Showing papers on "Critical theory published in 2000"

One-Dimensional Man: A Systematic Critique of Human Domination and Nature-Society Relations

Abstract: Herbert Marcuse’s critical theories outline some of the most sophisticated and powerful analyses of modern capitalism’s environmental problems. Although Marcuse’s intricately crafted critiques ofte...

Contingency, hegemony, universality : contemporary dialogues on the left

Abstract: In an unusual experiment, three theorists engage in a dialogue on central questions of contemporary philosophy and politics. Their essays, organized as separate contributions that respond to one another, range over the Hegelian legacy in contemporary critical theory, the theoretical dilemmas of multiculturalism, the universalism-versus-particularism debate, the strategies of the Left in a global economy, and the relative merits of post-structuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis for a critical social theory.

Liberating the Intellectual Domain From the Practice: Public Relations, Activism, and the Role of the Scholar

Abstract: Unlike practitioners, public relations scholars must consider unintended consequences of public relations practices at the societal and individual levels. By extending the domain in this way, logical paradoxes involving activism and nomothetic models of public relations may be resolved through the introduction of critical theory. Use of critical theory illuminates the role of invisible clients in setting the public relations research agenda and in truncating our intellectual vision. Critical theory suggests ways to study activism from a new perspective that would enhance practices and further the evolution of the intellectual domain.

Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture

Abstract: Contemporary theory is full of references to the modern and the postmodern. How useful are these terms? What exactly do they mean? And how is our sense of these terms changing under the pressure of feminist analysis? In Doing Time, Rita Felski argues that it makes little sense to think of the modern and postmodern as opposing or antithetical terms. Rather, we need a historical perspective that is attuned to cultural and political differences within the same time as well as the leaky boundaries between different times. Neither the modern nor the postmodern are unified, coherent, or self-evident realities. Drawing on cultural studies and critical theory, Felski examines a range of themes central to debates about postmodern culture, including changing meanings of class, the end of history, the status of art and aesthetics, postmodernism as "the end of sex," and the politics of popular culture. Placing women at the center of analysis, she suggests, has a profound impact on the way we thing about historical periods. As a result, feminist theory is helping to reshape our vision of both the modern and the postmodern.

Serving the System: A Critical History of Distance Education.

Abstract: When analysed through the critical lens, distance education has a long history of serving the system at the expense of the lifeworld. Using Jurgen Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action as a powerful learning paradigm to diagnose problems and envision cures, this paper looks at the history of distance education in terms of its ability to foster communicative action. It concludes that most forms of distance education have served the system. However, computer conferencing carries the potential for the interactivity that enables communicative action, but does not guarantee it. Only the value choices of distance educators willing to stand up against the system in this era of corporate globalisation can ensure that they make the 'learning turn' and serve the lifeworld.

The English School's Contribution to the Study of International Relations:

Abstract: This article attempts to sketch the broad parameters of the English school's approach to International Relations. Rather than linking the English school to a via media and, in particular, to the id...

Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents (Language and Literacy Series)

Abstract: Makes a case for teaching critical theory in secondary school literature classrooms. The author argues the importance of multiple critical perspectives and urges teachers to expand their theoretical repertoires. Literary theories covered include reader response, feminism and Marxism.

Critical Citizens for an Intercultural World: Foreign Language Education as Cultural Politics. Languages for Intercultural Communication and Education.

Abstract: Introduction 1. Critical Pedagogy as cultural politics 2. Philosophical foundations for critical cultural awareness 3. The critical dimension in foreign culture education 4. The teachers' voices: How they view critical cultural awareness in foreign language/culture classes 5. Preparing critical citizens and educators for an intercultural world Bibliography Appendices

Institutional Critique: A Rhetorical Methodology for Change

Abstract: We offer institutional critique as an activist methodology for changing institutions. Since institutions are rhetorical entities, rhetoric can be deployed to change them. In its effort to counter oppressive institutional structures, the field of rhetoric and composition has focused its attention chiefly on the composition classroom, on the department of English, and on disciplinary forms of critique. Our focus shifts the scene of action and argument to professional writing and to public discourse, using spatial methods adapted from postmodern geography and critical theory.

