Page 103 - Cultural Theory

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••• John Scott •••

Primary Secondary
structural structural Institutional
Habitus dimension dimension forms

Semantic capacity Signification Domination Symbolic orders,
Legitimation modes of discourse
Transformative Authoritative Legitimation Political institutions
capacity domination Signification
Allocative Legitimation Economic
domination Signification institutions
Regulative capacity Legitimation Domination Law, modes of
Signification regulation

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Legitimation through regulative mechanisms is of primary importance in the for-
mation of legal institutions and other modes of normative regulation. It is through
processes of legitimation that legal and customary orders are established and come
to be regarded as valid and, therefore, obligatory. Such normative orders can be very
complex, and Giddens shows that secondary processes of domination and significa-
tion are always involved. The building of a legal order requires the establishment of
a degree of mutual understanding with respect to the application of particular laws,
and the enforcement of institutionalized normative expectations depends upon the
availability of resources that enforcing agents can use to make the moral sanctions
effective.
Signification and legitimation are particularly closely linked together in the for-
mation of the socio-cultural lifeworlds through which people acquire a sense of
meaning and of personal and collective identity. It is through these means that peo-
ple come to live in a world that is meaningful to them and that provides a framework
of expectations and obligations that help to ensure that they do not experience the
egoism and anomie that Durkheim (1897) saw as resulting from the weakening or
failure of collective representations and a conscience collective.
Domination through the transformative use of resources comprises the ‘system’ or
political economy that underpins the socio-cultural lifeworld, though Giddens does
not consistently use this Habermasian terminology. This mechanism of domination,
in its most systematic form, operates through two distinct types of social institutions.
The authoritative use of resources is expressed through political institutions such
as states, political parties, and other formal organizations. The allocative use of
resources, on the other hand, is expressed through economic institutions such as
property, markets, and technologies of production. In each case, however, secondary
processes of legitimation and signification must sustain institutions of domination.
Authority in the political institutions that comprise nation–states and international
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