Showing papers on "Critical theory published in 2017"

Service user/survivor-led research in mental health: epistemological possibilities

Abstract: This paper considers possible epistemologies for user-led and survivor research by drawing on four discourses: the mainstream English tradition, Canadian Mad Studies, critical theory more generally and feminist standpoint epistemology. It discusses general, universalising epistemologies, the extent to which these characterise the discourses at stake and the problems with knowledge claims that rest on such singular conceptualisations. The institutional and political concomitants are considered. The paper has an additional double aim: to engage with survivor scholarship around critical theory and to insert that scholarship into the field of critical theory itself in a novel manner.

Political realism as ideology critique

Abstract: This paper outlines an account of political realism as a form of ideology critique. We defend the normative edge of this critical-theoretic project against the common charge that there is a problematic trade-off between a theory’s groundedness in facts about the political status quo and its ability to envisage radical departures from the status quo. To overcome that problem, we combine insights from theories of legitimacy by Bernard Williams and other realists, Critical Theory, and analytic epistemological and metaphysical theories of cognitive bias, ideology and social construction. The upshot is an account of realism as empirically informed critique of social and political phenomena. We reject a sharp divide between descriptive and normative theory, and so provide an alternative to the anti-empiricism of some approaches to Critical Theory as well as to the complacency towards existing power structures found within liberal realism, let alone mainstream normative political philosophy, liberal or otherwise.

The Education of Radical Democracy

Abstract: The Education of Radical Democracy explores why radical democracy is so necessary, difficult, and possible and why it is important to understand it as an educative activity . The book draws on critical social theory and critical pedagogy to explain what enables and sustains work for radical democratization, and considers how we can begin such work in neoliberal societies today. Exploring examples of projects from the nineteenth century to the present day, the book sheds light on a wealth of critical tools, research studies, theoretical concepts and practical methods. It offers a critical reading of the ‘crisis of hope’ in neoliberal capitalist societies, focusing on the problem of the ‘contraction of possibilities’ for democratic agency, resistance to domination, and practices of freedom. It argues that radically democratic thinking, practice, and forms of social organization are vital for countering and overcoming systemic hegemonies and that these can be learned and cultivated. This book will be of interest to academics, practitioners, researchers, and students in education and critical theory, and to those interested in the sociology, philosophy and politics of hope. It also invites new dialogues between theorists of neoliberal power and political possibility, those engaged in projects for radical democratization, and teachers in formal and informal educational settings.

The endurance of critique

Abstract: Critique in the humanities and the social sciences has recently been under attack and even declared lifeless. Considering the report of its death to be an exaggeration but acknowledging that one should never let a good crisis go to waste, I propose a reflection on the challenges faced by the practice of critical thinking in anthropology based on my own research on AIDS in South Africa, trauma among Palestinians, and policing and punishment in France, while resituating the questions it raises in a broader history of the discipline. More specifically, I discuss two major strands, genealogical critique and critical theory, suggesting how they may be combined, and two opposed views, critical sociology and the sociology of critique, showing that ethnography can surmount their supposed irreconcilability. Affirming that critique, under its multiple forms, is inherent to the anthropological project, I contend that it is more than ever needed in times laden with worrying spectres.

Don't be fooled by ignorant schoolmasters: On the role of the teacher in emancipatory education

Abstract: The question I address in this article is how we might understand the role of the teacher in education that seeks to promote emancipation. I take up this question in conversation with German and No...