Critical encounters in high school English : teaching literary theory to adolescents

Abstract: Makes a case for teaching critical theory in secondary school literature classrooms. The author argues the importance of multiple critical perspectives and urges teachers to expand their theoretical repertoires. Literary theories covered include reader response, feminism and Marxism.

Critical theory and the management of change in organizations

Abstract: Raises the initial problem of what is meant by the term critical theory and discusses some common misconceptions that have arisen about the meaning of this term. The dialectic logic that was championed by the group of scholars collectively known as the Frankfurt School is outlined and it is noted how dialectics transcends binary oppositional thinking. It is argued that the body of work of these scholars has a strong contemporary relevance to issues in the management of change in organizations. The other papers in the issue are introduced.

Critique of Violence: Between Poststructuralism and Critical Theory

Abstract: Critique of Violence is a highly original and lucid investigation of the heated controversy between poststructuralism and critical theory Leading theorist Beatrice Hanssen uses Walter Benjamin's essay 'Critique of Violence' as a guide to analyse the contentious debate, shifting the emphasis from struggle to dialogue between the two parties Regarding the questions of critique and violence as the major meeting points between both traditions, Hanssen positions herself between the two in an effort to investigate what critical theory and poststructuralism have to offer each other In the course of doing so, she assembles imaginative new readings of Benjamin, Arendt, Fanon and Foucault, and incisively explores the politics of recognition, the violence of language, and the future of feminist theory This groundbreaking book will be essential reading for all students of continental philosophy, political theory, social studies and comparative literature Also available in this series: Essays on Otherness Hb: 0-415-13107-3: GBP5000 Pb: 0-415-13108-1: GBP1599 Hegel After Derrida Hb: 0-415-17104-4: GBP5000 Pb: 0-415-17105-9: GBP159 9 The Hypocritical Imagination Hb: 0-415-21361-4: GBP4750 Pb: 0-415-21362-2: GBP1599 Philosophy and Tragedy Hb: 0-415-19141-6: GBP4500 Pb: 0-415-19142-4: GBP1499 Textures of Light Hb: 0-415-14273-3: GBP4250 Pb: 0-415-14274-1: GBP1399 Very Little Almost Nothing Pb: 0-415-12821-8: GBP4750 Pb: 0-415-12822-6: GBP1599

American Indian Geographies of Identity and Power: At the Crossroads of Indigena and Mestizaje.

Abstract: In this article, Sandy Marie Anglas Grande outlines the tensions between American Indian epistemology and critical pedagogy. She asserts that the deep structures of critical pedagogy fail to consider an Indigenous perspective. In arguing that American Indian scholars should reshape and reimagine critical pedagogy, Grande also calls for critical theorists to reexamine their epistemological foundations. Looking through these two lenses of critical theory and Indigenous scholarship, Grande begins to redefine concepts of democracy, identity, and social justice.

A Critical Archaeology Revisited

Abstract: In 1987, a small number of historical archaeologists issued a call for archaeologists to embrace the teachings of critical theory so that their research could be used to challenge societal structures of inequality. Although community partnering, an outgrowth of critical theory, has become increasingly important to archaeological practice, a true archaeological “praxis” has yet to be achieved. Possible reasons for this include a decontextualization of critical theory from its historical origin, the subsequent reification of capitalism in critical research, and the obscuring of agency in critical interpretations because of an emphasis on top‐down or macroscale models of society. We suggest that true praxis can be achieved in historical archaeology through a reconceptualization of the relationship between individuals and society and through a structuring of archaeological research that seeks to create a discursive relationship between past and present peoples and between researchers and community partners. W...

