Showing papers on "Critical theory published in 1982"

Critical Ethnography in the Study of Comparative Education.

Abstract: In this essay I consider recent perspectives in educational research and in particular the use of critical ethnography in the study of comparative education. Since the term is relatively new, some introduction will first be given to other approaches, their origins, and their relationship to critical approaches in the field. The parameters of several approaches and their implications for the study of comparative education will be discussed, and suggestions will be made throughout for research applications of these approaches in comparative education. "Critical ethnography" refers to studies which use a basically anthropological, qualitative, participant-observer methodology but which rely for their theoretical formulation on a body of theory deriving from critical sociology and philosophy. 1 The theoretical forebears in this area date back to Marx, with his critique of bourgeois theories of society, and the positivist sociology of Comte.2 The fundamental criticism of positivist social science embodied in Marx's approach was that the distinction between the objective and subjective could not bring together the "is" and the "ought" in a way that made possible the construction of a theory of ethics and politics.3 These questions come down to us today in modern guise when we consider problems in educational research, but their basic core remains the same: Is it the task of social scientists to seek ever more diligently to define objective methods of researching the social world (or education), with possibilities for change seen as simply the result of "reading out the data" and making choices on the basis of some cost-efficient or technological rationale? Or is it their task to attempt to understand as accurately as possible the subjective understandings that actors have of their own version of "social reality"? Or, third, is there some way of seeing social science in Marx's terms that would forever blur the objective/subjective distinction and thus make necessary the redefinition of social research itself? These questions lie at the heart of any discussion of research methodology

Work and Instrumental Action

Abstract: In recent discussions of historical materialism, the relationship of Marx's critique of political economy to a critical social theory directed toward political action has come into question. The thesis that there is a "crisis in the theory of revolution" indicates that the analysis of capital, the centerpiece of Marx's theoretical project, can no longer retain such a leading role in the determination of a critical social theory capable of offering a Praxis-oriented interpretation of the contemporary situation of late capitalism. The function of the critique of political economy in a theory of class struggle was always disputed in the history of Marxism, but it has never before been questioned to such a great extent. Although the fundamental methodological notion of the mutual translatability, if not the thematical convergence of the systematic analysis of capital and a Praxis-oriented theory of revolution forms the basis of the Marxian tradition, precisely this theoretical complementarity is currently in doubt. The categories of a crisis theory based on the analysis of capital are apparently no longer adequate to describe the altered crisis areas and conflict potentials of late capitalist society. This incongruity has come to dominate both the theoretical and the political sides of Marxist discussion. Marx's conception of work has taken on a central position among the theoretical doubts about the relevance of Marxism as a theory of human emancipation.' In its original form, the concept is a categorical connective between the critique of political economy and the materialist theory of revolution: the concept of work should not

Nostalgia: A sphere and process of contemporary ideology

Abstract: This theoretical essay looks at the ahistorical elements of nostalgia as found in popular culture, with special emphasis on discussion within the Frankfurt School offered as alternative explanations. It is argued that the anti-critical thrust of nostalgia masks the crises of monopoly capitalism and redirects the conflicts in manageable channels. This conclusion is reached in light of analyses by Marcuse, Horkheimer, Habermas, Adorno and other critical theorists who have considered these issues.

Cognitive Interests and Self-Reflection

Abstract: In his inaugural lecture1 Habermas presented a programme of a philosophy of emancipation, according to which our knowledge is guided by our interest in emancipation, our interest in intersubjective communication, as well as our interest in technical mastery over nature. Already, at that time, Habermas indicated that a proof of the thesis that our knowledge depends on our interests was not to be given in the form of a systematic argument but rather by way of a historical appraisal of the positivistic and historicist philosophy of science. Accordingly, Knowledge and Human Interests turned out to be a history of philosophy, albeit of a special kind. His excursion through the idealistic (Kant, Hegel) and the materialistic (Marx) theory of knowledge, through the prehistory of positivism (Comte, Mach), pragmatism (Peirce), historicism (Dilthey), psychoanalysis (Freud) and perspectivism (Nietzsche) served as the philosophical and historical framework within which the thesis of the cognitive interests was to be systematically established. This was in effect the systematisation of a theory the aims of which converge in the concept of ‘self-reflection’. Knowledge and Human Interests was an exercise in ‘self-reflection’ in the sense of a theory of knowledge which, while raising the question of human interests, at the same time resurrected the Kantian question concerning the conditions of the possibility of knowledge in general; it was also a ‘self-reflection’ in the sense of a critical theory which, while reflecting upon cognitive interests, was at the same time a reflection on the conditions of the possibility of emancipation from ideologies and power structures.

