The Idolatry of the Actual -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- The Structure of Critical-Theoretical Argument -- The Argument -- The Critique of Late Habermas -- 1. Capitalism and Contradiction in Legitimation Crisis -- On the Concept of Crisis -- System and Lifeworld -- Liberal Capitalism and Contradiction -- "A Descriptive Model of Advanced Capitalism" -- Crisis Tendencies in Advanced Capitalism -- The Critical Reception of Legitimation Crisis -- 2. Rationalization and Social Pathology in The Theory of Communicative Action -- The Theory of Communicative Action in a Nutshell -- Linguistification as Rationalization:An Evolutionary Account of the Lifeworld -- Mediatization as Rationalization:An Evolutionary Account of System -- System and Lifeworld Interchange Roles and the Thesis of Colonization -- Summary -- Protest Potential in The Theory of Communicative Action -- Culture and Economy:On the Instrumentalization of Status Distinctions -- The "Inevitability" of System -- Postscript: Between Facts and Norms,in Which Law Saves Us from Ourselves -- Intermediate Reflections: Habermas and the Sociology of the School -- Habermas on the Function of the School -- Dominant Perspectives in the Sociology of the School -- Schooling in Capitalist America: The Correspondence Principle -- Correspondence and Legitimation -- Jean Anyon and the Differentiation of the "Hidden Curriculum" -- Paul Willis and "the Lads" -- The Educational Exchange and the Counter-School Insight -- "The Lads' " Culture and the Role of Race and Gender -- Fatalism, Positivism, and Working-Class Culture -- Conclusion -- 3. Moral Consciousness and Postconventionality -- Interactive Competence and the System of Speaker and World Perspectives -- Postconventionality and Discourse -- Vindicating the Developmental-Logical Argument -- Problems in Kohlberg.

4. Socialization and Ego Autonomy -- The True Individual -- The Causes of Postconventionality -- Arrested Development and the Systems-Theoretical Individual -- Arrested Development and Moral Consciousness -- Concluding Reflections: Multicultural Identity as Postconventionality -- New York Multiculturalism and the "Contact" Hypothesis -- Multiculturalism as a Fact and Multicultural Integration as an Aim of Policy -- Multiculturalism as Political Integration -- Constitutional Patriotism as Multicultural Identity -- The Actualization of Democratic Rights as a Source of Postconventional Recognition -- Multicultural Education and Capitalist Colonization: A Social Contradiction -- The Practical Significance of the Contradiction -- Conclusion: The Status of the Argument -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y.