Donald Trump: A Critical Theory-Perspective on Authoritarian Capitalism

Abstract: This paper analyses economic power, state power and ideological power in the age of Donald Trump with the help of critical theory. It applies the critical theory approaches of thinkers such as Franz Neumann, Theodor W. Adorno and Erich Fromm. It analyses changes of US capitalism that have together with political anxiety and demagoguery brought about the rise of Donald Trump. This article draws attention to the importance of state theory for understanding Trump and the changes of politics that his rule may bring about. It is in this context important to see the complexity of the state, including the dynamic relationship between the state and the economy, the state and citizens, intra-state relations, inter-state relations, semiotic representations of and by the state, and ideology. Trumpism and its potential impacts are theorised along these dimensions. The ideology of Trump (Trumpology) has played an important role not just in his business and brand strategies, but also in his political rise. The (pseudo-)critical mainstream media have helped making Trump and Trumpology by providing platforms for populist spectacles that sell as news and attract audiences. By Trump making news in the media, the media make Trump. An empirical analysis of Trump’s rhetoric and the elimination discourses in his NBC show The Apprentice underpins the analysis of Trumpology. The combination of Trump’s actual power and Trump as spectacle, showman and brand makes his government’s concrete policies fairly unpredictable. An important question that arises is what social scientists’ role should be in the conjuncture that the world is experiencing. See also the related blog post "How The Frankfurt School Helps Us To Understand Donald Trump’s Twitter Populism" http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/christian-fuchs1/how-the-frankfurt-school-_b_14156190.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-donald-trump The German translation of this shorter piece was published in Der Falter 5/2017: 21-23.

Deploying Qualitative Methods for Critical Social Purposes

Abstract: Twenty years ago, in her now-famous Harvard Educational Review article, Elizabeth Ellsworth (1989) questioned the assumption that critical perspectives or critical research were either empowering or transformative. She argued that critical theory was embedded within patriarchal forms of reason, Enlightenment logic, and male domination, such that the attempted adoption of a critical lens can easily create the illusion of justice while actually reinscribing old forms of power.

From Positivism to Critical Theory: School-Community Relations toward Community Equity Literacy.

Abstract: In recent years, research on urban school–community relations has emerged with renewed vigor and a myriad of suggestions for how to best approach the topic. While most of these suggestions are anchored in positivist and interpretive epistemologies, a growing number of scholars are applying more critical approaches to school–community relations that center issues of equity and unequal power relations. However, these approaches are often perceived as being too impractical for educational leaders to implement. This article thus situates approaches to school–community relations across three epistemologies: positivism, interpretivism, and critical theory to make these ideas more accessible for educational leaders. With a focus on developing educational leaders to work equitably across school and community contexts, this article provides an operating framework for each approach that delineates assumptions, goals, views of families, strategies, and types of leadership. Finally, this article provides an e...

Critical Social Theory and Sustainable Development: The Role of Class, Capitalism and Domination in a Dialectical Analysis of Un/Sustainability

Abstract: It is still a relatively open question if and how sustainability fits into a critical theory of society. This paper's aim is to makes a contribution to the critical social theory foundations of sustainability and to reflect on the links between capitalism, class and sustainability. Sustainability has not been a very popular concept in sociological theory. One of the reasons may be that sociology has a strongly critical tradition focusing on the analysis and critique of power structures in modern society. It is therefore often sceptical of ideas coming from the policy world that are susceptible to having an administrative character. The article argues that, although sustainability has a strongly ideological character, a critical theory of society should not simply discard this notion, but aim to sublate it. Some foundations of a way to integrate sustainability into a critical theory of society are presented. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

The Spectacle and Organization Studies

Abstract: The aim of this essay is to revisit Guy Debord’s critical theory of the spectacle as formulated 50 years ago in the ‘Society of the Spectacle’ in light of the contemporary production of spectacles. Debord’s arguments about appearance, visibility and celebrity are echoed in the way organizations increasingly focus on their brand, image, impression, and reputation. Yet, the role of spectacles in organizational life has remained under-researched in organization studies. As the boundaries between fact and fiction, reality and representation, substance and appearance become increasingly blurred, questions about the production and effects of spectacles seem more pertinent than ever. Are representations faithful mirrors of reality, or attempts to conceal reality? Do they replace reality, or bring new realities into being? By articulating three possible understandings of the spectacle, as fetishism, hyper-reality or performativity, this essay invites organization scholars to examine the organization of the real a...