The Policy Analysis-Critical Theory Affair: Wildavsky and Habermas as Bedfellows?

Abstract: Policy analysis may benefit from specific conceptual contributions derived from Jurgen Habermas's critical social theory. In particular, Aaron Wildavsky's emphasis on the policy analyst's fostering of social and political ‘interactions’ can be given concrete empirical content derived from the critical theorist's account of social and communicative action. In addition, the critical theorist's distinction between action and ‘learning’ extends and sharpens Wildavsky's and Lindblom's account of policy outcomes. Once obstacles to social and political learning are distinguished from ordinary constraints upon citizens' action, policy analysis research (as formulated by Wildavsky and Lindblom) can be more concretely specified and then understood also and essentially to involve fundamental normative judgments of the legitimacy of policy-fostered ‘interactions’.

Reviews : David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas (London, Hutchinson, 1980)

Abstract: A dual function can perhaps be ascribed to introductory texts: firstly to explicate the basic subject matter at hand and, secondly to open up avenues for further (critical) appraisal of this material. On first reading David Held’s ~nt~oducca~an t® Critical Theory seems to satisfy these criteria. The &dquo;classical&dquo; period of critical theory --the &dquo;Frankfurt School&dquo; is examined, initially, on the levels of political economy, aesthetics, psychoanalysis and philosophy of history. This is followed by a differentiation of the three main theorists according to their notions of epistemology and methodology Horkheimer’s formulation of critical theory, Adorno’s conception of negative dialectics and Marcuse’s notions of theory and practice. Further to this, the contemporary efforts of Habermas are systematically (and critically) presented. His earlier work on the public sphere, the distinction between labour and interaction, the attempt to ground knowledge in (the problematical) &dquo;quasi-transcendental&dquo; human interests and so on, are brought together (in their continuity and discontinuity) with Habermas’s more recent concerns

Habermas’s Concept of Critical Theory

Abstract: The concept of critical theory is ambiguous. It combines in a productive way two meanings of the word Kritik which were developed in classical German philosophy. The one meaning stems from the Kantian programme for a transcendental philosophy and signifies the testing of legitimacy. The other meaning goes back to the Young Hegelians’ attitude to the opposition of theory and practice and signifies negation. Ever since Marx developed his concept of a realist science, which sought to draw the consequences from the faltering beginnings and eventual failure of German idealism, the two meanings of the concept of Kritik have been fused together. Thus the ambiguity of the concept has been passed on from generation to generation and can be traced even to present-day neo-Marxism. This is what I wish to demonstrate in what follows.

Working at Watching: A Reply to Sut Jhally

Abstract: I am grateful to SutJhally for his critique, both in the preceding article and in our informal exchanges (see his footnote 16) . I have gone back to the drawing board ; back to the beginning of the debate on the audience commodity . In my contribution to that debate in this journal, I was concerned to support Dallas Smythe against a peculiar kind of criticism of his views on the audience commodity . I called it criticism of the form \"yes, yes, of course. . . but what about X?\" ; or criticism in which the concept of the audience commodity \"seems self-evidently true, but not terribly interesting . Its theoretical meaning is obvious, and already exhausted. There is much that is new outside it, but nothing new within it\" . I think that there is something quite new within it, but I am no longer sure that Smythe would agree with me about what it is . His very important point (expanded in his recent book, Dependency Road, 1981) 1 is that mass media sell audiences to advertisers, and that these audiences perform value-adding labour in the marketing of commodities . But from the very beginning of this debate I felt that watching, listening itself was the new thing within the media that needed attention . And this is what I attend to below. Just what is it that we have heretofore called \"an audience commodity\"? The \"audience commodity\" is the talk of the TV trade. In his article Smythe cites the talk of traders, and his book cites more. Jhally notes that \"network executives and advertisers talk about buying and selling audiences\" . Now, the talk of traders is valuable data as to what they believe to be true . But that doesn't mean it is true . The nature of what they buy and sell may be invisible to them, or only partly visible, in distorted form. Things go on behind their backs . I will stick with advertising-based media here because this is the case that demands clear understanding. Ifwe are wrong or unclear about the nature of the \"audience commodity\" in this classic case, we are sure to be wrong on the others . Indeed, in this case, the \"obvious\" case, the \"audience commodity\" turns out to be different from what it first appears .

