (he self-destructive consequences of the growth in complexity, or who are more seriously affected by them."1 The bond that unifies these heterogeneous groups is the critique of growth. Neither the bourgeois liberation movements nor the organized workers' movements provide a model for this type of protest. Historical parallels are more often found in the social-romantic movements of early Industrialism, led by craftsmen, plebeians, and workers; in the defensive movements of the populist middle class; in the attempts to escape motivated by bourgeois critiques of civilization undertaken by reformers, Wandervoget, and so on.
The rapid changes in scenes, groupings, and topics makes it very difficult to classify the current potential for protest and retreat. To the extent that organizational cores form in parties or associations, the members are recruited from the same diffuse reservoir.5 The following key phrases are currently used to identify various trends in the Federal Republic of Germany: the anti-nuclear and environmental movement; the peace movement (encompassing the North-South conflict); the citizens' action movement; the alternative movement (which comprises urban scenarios with squatters and alternative projects as well as communites in the country); minorities (the elderly, homosexuals, disabled people, etc.); the psychological scene with support groups and youth sects; religious fundamentalism; the tax protest movement; parent associations' school protest; resistance to ''modernist reforms"; and finally, the women's movement. Furthermore, independence movements struggling for regional, linguistic, cultural or religious autonomy are also of international significance.
1 would like to differentate the emancipatory potential from the potential for resistance and retreat in this spectrum. After the period of the American civil rights movement, which has long since concluded in the particularistic self •affirmation of black sub-cultures, the only movement that follows the tradition of bourgeois-socialist liberation movements is the feminist movement. The struggle against patriarchal oppression and for the realization of a promise that is deeply rooted in the acknowledged universallst foundations of morality and legality lends feminism the impetus of an offensive movement, whereas all other movements are more defensive in character. The movements of resistance and retreat seek to stem or block the formal* organized spheres of action in favor of communicative structures; they do not seek to conquer new territory. To be sure, an element of particularism links feminism to these movements: the emancipation of women means more than the merely format attainment of equality and elimination of male prejudices. It means the toppling of concrete life styles
3. J. HirKh, "Altemativbevregurig -- einc potiluche Atternacifc," FtxrlamentariicA*i Ritval und politiichc AUeirtativen, cd. R. Roth (Frankfurt am Main, 1&B0).
4. Of gre« help to mc was the manuscript by K.W. Brand, **Zur DisWiipn um Enftchung, Funkiion imd Fcispekiivc dcr Oekologie- und AlicrnativbemgiLng" (Munich, IpBO).
5. Hirseh (19B0J; J. Hubcr. W«t soil <&u alia Ondemf (Berlin. 1990).
NEW SOCML MOVEMENTS 3f
determined by male monopolies. The historical legacy of the sexual division of labor, to which women were subjected in the nuclear bourgeois family, also gives them access to virtues, to a set of values that are both in contrast and comlementary to the male world and at odds with the one-sided rationalized praxis of everyday life.
Within the resistance movements one can distinguish between the defense of traditional and social property and a defensive which already operates on the basis of a rationalized life-world and tries out new forms of cooperation and community. This criterion allows us to separate the old middle-class protest against the threat which major technical projects posed to neighborhoods, parents' protest against comprehensive schools, the tax protest (for which the California movement for Proposition 13 provides a model), and even most independence movements, from the core of the new conflict potential: i.e., from the youth and alternative movement, for which a critique of growth based on environmental and peace concerns provides the common focus. I would like to support, at least cursorily, the argument that these conflicts can be understood as resistance to tendencies to colonize the life-world.*
The objectives, attitudes, and behavior prevalent m youthful protest groups can at first be grasped as reactions to specific problem situations perceived with great sensitivity: "green" problems. The large industrial intervention in ecological balances, the scarcity of non'renewable natural resources, and the demographic development present industrially developed societies with serious problems. Vet, these challenges are largely abstract and require technical and economic solutions that mustr in turn, be planned globally and implemented by administrative means. What sparks the protest, however, is the tangible destruction of the urban environment, the destruction of the countryside by bad residential planning, industrialization and pollution, health impairments due to side effects of civilization-destruction, pharmaceutical practices, and so forth. These are developments that visibly attack the organic foundations of the life-world and make one drastically conscious of criteria of Uvability, of inflexible limits to the deprivation of sensual-aesthetic background needs.
