The Role of Reason and the Example of Post-Modern Planning

Broad confidence in reason and rationality are assumed by most versions of modern science, epistemology, and methodology (Meehan 1981), though this seems to be eroding not just in the social sciences but through- out society. Post-modernism is part of this larger erosive trend. In litera- ture post-modern novels, such as Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, illustrate the futility of analytical reason and the naivety of causal explana- tion. Post-modern architecture revels in constructing buildings that at first glance cannot "reasonably" be expected to stand.30 Qualifications to both reason and rationality have long been required in the social sciences by Stanley Fish attempts an answer that is much too complicated to be summarized here (1989: chap. 7).

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Santos's project for a post-modern law actually confuses skeptical and affirmative post- modernism. He exhibits a passing fancy with Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Rorty, and Harold Bloom's early work. But his proposals are also democratic and humanist. It would probably be greeted by the contemporary skeptical post-modernists as naive and logocentric.

30 _{It might be assumed that architecture is immune to the extreme forms of post-modern-} ism because buildings must respect the laws of science relating to gravity in order to be viable. But the avant garde of post-modern architecture today takes pride in "knowing nothing about materials" and in being willing to build "with chewing gum." One is said to have "built an officers' club, and the roof caved in during the dedication ceremonies." In other cases post- modern designs are abandoned because "they simply can't be built" (Seabrook 1991: 127, 129).

Popper's "falsifiability" (1959, 1962, 1979), by Kuhn's "paradigmatic" view (1970, 1971), and by Lakatos's competing "research programmes" (1970) and "rational reconstruction" (Brante 1986: 190-95). The post- modern challenge to reason is even more thoroughgoing, however, and thus more threatening to conventional social science.

There is considerable internal debate among post-modernists about how reason can best be "overcome," but most skeptics call for a "definitive fare- well" to modern reason (Borradori 1987-88).31 They contend that, al- though an individual may reflect on a topic, employ "reasoned arguments," and go through the motion of rationally evaluating evidence, this yields preference rather than privileged insight (Baudrillard 1983c; Lyotard 1984; Vattimo 1988) because reason is "a matter of taste and feeling, know-how and connoisseurship" (Latour 1988). Within this understand- ing of reason modern science has no unique or special logic (Latour 1987; 1988: 179, 186 Latour and Woolgar 1979). Religions, cults, and witch- craft are elevated to the status of "rationalities" equal to science (Shweder 1986: 172). Logic and reason are "on the same footing" as myth and magic (Latour 1988: 146-50, 186, 212-13).

Several motives account for the general post-modern attack on reason. First, modern reason assumes universalism, unifying integration, the view that the same rules apply everywhere. Reasoned argument is assumed to be basically the same from country to country, culture to culture, and across historical periods. Post-modernism, on the contrary, argues that each situation is different and calls for special understanding. Post-mod- ernists assume that the "foundations change from one episteme to another" (Harland 1987: 106-7). There is no place for universal reason in a post- modern world where all paradigms are equal because each has its own logic. So if there is such a thing as post-modern reason, it is "scattered abroad and disseminated into heterogeneous forms" (Schräg 1988: 2); it is a "logic beyond any form of reason whatsoever" (Harland 1987: 140). Modern reason and rationality are said to be specific to situations, cultural artifices, internal to each system of thought and never examined critically (Henriques et al. 1984: 124). Reason is criticized for allowing "little room for cultural and personal idiosyncrasies" (Toulmin 1990: 200).

Second, reason is the product of the Enlightenment, modern science, and Western society, and as such for the post-modernists, it is guilty by association of all the errors attributed to them. Reason, like modern sci- ence, is understood to be dominating, oppressive, and totalitarian (Bern- stein 1986). Assuming a "best answer" or a "unique solution," it thus pre- 31 _{Sometimes the skeptics' anti-reason statements are nuanced, but the consequences for the} social sciences are the same. For example, does it really make any difference if, as Vattimo claims (1988: liii), he only intends to argue that there is no difference between reason and the irrational?

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eludes diversity and tolerance (Toulmin 1990: 199—200). "Its reasonable ways are provisional and always brutally unfair to someone or other. In this sense irrationality is less mad than reason and order" (Corlett 1989: 215). The post-modernists focus on how reason and rationality are em- ployed as legitimating devices to defend modern bureaucracy, law, eco- nomics, and politics (Wellmer 1985: 338-46). Reason "reduces the do- mains of indeterminacy, contingency, and democracy for reasons of efficiency, domination and power" (Ryan 1988: 565). Abandoning reason means, for post-modernists, liberation from modernity's preoccupation with authority, efficiency, hierarchy, power, technology, commerce (the business ethic), administration, social engineering (Ryan 1988: 563-65). It means release from modern science's concern for order, consistency, pre- dictability, "institutionalized procedures dictated by the authority of an accepted paradigm" (Schräg 1988: 3). Thus reason is resisted because it leads to objectivity in science and power to the military and the govern- ment; they, in turn, are associated with violence, suffering, and alienation in the twentieth century, be it the Holocaust, world wars, Vietnam, Stalin's Gulag, or computer record keeping of information on individuals. As a product of the Enlightenment, reason is infused with the idea of progress and humanism. But reason, the post-modernists argue, has neither im- proved the human condition nor solved the problems of the homeless, women, Blacks, and other oppressed groups (Touraine 1988b). Even though good "reasons" have been given for every imaginable action, "the consequences have all too often been experienced as disastrous, immoral, or the fruit of inexcusable stupidity" (Edelman 1988: 109).