Critical Sociology and Authoritarian State Socialism

Abstract: Jurgen Habermas has demonstrated the possibility in the West of a process of democratisation that shows the limits of technocratic rationalisation of polity and economy. Moreover, he has done this (however tentatively) while presenting advanced capitalism as a framework of political and cultural instabilities, potentially crisis- and conflict-laden. It is thus that he has reconstructed Marxism as a critical sociology. However, he has not systematically addressed the problem of the relationship of a Marxist critical sociology to those societies that use a version of Marxism as their ‘ideology’ of legitimation. While it is not necessarily his task or that of his co-workers to produce a theory of the so-called socialist societies, it is nevertheless fair to ask if those approaches and concepts of his that have universal aspiration contribute to such a critical theory. For today most inherited Marxist theory, from Engels and Plekhanov to Lenin and Trotsky (and even Lukacs, Gramsci and Sartre), is either powerless in the face of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, or worse even contributes to their legitimation. In this essay I shall attempt to investigate the possible uses of Starnberg critical sociology for the study of these societies.

Habermas's Social and Political Theory

Abstract: Jurgen Habermas is the most distinguished, and perhaps by that token also the most controversial, social theorist and political philosopher writing in German today.1 In the English-speaking world, to adopt a well-worn phrase, Habermas’s works are well known, but they are not yet known well. In some part this is because of vagaries of translation. Four of Habermas’s major writings have been translated into English under the titles of Toward a Rational Society,2 Knowledge and Human Interests,3 Theory and Practice,4 and Legitimation Crisis. These, however, represent only part of a vast output, and they have not been published in a chronology which conforms directly to the development of Habermas’s ideas. The original version of Theorie und Praxis, for example, was published in 1962, some years before Erkenntnis und Interesse (Knowledge and Human Interests), but these have appeared in reverse order in English. A more important reason for the relative lack of impact that Habermas’s work has had among English-speaking social scientists is that he writes from the context of unfamiliar intellectual traditions: those of Frankfurt critical theory, hermeneutics, and Hegelian philosophy, as well as Marxism. To attempt a mix of all these sounds formidable enough, but Habermas’s compass in fact extends much more widely.

Elements of a Radical Theory of Public Life: From Tönnies to Habermas and Beyond

Abstract: Since the Bolshevik Revolution, all emancipatory political thinking has been concerned with the subject of public life. Initiated by Rosa Luxemburg's critique of the earliest phase of that revolution,' this tradition of autonomous political thinking is of considerable relevance to any deepened understanding of the growth of public spheres under late capitalist conditions . At least, this is the argument of the following essay, which can also be read as a tentative and by no means exhaustive survey of this tradition's achievements and failures . It should be emphasised that the starting point of this survey is immanent. It seeks to avoid \"mere moralizing\" (as Hegel called it) by thinking with and against several important twentieth-century contributors to a theory of autonomous public life. The argument begins with 'Ponnies' path-breaking critique of public opinion . The narrative then broadens into an examination of Dewey's attempt to retrieve and radicalise the old liberal bourgeois principle ofpublicity. Dewey's defence of the principle of \"free and systematic communication\" is seen to be especially important, inasmuch as it foregrounds themes of vital importance to more recent critiques of late capitalism-especially to those of Jurgen Habermas . During the past several decades, it is argued, Habermas has made the most interesting and ambitious contributions to a radical theory of public life . These contributions are analysed and evaluated in some detail . It is proposed that his recent preoccupation with a theory of universal pragmatics is less than fully consistent with itself . Weakened by several internal difficulties, and therefore unable to realise its guiding political intentions and implications, this theoretical project is marked by political retreats . Habermas' advocacy of new forms of public life, it is argued, is contradicted by the abstract-formal mode of reconstructive argumentation which has more and more come to guide his inquiries . The theoretical project of defending the principle of autonomous public life, the remaining third of the essay concludes, must accordingly move beyond the antinomies and formalisms ofHabermas' otherwise important arguments . This project must seek to internalise a range of substantive theoretical and political questions, several of which are briefly analysed .

Marcuse's Freudian Marxism

Abstract: Marcuse's early essays in the 1930s on the emancipatory content of German idealism and bourgeois culture prepared the way for his search for a materialist concept of reason that could anchor emancipatory struggle, largely individuated at first, during advanced capital? ism's "total mobilization". Indeed this was the raison d'etre of critical theory as a whole, al? though Marcuse is distanced from Horkheimer and Adorno (and especially from Habermas, a second-generation member of the Frankfurt School) by his reading of Freud. Where Adorno viewed Freud entirely as a profound analyst of the social manipulation of our inner cores, Marcuse treated Freud both as a perceptive critic of bourgeois repression and also as a prophet of liberation [ 1 ]. This more than any? thing else has made enemies for Marcuse both on the right and the left. Either he is read as an uninformed Epicurean who endorses "total" liberation from bourgeois morality or as a mis? directed instinct theorist who substitutes biolo

Critical theory, curriculum and teaching

Abstract: 1. I wish to express my thanks to Stephen Juan and Phil Jones, members of the Australian Association for Independent Education Policy Research, and to John Freeland for discussions and criticisms of drafts of this paper.