Rethinking social justice in schools: how will we recognize it when we see it?

Abstract: The dialogue of this paper operates at two levels. First, it seeks to rethink the various perspectives on social justice evident in the academic literature, reviewing what is collectively known about it and where current thinking is taking and/or should be taking us. Second, it reports on research concerning the schooling of students with disabilities or, more accurately, research concerning the practices of teachers in relation to the inclusion of students with disabilities within ‘mainstream’ classrooms. These two discussions come together through their collaborative interest in recognizing social justice when they ‘see’ it; the data from the research are used to inform the theory it illustrates and the theory is used to explain teachers' practices. In this critical sense it is more than a dialogue, with its parts dialectically related. The paper's critique also extends to questioning whose interests are served (and whose are not) by various social justice perspectives and their applications to schooling. It concludes that ‘a critical theory of social justice must consider not only distributive patterns, but also the processes and relationships that produce and reproduce those patterns’ (Young 1990: 241).

The Promise of the City: Space, Identity, and Politics in Contemporary Social Thought

Abstract: The Promise of the City proposes a new theoretical framework for the study of cities and urban life. Finding the contemporary urban scene too complex to be captured by radical or conventional approaches, Kian Tajbakhsh offers a threefold, interdisciplinary approach linking agency, space, and structure. First, he says, urban identities cannot be understood through individualistic, communitarian, or class perspectives but rather through the shifting spectrum of cultural, political, and economic influences. Second, the layered, unfinished city spaces we inhabit and within which we create meaning are best represented not by the image of bounded physical spaces but rather by overlapping and shifting boundaries. And third, the macro forces shaping urban society include bureaucratic and governmental interventions not captured by a purely economic paradigm. Tajbakhsh examines these dimensions in the work of three major critical urban theorists of recent decades: Manuel Castells, David Harvey, and Ira Katznelson. He shows why the answers offered by Marxian urban theory to the questions of identity, space, and structure are unsatisfactory and why the perspectives of other intellectual traditions such as poststructuralism, feminism, Habermasian Critical Theory, and pragmatism can help us better understand the challenges facing contemporary cities.

Red Kant, or the Persistence of the Third "Critique" in Adorno and Jameson

Abstract: slogan-the one absolute and we may even say 'transhistorical' imperative of all dialectical thought-will unsurprisingly turn out to be the moral of The Political Unconscious as well."' A great deal of critical theory, since Jameson issued his mandate, has assumed an identity between the aesthetic (particularly in its Kantian and modernist versions) and the process of ideological deformation of the material, the real, the sociopolitical; ultimately, of the historical. For many critics working during the last two decades from the Marxian or Marxian-derived premises of the "critique of aesthetic ideology," it has been axiomatic that Kantian aesthetics and the art contemporaneous with it establish an essentialist or transcendental ideology of literary-cultural value whose Other, from romanticism through modernism, will be the material, the social, and the historical; whose Other, to formulate it more precisely, will be the critical attempt to engage the material, social, and historical from a political, interventionist

Uncovering training resistance

Abstract: This paper draws on critical theory in an attempt to show how organizational ideologies operate in resistance to change that is engendered by training. In particular, the paper introduces critical theory’s views of dialectical reasoning and its relationship to oppression in human thought and action. It then describes the liberating themes from adult education and training concepts and theories. In this discussion, the paper elucidates the notion that unquestioned ideological assumptions produce fallacies that become instrumental modes for domination in interpersonal relationships. It illustrates this in a case analysis of an attempt to change the prevailing management ideology at a major university. Embedded within the attempted change program is the struggle for a new synthesis of meaning in the relationships and the countervailing antithesis of management resistance. The paper concludes with an outline of some of the implications of embracing a critical theory perspective as a trainer and change agent.