Third, reason and rationality are inconsistent with post-modern confi- dence in emotion, feeling, introspection and intuition, autonomy, creativ- ity, imagination, fantasy, and contemplation. Post-modernists point out that to abandon their basic priorities and to countenance reason is to

favor the head over the heart; the mechanical over the spiritual or the natural . . . , the inertly impersonal over the richly personal . . . , the banal collective over the uniquely individual, the dissociated anomic individual over the or- ganic collective; the dead tradition over the living experiment; the positivist experiment over the living tradition; the static product over the dynamic pro- cess; the monotony of linear time over the timeless recurrence of myth; dull, sterile order over dynamic disorder; chaotic, entropie disorder over primordial order; the forces of death over the forces of life. (Graff 1979: 25)

Despite the intellectual incentives to abandon reason and rationality, af-

firmative post-modernists are more cautious, and many of them step back

from the radical gesture of completely repudiating it. Some of them simply

avoid the more rigid formulations of reason and rationality; others are in-

Many affirmative post-modernists call for flexibility, for contextual consid- eration of what is "reasoned" (Ryan 1988: 564), neither accepting ratio- nality nor rejecting it (Ankersmit 1989: 140-42). They suggest that there are many different kinds of reason; some of them post-modernism should retain, and others it must reject. There is, of course, little agreement about the preferred order of reason (Touraine 1988b; Eco 1983a: 127-30; Ag- ger 1990: 14, 23-24); the only agreement is that it should call modern science into question (Aronowitz 1981, 1988a: 131).32 Instrumental or "scientific" reason, however, does appear especially objectionable (Bauman 1987: 191) inasmuch as it is rational, purposive, and subject centered and also because it emphasizes utility, efficiency, reliability, durability, superi- ority (Leiss 1983; Leiss et al. 1986).

Some affirmative post-modernists consider reason essential both to their own critique of modern social science and to the construction of positive post-modern projects that are both reasonable and logical (Griffin 1988a: 30), such as a post-modern science or the development of post-modern political and social movements. If they deny reason any legitimacy, then they are in a "predicament of having to use the resources of the heritage" that they question (Sarup 1989: 58). Some even conclude that the "ten- dency toward a displacement of reason . . . in postmodernism needs to be curtailed, for it invites a blatant irrationalism" (Schräg 1988: 3). Others contend that the real problem is that reason is absent in the modern world to begin with. They warn that the absence of reason is not cause for en- dorsing its demise (Agger 1990: 175). One feminist post-modernist pro- poses to avoid contradiction and ambivalence by deconstructing modern reason and then reconstructing a feminist rationality (Weedon 1987: 10). An example from the fields of planning and organization theory illus- trates how abandoning or even seriously doubting rationality and reason makes social science virtually impossible. Conventional versions of these fields presume, by definition, rationality; they are premised on logic and reason (Cooper and Burrell 1988). Complaints against reason and ratio- nality are major points in deconstructing modern planning and organiza- tion theory. Both reason and rationality are, however, reintroduced when interest turns to constructing new post-modern versions of these fields.

Any presentation of post-modern planning and organization theory is generally preceded by a critique of modern, conventional versions and its assumptions as post-modernists attempt to break with the conception of planning as a "focus on large scale, technologically rational, austere and functionally efficient international style design" (Dear 1988). Modern

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Some affirmatives agree with the Frankfurt school's support for ethical substantive rea- son, its emancipatory character and its support for human rights, equality, and social justice. This view is closer to that of the post-Marxists than the post-modernists, however.

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planning emphasizes efficiency, integration, coordination of policy, and revision in light of feedback (Meehan 1979). Post-modernists contend that this form of conventional planning leads to disorder, confusion, and the deterioration of life conditions. It is an absurdly narrow capitalist activity (Dear and Scott 1981) that presupposes an integrated system, a homoge- neous whole that rejects diversity and difference.33 A plan is the work of a central planning agency, of an hierarchical administrative body that claims expertise. It is said to have a rhetoric of instrumentalism, negotiation, and performance (Dear 1989). There is no room for the individual mind (Ryan 1982: 187). Reason and rationality are presumed to disguise power rela- tions in the field of planning and organization studies. Post-modernism "reveals formal organization to be the ever-present expression of an auton- omous power that masquerades as the supposedly rational constructions of modern institutions" (Cooper and Burrell 1988: 110).