The Differences That Make a Difference: A Comment on Richard Bernstein

Abstract: In contrast to Bernstein's emphasis on the common ground shared by Rorty and Habermas, this paper stresses the basic differences between them, particularly their diverse assessments of rationalism, universalism, foundationalism and developmentalism, as well as their opposed evaluations of systematic thought and critical social theory. Several difficulties with Rorty's views on reason, truth and objectivity, as with his historicism and physicalism are suggested. It is concluded that Bernstein's emphasis on the common elements in their "moral-political vision", in the face of these striking theoretical differences, overestimates the extent to which normative ideals can survive being cut off from larger contexts of ideas.

Organizational effectiveness : a study of the concept, with empirical reference to a general nurse training system

Abstract: The concept of organizational effectiveness is of vital importance to accountants because it forms the ultimate criterion for the design of accounting information systems for control. It also has close conceptual links with the concept of corporate accountability. Depending on how an accountant defines effective organizational behaviour he/she will seek to design management information systems that implement and achieve this perspective. Depending on how and in whose interests a corporation is seen to be working towards accountants will design appropriate corporate reports. This thesis examines the concept in detail and argues that theories of effectiveness have" generally been developed on what Habermas calls a technical level of interest. Little research attention has been paid to developing concepts of effectiveness on the hermeneutical and critical levels of interest. Critique, however, is felt to be vital for the moral and intellectual development of social theory and social science, of which accounting is constitutive. Indeed, Habermas argues that the function of theoretical and practical discourse is to help lead to an ideal situation of rational consensus and of free speech which is unconstrained by sources of domination. Based on this epistemological stance, the thesis develops a technically-interested theory of O.E. This and the research inSights it produces are evaluated and an integrated, critical theory of O.E. is proposed. This is then used to generate additional information from the same empirical base~ a process which shows the inadequacy of developing only technical theories of effectiveness. Finally, the implications of such an integrated theory of O.E. for accounting are examined and new research directions are suggested. The structure of the thesis itself has attempted to be an analogue of critique~ beginning with a technical theory of O.E., evaluating this and proposing an enriched, integrated alternative. It has also attempted to be a thesis in the social science, emphasizing the holism of social knowledge •

Linguistic Acts, Aesthetic Criticism, and Curriculum Policy

Abstract: presenting criticism as a part of curriculum policy. Recent contributions by moral philosophers1 and philosophers of language2 have shed considerable light on such matters and, in this paper, I wish to address this topic by utilizing and extending some of their findings. The results of this investigation, I believe, will reveal a number of conceptual problems with critical theory as it is currently presented in the literature. Recognition of these should open the way for some rethinking on the topic of criticism with, it is hoped, beneficial effects on the future conduct of education in the arts.

Jürgen habermas and the rationalization of communicative interaction

Abstract: This paper analyzes J. Habermas's theory of “universal pragmatics” and examines the extent to which Habermas's ideal speech community is predicted upon a specific type of relationship between the individual and society. The ability of the theory of universal pragmatics to overcome the form of domination institutionalized by modern societies is questioned, and the argument is made that Habermas's radical program of emancipation is vitiated (1) by Habermas's conflation of “transcendental” and “situationally engaged” enlightenment and (2) by Habermas's inability to reintegrate practical-emancipatory and technical forms of reason. Habermas's idea of “communicative competence” replicates, rather than displaces, the “modern” solution to the problem of the relationship between the individual and society.

"Critical Theory" in Context: the Political Cabaret of Pre-war German sociology

Abstract: Pre-war German Sociology was marked by the tensions of the times. Some sociologists fled the country, others eschewed Nazism while remaining. Still others contributed ideological service to the Party. Among the best known of these was Hans Freyer. It has rarely been observed that many of Freyer's formulations share a similar form to the well known "critical theory" of Horkheimer and Adorno, not only in what they propose but also in what they oppose, notably 'positivism'. Critical theory may be seen to have had strange bed-fellows in its contemporary context.

Desire and History in Roland Barthes

Abstract: In the final pages of Mythologies Roland Barthes describes the contradictory position which the critic of culture-the mythologist-inhabits . The critical thrust of his project lies in displacing the effect of normalization or naturalization which myth produces so that the sign can be grasped anew within the historical processes that gave it form . Yet it is precisely because the critic relentlessly analyzes his own culture that he is unable to live in its plenitude. If the critic analyzes the mythology of 'good French wine', as Barthes does, he can no longer innocently enjoy it . The act of reinventing history precludes to him both the comfortable existence within the collective myths of his community and the luxury of a utopian vision of the future . \"For him,\" Barthes writes :