ABSTRACT
Jürgen Habermas, the leading contemporary exponent of Critical Theory, presents a critical diagnosis and normative reframing of state-society relations that attempts to address and respond to the dilemmas of liberal democratic welfare states. This chapter argues both to elucidate the ways in which Habermas's work can inform an understanding of conflicts in state-family relations, and to demonstrate the limits of framing an analysis of the governance of child sexual abuse wholly in Habermas's terms. Habermas's theory, whilst useful in highlighting some of the features of recent 'crises' in the governance of child sexual abuse, limited in its capacity to account for such problems of governance. The theory is grounded on a foundational distinction between the 'system' and the 'lifeworld', and on naturalised assumptions concerning the status of childhood. It considers the argument laid out in this earlier work, showing how this provides a possible way of analysing conflicts concerning the governance of child sexual abuse, and drawing out its limitations.
