Does this mean that, as Habermas puts it, abstract systems "colonise" a pre-existing "life-world," subordinating personal decisions to technical expertise? It does not. The reasons are twofold. One is that modern institutions do not just implant themselves into a "life-world," the residues of which remain much the same as they always were. Changes in the nature of day-to-day life also affect the dis-embedding mechanisms, in a dialectical interplay. The second reason is that technical expertise is continuously reappropriated by lay agents as part of their routine dealings with abstract systems.

XREF: Challenges Habermas's life-world colonization thesis; connects to Giddens's structuration theory about the dialectic between structure and agency.

Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Moderni…, loc. 347