Problems of Over-Complexity: Certainly, there are good reasons to fear the , potential for military destruction, nuclear power plants, atomic waste, gene
;': manipulation, storage and central utilization of private data, etc These real
U; fears, however, combine with the horror of a new category of literally invisible
jijf; risks that can be grasped only from the vantage point of the system. These
||   \ risks intrude into the life-world, but at the same time they explode the
|f& dimensions of the life-world. The fears function as catalysts for a feeling of
H being overwhelmed by possible consequences of processes for which moral
B  j responsibility can be assumed, inasmuch as we set them in motion both
I technically and politically, but for which we can in fact not be responsible
^^ftj weekly newspaper Das Parlament (September 1980). pp. £Sff,
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because of their uncontrollable magnitude. In this case, resistance ij directed toward abstractions that are forced upon the life-world. They must be addressed within the life-world, although they supercede the iensually focused, spatial, social, and temporal boundaries of complexity even of extremely differentiated life-worlds.
Burdens on the Communal Infra-Structure; An obvious component of the psychology movement and renewed religious fundamentalism and a motivating force behind most of the alternative project? and many citizens action groups is the pain of withdrawal symptoms in a culturally impoverished and unilaterally rationalized praxis of everyday life. Thus, ascribed characteristics such as sex, age, skin color, even neighborhood and religion, contribute to the establishment and delimitation of communities, the creation of sub-culturally protected communications groups which further the search for personal and collective identity. High value is placed on the particular, the provincial, small social spaces, decentralired forms of interaction and de-specialized activities, simple interaction and non-differentiated public spheres. This is all intended to promote the revttalization of buried possibilities for expression and communication. Resistance to reformist intervention also belongs here. Such intervention becomes its opposite because the means of its implementation run counter to the declared, social-integrative objectives.
The new conflicts thus arise at the seam between system and life-world. I have already indicated how the exchange between private and public sphere, on the one hand, and economic and administrative system, on the other, takes place via the media of money and power. 1 have also outlined how this exchange becomes institutionalized in the roles of the employed and the consumer, the client and the citizen (StoaUburget). Precisely these roles are the target or protest. Alternative praxis is opposed to the profit-oriented inMrumentalization of professional labor, the market-dependent mobilization of labor, the extension of competitiveness and performance pressure into elementary school. It is also directed against the process whereby services, relations and time become monetary values, against the consumerist redefinition of private life spheres and personal life styles. Furthermore, the clients' relation to public service agencies is intended to be broken and restructured according to the participatory model of self-help organizations. This direction is particularly characieristic for reform models in the area of social and health policy (for example, in the case of psychiatric care). Finally, those forms of protest that range from the undirected explosion of youthful disturbances (Zurich bums) to calculated or surrealistic violations of the rules (such as the American civil rights movement and student protests) to violent provocations and intimidation negate the definitions of the citizens* role as well as the routines of a goal-oriented realization of interests.
The partial dissolution of the social roles of employees and consumers, of clients and citizens, should, according to the programmatic conceptions of some theoreticians, clear the path for counter institutions developed from
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NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 17
within the life-world in order to limit the particular dynamic of the economic and political-administrative system of action. On the one hand, these institutions are supposed to branch off from the economic system into a second, informal sector that no longer is profit-oriented. On the other hand, these institutions are supposed to counter the party system with new forms of an expressive "politics of the first person" which, at the same time, is supposed to have a democratic base.7 According to this conception, such institutions would render inactive the abstraction and neutralization process by virtue of which work and political opinion have been linked to media-directed interactions in modem societies. The capitalist firm and the mass party (as an "ideologically neutral organization to attain power") organize their social realms of influence through labor markets and constructed public spheres. They treat their employees and their electors as an abstract labor force or as subjects of decision, and they differentiate and distance those spheres in which alone personal and collective identities could be formed as the environment of the system. The counter-institutions, on the other hand, are supposed to re-integrate a section of the formally organized areas of action, save it from the influence of media intervention, and restore these "liberated areas" to the mechanism of understanding which coordinates action.
Regardless of how unrealistic these notions may be, they remain important for the polemical significance of the new resistance and retreat movements which are reacting to the colonization of the life-world. This significance is hidden in the self-image of the participants just as it is in the ideological depiction of the enemy when the rationality of the maintenance of the status quo in economic and administrative systems of action arc identified with each other-; that is, whenever rationalization of the life-world is not carefully distinguished from the increasing complexity of the social system. This confusion explains the mutually disruptive fronts that obscure political oppositions which are set up between the anti-modemism of the young conservatives and the new-conservative defense of a post-modernism that robs a modernism alienated from itself of its reasonable content and its possibilities for the future.
7. On the dual economy, cf. A. Cotz.Abichitdvom Proletariat (Frankfurt am Main, 1980): Huber (1980). On the impact of democratic nutt parties cm the elcciora' lifc-vorld context, tee Ctmi Kpffe, "Konliuirrpipartci und kollcfctivepoliuKhe IdenlitJi,'* in Parlamentomchet Ritml (19S0).