Meeting Halfway between Rochester and Frankfurt: Generative Salience, Focal Points, and Strategic Interaction

Abstract: Rational choice theory and the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas exclude important social categories from their analyses of strategic interaction. Successful strategic action in many contexts, however, depends upon the irreducibly intersubjective categories of the lifeworld. I defend this claim by analyzing the use of focal points to solve the multiple equilibria problem in coordination games, reconstructing both the generation of the salience behind focal points as well as the strategic rationality of using them. The goal of this reconstruction is to demonstrate the compatibility of what appears to be mutually hostile research traditions, validating the intuition that together they provide a better understanding of politics than either school can on its own. Knowledge is elusive and volatile; it escapes measurement. That's why the conquering god of that era was Hermes ... god of crossroads. -Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

Cultural Studies and Critical Theory

Abstract: This second edition provides a comprehensive overview of issues in the humanities at the turn of the new millennium, providing historical background, defining key terms, and introducing the ideas of key thinkers. This book is intended for undergraduate students in cultural studies and theory, literary studies, literary theory and history, semiotics, textual theory, cinema studies, film theory and criticism and postmodern theory.

From Pluralist to Patriotic Politics: Putting Practice First

Abstract: Introduction: Against the Neutralist 'Politics' of Political Theory Two Pluralist Polities Compromising Zero-Sum Morals Towards the Patriotic Polity Governance: Towards the Patriotic Lawmaker Welfare: Towards the Patriotic Corporation Recognition: Towards a Patriotic Respect of the Individual Conclusion: Aim Higher

Stations of the Cross: Adorno and Christian Right Radio

Abstract: Since the 1970s, American society has provided especially fertile ground for the growth of the Christian right and its influence on both political and cultural discourse. In Stations of the Cross political theorist Paul Apostolidis shows how a critical component of this movement’s popular culture—evangelical conservative radio—interacts with the current U.S. political economy. By examining in particular James Dobson’s enormously influential program, Focus on the Family —its messages, politics, and effects—Apostolidis reveals the complex nature of contemporary conservative religious culture. Public ideology and institutional tendencies clash, the author argues, in the restructuring of the welfare state, the financing of the electoral system, and the backlash against women and minorities. These frictions are nowhere more apparent than on Christian right radio. Reinvigorating the intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School, Apostolidis shows how ideas derived from early critical theory—in particular that of Theodor W. Adorno—can illuminate the political and social dynamics of this aspect of contemporary American culture. He uses and reworks Adorno’s theories to interpret the nationally broadcast Focus on the Family , revealing how the cultural discourse of the Christian right resonates with recent structural transformations in the American political economy. Apostolidis shows that the antidote to the Christian right’s marriage of religious and market fundamentalism lies not in a reinvocation of liberal fundamentals, but rather depends on a patient cultivation of the affinities between religion’s utopian impulses and radical, democratic challenges to the present political-economic order. Mixing critical theory with detailed analysis, Stations of the Cross provides a needed contribution to sociopolitical studies of mass movements and will attract readers in sociology, political science, philosophy, and history.

Mediation, conflict resolution and critical theory

Abstract: Focusing primarily on questions of methodology, this article argues that mediation in international affairs has yet to be properly analysed using the theoretical tools provided by the post-positivist turn in international relations theory. Recognizing the familiar distinction between power-political and facilitative approaches, the article makes the case for a third approach based on the political theory of Jurgen Habermas. The debate between neorealist forms of analysis and critical theory is well known. More contentious, however, is the argument that facilitative forms of third party intervention, such as the Norwegian mediation of the Oslo Accords, cannot operate without a more formal and abstract notion of the ‘right’ in politics. Facilitation's gently working of the lifeworld has much in common with the hermeneutic approach to social science. Like hermeneutics, therefore, facilitation may suffer as it fails to root out relations of power and domination. Even ‘interim stages’ in conflict resolution need a sense of ‘final status’ to gather a sense of pace and direction. The Oslo Accords, for example, demonstrate the need to create a strong vision of ‘final status’ during the interim stage. The article leaves the practical political questions to one side. However, a ‘methodological space’ for critical theory opens up once the defects of the tradition are highlighted, a space which may be filled by distinct forms of mediation practice.

