A Critical Theoretical perspective is used to analyse the underlying logic of globalization (flexible capital accumulation) as problematic for social policy and programs. Conflicts between economic accumulation and political legitimation emerged as contradictory stagflation leading to delinking the gold standard and abandonment of the Keynesian consensus and Bretton Woods system. The Macdonald Royal Commission on Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada abandoned its claim to public enlightenment and social consensus in validating free trade. The economic constitution of free trade limits social rights and future political intervention into the economic sphere. The social orientation to emancipation and well-being are restrained to utilitarian discourse. Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School is compared with positivism and interpretivism within an analytic frame of ontology, epistemology and methodology. The historical background of the Frankfurt School is discussed with contributions by Adorno, Foucault, Freud, Habermas, Honneth, Horkheimer, and Marcuse. A meta-theoretical framework is developed for use in social work theory and practice. Jiirgen Habermas' Theory of Social Action is analysed within the frame as arguing the good life in the public sphere. Habermas' interpretation of the crisis of the welfare state as the colonization of the lifeworld by strategic communication is applied to the recent free trade and social policy debate. Universal pragmatics and the criteria of universal validity claims is developed. A communication assessment method is developed from Habermas' universal validity claims criteria and theory of communicative action. The typological criteria is used to measure public consensus on The Globe and Mail Newspaper coverage of Canadian public sphere discourse on free trade and social policy from 1980 to 1995. A multi-stage sample of textual arguments is deconstructed and analysed within an "ideal speech situation" of the hermeneutic-dialectical computer program ATLAS/ti. Qualitative analysis and statistical measures of Chi-Square Analysis and Dendrograms are adapted to the validity claim criteria to describe the results. Methodological results are tentative, and presented as an exploration of theory applied to method which is useful for social work theory and practice. The importance of the Habermasian revision of Critical Theory to social work theory and practice is discussed.

A Critical Theoretical perspective is used to analyse the underlying logic of globalization (flexible capital accumulation) as problematic for social policy and programs. Conflicts between economic accumulation and political legitimation emerged as contradictory stagflation leading to delinking the gold standard and abandonment of the Keynesian consensus and Bretton Woods system. The Macdonald Royal Commission on Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada abandoned its claim to public enlightenment and social consensus in validating free trade. The economic constitution of free trade limits social rights and future political intervention into the economic sphere. The social orientation to emancipation and well-being are restrained to utilitarian discourse. Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School is compared with positivism and interpretivism within an analytic frame of ontology, epistemology and methodology. The historical background of the Frankfurt School is discussed with contributions by Adorno, Foucault, Freud, Habermas, Honneth, Horkheimer, and Marcuse. A meta-theoretical framework is developed for use in social work theory and practice. Jiirgen Habermas' Theory of Social Action is analysed within the frame as arguing the good life in the public sphere. Habermas' interpretation of the crisis of the welfare state as the colonization of the lifeworld by strategic communication is applied to the recent free trade and social policy debate. Universal pragmatics and the criteria of universal validity claims is developed. A communication assessment method is developed from Habermas' universal validity claims criteria and theory of communicative action. The typological criteria is used to measure public consensus on The Globe and Mail Newspaper coverage of Canadian public sphere discourse on free trade and social policy from 1980 to 1995. A multi-stage sample of textual arguments is deconstructed and analysed within an "ideal speech situation" of the hermeneutic-dialectical computer program ATLAS/ti. Qualitative analysis and statistical measures of Chi-Square Analysis and Dendrograms are adapted to the validity claim criteria to describe the results. Methodological results are tentative, and presented as an exploration of theory applied to method which is useful for social work theory and practice. The importance of the Habermasian revision of Critical Theory to social work theory and practice is discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate