Praxeologies and Homeostasis

In the debates within media pedagogy, the need for an action-oriented media pedagogy has been stressed by different parties. These arguments are explicitly based on media pedagogy as an action theory, which, in the German-speaking world, has strong links to the debate between Niklas Luhmanns System Theory and Jürgen Habermas Critical Theory, which is also the base of Baackes habilitation. More recently, a stronger interest in and reception of French action theory have begun to assert themselves namely Pierre Bourdieus praxeology , which focuses on questions of social inequality and limitations or social constraints of given agents. These findings coincide for the most parts with the results of Pierre Bourdieus praxeological sociology of education, which is why discussions of media habitus promise a theoretical linking of German action theory and French praxeology. In the sense of a socio-scientific foundation of media pedagogics, this project therefore starts out from the point where an action theoretical and praxeological media pedagogy is already being broadly discussed. The aim of this project is to collate the German and French histories of social sciences regarding action theory and praxeology. The research questions are: 1. How can an action-theoretical foundation of media pedagogics be argued on the basis of these German debates? 1. Given the French debates, how may a praxeological foundation of media pedagogy be argued? 2. How may the discussion on media habitus be enriched, from the perspective of basic research, by action theory or praxeology in the sense of a critique of society and within the framework of a socio-scientific foundation of media pedagogy? This project proposes to apply a historical epistemology/epistemological critique and discourse analysis in the sense of a praxeological/action theoretical sociology of knowledge in order to simultaneously explore and theoretically premise French praxeology in the sense of Bourdieu and action theory in the sense of Habermas.

Based on the projects creation of the digital archive of the complete work of Dieter Baacke, one of the founders of German media education, we were able to elaborate the relationship between action theories (Praxeologies) and concepts of balance (Homeostasis)on a broad sociological, economic, technological, and media theoretical level. The main emphasis was on the analysis of the pragmatic level of discourse regarding the crucial discussions on the notion of media literacy, which at the end of the project, we could extend to those of media performance. Based on current research on the method of discourse analysis and the complete works of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu we methodologically emphasized the need to argue a discourse pragmatism, as was made plausible by an in-depth analysis of Dieter Baackes habilitation thesis Communication and Competence. In this context, we were also able to show how the assumptions of system theory (Niklas Luhmann) favour a sociology in which the restabilization of the (capitalist) system is modelled on its own as homeostatic, while in contrast, the Critical Theory of the Society (Jürgen Habermas) understands the field of society as a divided conflict zone. In this respect, the most important research finding of this project is the systematic coincidence of the French critique of power and the German social criticism within the framework of (French) praxeology and (German) theory of action. Overall, the present state of research could be extended using a discourse- analytically oriented mixed method. Action oriented media education was epistemologically substantiated and empirically explained.