The Politics of Inclusive Agreements: Towards a Critical Discourse Theory of Democracy:

Abstract: This article offers a critical assessment of Jurgen Habermas's discourse theory of democracy. It suggests that the main thrust of a discursive account of legitimacy is the attempt to show how the demands of maximal democratic inclusion might be reconciled with a politics of reasoned agreements. While this aim is endorsed, the thrust of the argument is that a critical theory of democracy requires that normative frameworks that bring certain substantive features of democratic life into focus should supplement Habermas's procedural approach. First, the account of maximal inclusion has to be developed in a way that clarifies the egalitarian demands of distributive justice. Secondly, the account of a politics of reasoned agreements has to be connected to a theoretical analysis of the bonds of solidarity that could underpin such a form of political engagement. These developments contribute to a critical theory that gives a more adequate account of the motivational basis of discursive democracy.

Qualitative research in education and the critical use of rationality

Abstract: Qualitative research is often seen as the antithesis of quantitative research, both approaches being regarded as mutually exclusive. In the first part of the article the author shows how critical theory can shape the practice of integrated qualitative and quantitative research. The author contends that the qualitative-quantitative research methodology dichotomy can be transcended, if research methodology is framed in a critical paradigm. Quantitative research methodology grounded in positivist theory should not simply be dismissed for qualitative, interpretive educational research. These approaches to educational research should be seen as complementary to the broader social discourse of educational research. In the second part of the article the author argues that qualitative educational research in a critical spirit is constituted by the notion of rationality. Rationality is linked to clarity of articulation, reflexive attunement to society, creativity and divergence, intuition and dialogue, all constitutive rules of educational research. The author develops the argument that qualitative educational research is inextricably linked to the critical use of rationality.

Social Creativity, Collective Subjectivity and Contemporary Modernity

Abstract: Nature, social systems and collective causality action and movement, memory and social creativity the logic of scientific research evolution and history modernity, tradition and reflexivity in contemporary Brazil the forms of co-ordination of the economy dialectics and modernity, autonomy and solidarity by way of conclusion - critical theory at the turn of the century.

Group Enmity and Accord: The Commercial Press in Three American Cities

Abstract: Social theory provides two opposing views about the role played by mass communications in modernizing America. Mass society theorists, including Jose Ortega y Gasset (1932), George Seldes (1938), and Joseph Bensman and Bernard Rosenberg (1963), and also critical theorists, especially Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (1991 [1944]) and Jurgen Habermas (1989), maintained that the mass press weakens authentic forms of community, whereas, in contrast, Chicago School sociologists, especially Robert Park(1971 [1922]), contended that the newspaper, notably the ethnic press, buffers the individual against the brutalizing effects of the city’s impersonality and disorganization. Instead of encouraging reflective and rational thought, the commercial press, according to Habermas (1989: 195), is both emblem and harbinger of the decay of civil society as it reinforces the totalizing processes of modernity and offers the public crass and stultifying banalities.

Cultural imperialism: A critical theory of interorganizational change

Abstract: Current theories of organization tend to discuss the management of change across networks in a grammar of instrumental reason, thereby offering legitimacy to the imperialism that emerges when groups come together in a shared‐change experience. However, by adopting principles of critical theory, the social research project initiated by a group of scholars known as the “Frankfurt School”, we may challenge this degradation of knowledge and its companion, human domination. A critical theory of interorganizational change reveals three forms of organizational imperialism: cultural domination, cultural imposition, and cultural fragmentation. From this perspective, we may understand the deleterious human, social and cultural consequences of organizational expansionism, and thereby initiate a dialogue for cultural emancipation, a more meaningful, culturally sensitive approach to change.