Social coordination or cooperation? Ambiguities of Haslanger’s approach to social life

I argue that Haslanger’s account of ideology in ‘Cognition as a Social Skill’ does not seem to possess the normative resources it needs to diagnose non-distributive forms of social injustice without begging the question. This outcome is due to two interconnected problems: first, Haslanger misidentifies the core of human sociality as social coordination rather than social cooperation; second, her account succumbs to the kind of normative confusion Nancy Fraser diagnoses in Foucault’s work. These problems, I contend, stem from her model of behaviour, wherein social actors represent and intervene in their world for the sake of their prudential interests. Drawing on Habermas, I indicate why models of strategic action like Haslanger’s are insufficient for identifying ideology or engaging in social criticism.