3.4.4. Individual and Social Knowledge
Economic, political, and cultural structures are regularities that emerge from co-ordinated social production, enable and constrain individual and social human practices that produce new structures and reproduce existing ones. All social systems and societies are based on a dialectic of structure and agency: Humans produce social structures that enable and constrain human practices that again produce and reproduce social structures. This dialectic of structure and agency is situated in specific economic, political or cultural contexts, in which certain structures are produced and reproduced (Fuchs 2008): Usevalues are the key economic structures, rules the key political structures, and collective meanings the key cultural structures. Modern society is a society that is based on the accumulation of money (that mediates the production of usevalues) in the economic system, political influence in the political system, and reputation in the cultural system (Fuchs 2008, chapter 3). In modern society, structures take on a duality of general features and roles in accumulation that correspond to a generalisation of the duality of the commodity as use-value and exchange-value that Marx (1867) identified for the modern economy. Modern society is based on a dialectic of general social structures and structures of accumulation: the modern economy is shaped by a dialectic of use-values and monetary capital, the modern political system by a dialectic of rules and influence, and the modern cultural system by a dialectic of collective meaning and reputation (table 3.2). General social structures become subsumed under the logic of accumulation (Fuchs 2008, chapter 3).
Work, political engagement, and cultural activity produce and reproduce use-values, rules, and meanings (table 3.2). The structures produced by such social practices are combinations of physical resources and knowledge. All usevalues are objectification of activities of the human body and the human brain and they are to specific degrees tangible or intangible. Rules such as laws are intangible social conventions that are written down in texts and enforced by concrete human beings. Collective meanings can be more or less tangible and intangible. A tradition, for example, is mainly intangible, but it is carried out by humans with the help of artefacts. Concrete human beings acting socially in their social environment and physically in the natural environment produce and reproduce general social structures. As part of their practices (work, political engagement, cultural activity), they draw on their individual knowledge and create new social knowledge. The dialectic of individual knowledge and social knowledge products is part of the dialectic of structure and agency that is at the heart of society and all social system (Fuchs 2008, chapter 3). Knowledge structures are dialectically mediated with general social structures (table 3.2).
Theodor W. Adorno and the Critical Theory of Knowledge
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