But post-modern planning and post-modern organization theory are al- most by definition a contradiction, and this may be why post-modernists in these fields are required either to compromise with modernity and reason instead of dismissing them entirely or to somehow limit themselves to critique. So Cooper and Burrell criticize the role of rational control and reasoned understanding in organization studies and sketch out new post- modern forms of formal organizations. Post-modern organizational stud- ies are described as "process" and as "informal," as a "series of programmes, technologies, and as anti-functional strategies." But reason remains intact (Cooper and Burrell 1988: 105-10). Post-modern planning advocates the absence of a plan altogether or a situation where no plan is permitted to claim superiority. But most post-modern planners also retain reason and rationality while focusing their innovative energy on revision of other con- cepts. For example, they question space as objective, observable, tangible, controllable, and they offer a post-modernism view of space and time. They reject absolutist deconstructive relativism; they call not for the abo- lition of theory but for its re-formulation.

Ryan, a post-modernist with a post-Marxist orientation, offers a model of "anticentrist, antiabsolutist deconstructionist" planning that, while probably not acceptable to the skeptical post-modernists, departs equally

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The post-modern analysis that follows reverses the line of argument offered during the Cold War period when planning was understood to be socialist and capitalist-democracies were considered anti-planning (Lindblom 1959).

A "post-modern" critique of planning today is often phrased in Marxist terminology (classes and capitalism) (Harvey 1985, 1987; Dear and Scott 1981; Jameson 1984a; Zukin 1988), but post-modern planning gives up any aspirations of revolution, any instrumentalist theories of domination. Post-modern planners do, however, advance a "project." Many of them hope to reconstruct their discipline after having deconstructed it, to eventually provide planning with a new "master-narrative" appropriate for a post-modern age (Dear 1986: 376).

from modern, conventional views of the field (1982: 124-26). Its inno- vative qualities come not from abandoning reason so much as from other post-modern elements. He argues that this new form of planning for a post-modern world would have to be participatory and involve the social collectivity in all its heterogeneous form. "Multiple strategies, policies, and plans would have to be employed, all interrelated, with no one exclusively dominant. A principle of nonexclusion (which would integrate culture, politics, psychology) and nonisolation (which would not privilege eco- nomic optimality, abstractly conceived) follows from the deconstructive displacement of abstract formalism from the center of planning" (Ryan 1982: 188). "Post-modern planning would begin with participatory input, not with a centralizing, efficiency map . . . [that] focuses the social system toward the satisfaction of criteria." It would take "on the satisfaction of social needs." It "would emphasize 'interactive adaptation,' the role of un- certainty, the modifications imposed by diverse situations and different contexts, the need for inclusion, rather than exclusion, of variables, the wisdom of choosing policies over monolithic programs and the impossi- bility of mapping a whole reality." It would entail "multiple inputs based on needs, diversification of initiative, situational adaptation . . . , an em- phasis on diverse, microstructural ground level plans to counter the theo- reticist tendency of macro-structural, singular, global planning, and finally, immediate interfacing between sectors, rather than mediated relaying through the 'center' " (Ryan 1982: 191-93).

It is difficult to exaggerate the gravity for the social sciences of skeptical post-modernism's denial of reason and the affirmative post-modernists' ambivalence about it. Although one can understand post-modernism's tol- erance, multiple realities, and pluralism, its repudiation of reason, and the vagueness of its standards of judgment (as discussed below) reduce its potential for the social sciences. In addition, rejecting reason requires that post-modernists make room within their ranks for those who, though they share some of its views, are questionable allies. For example, some of the New Age groups and those whose views of science are clearly mystical (a number of examples are found in Griffin 1990). Taken to the limit, the skeptical post-modernists' hostility to reason and rationality encourages anti-intellectualism. When the skeptics abandon reason and employ meth-

ods that reduce knowledge and meaning to "a rubble of signifiers," they

also "produce a condition of nihilism,"34 a state that may prepare "the ground for the re-emergence of a charismatic politics and even more sim- plistic propositions than those which were deconstructed" (Harvey 1989: 350). The affirmative post-modernist's ambivalence about reason "tends

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Nihilism is defined here as a denial of the possibility of any affirmation (Vattimo 1988) and the rejection of the very prospect of knowledge altogether (Hawkesworth 1989: 557).

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also toward mysticism" and "begins to veer into nihilism" (Ryan 1988: 565). In some cases, it attracts individuals whose concern with religion, the transcendental, and the hermetic may invite intolerance (Levin and Kroker 1984: 16) and even prejudice (Ryan 1988: 565).

4. Standards of Judgment and Criteria of Evaluation