Starve and immolate: The politics of human weapons

Abstract: Suicide bombing and martyrdom are frequently associated with the religious violence perpetrated by Islamist groups. When in September 2014 a female suicide bomber of the Kurdish YPJ (Women’s Protection Units) blew herself up amongst IS-fighters in Kobane, the world was once again reminded that militant self-sacrifice is not the sole prerogative of fundamentalists (Al Jazeera 2014). Instead there have been numerous examples of secular and atheist organizations in the Middle East and elsewhere who use dying for a cause as a tactic. But how can people be motivated to go their deaths without any religious justifications for martyrdom or paradisiac rewards? Are those organizations really secular or are they religious with secular disguise? Bargu’s political ethnography of the struggle of leftist captives against the introduction of F-type Prisons in Turkey after the year 2000 provides an indepth look in the mindset of secularists who forge their lives into weapons. The aim of Starve and Immolate is, however, much more ambitious than merely documenting this contention. Instead, the goal is to develop a theory about the complex connections and entanglements of contemporary forms of sovereignty and resistance. In October 2000, several hundred political prisoners in Turkey went on a hunger strike in protest against the government’s plan to send them to high security prisons, where they would be subjected to cellular imprisonment. Previously the prisoners had lived together in large wards in which they could organize a political life in communes. They saw the introduction of new prisons as an attack on their organization and feared that the isolation in the new cells would be equivalent to the torture of solitary confinement. As the Turkish government showed no signs of conceding to any of their demands, the captives intensified their protest by announcing a “death fast.” Should the government not revoke its decision, the prisoners would collectively starve themselves to death. On the 61st day of the death fast on December 19, 2000 the authorities assumed that the prisoners were on the brink of death and decided to launch the “Operation Return to Life.” Ironically, it did not save any lives but led to the death of 30 captives who resisted their forcible transfer and were killed by security forces or took their own life in protest. Furthermore, the event escalated the confrontation. In certain intervals new teams of volunteers joined the hunger strike until death. Through the consumption of sugar, salt, water, and vitamin supplements during the fast they could extend their

How Can the Study of the Humanities Inform the Study of Biosemiotics

Abstract: This essay – a collection of contributions from 10 scholars working in the field of biosemiotics and the humanities – considers nature in culture. It frames this by asking the question ‘Why does biosemiotics need the humanities?’. Each author writes from the background of their own disciplinary perspective in order to throw light upon their interdisciplinary engagement with biosemiotics. We start with Donald Favareau, whose originary disciplinary home is ethnomethodology and linguistics, and then move on to Paul Cobley’s contribution on general semiotics and Kalevi Kull’s on biosemiotics. This is followed by Cobley (again) with Frederick Stjernfelt who contribute on biosemiotics and learning, then Gerald Ostdiek from philosophy, and Morten Tonnessen focusing upon ethics in particular. Myrdene Anderson writes from anthropology, while Timo Maran and Louise Westling provide a view from literary study. The essay closes with Wendy Wheeler reflecting on the movement of biosemiotics as a challenge, often via the ecological humanities, to the kind of so-called ‘postmodern’ thinking that has dominated humanities critical thought in the universities for the past 40 years. Virtually all the matters gestured to in outline above are discussed in much more satisfying detail in the topics which follow.

A pragmatist vocation for International Relations: The (global) public and its problems:

Abstract: The turns to pragmatism and practice theory in recent years are indicative of a fragmented discipline searching for the ends of International Relations theory. While diverse and contested, both bri...

Critical Theory of Technology and STS

Abstract: The Critical Theory of the early Frankfurt School promised, in Adorno’s words, a ‘rational critique of reason’. Science and Technology Studies can play a role in the renewal of this approach. STS i...

What is Missing? Jürgen Habermas's Turn to a 'Post-secular Society' and the Limits of Postmetaphysical Modernity

Abstract: This thesis examines Jürgen Habermas’s recent turn to a “post-secular society” and evaluates this move in light of the wider background of his philosophical and political thought. While taking stock of Habermas’s arguments that a postsecular turn in liberal politics is necessary in order to regenerate and thus strengthen and stabilize the normative content of the Enlightnement project, my analysis in this thesis shows that the concept of “post-secular society” raises significant normative tensions for the “postmetaphysical” character of Habermas’s philosophical and theoretical thinking. In the first part of the thesis I examine Habermas’s re-construction of the normative project of modernity (as found in the works of Kant, Hegel and Marx) independent from the metaphysical premises of “the philosophy of the subject”. My discussion brings to the fore the central role played by the “dialectic of Enlightenment” in Habermas’s thought: modernity must generate normative substance out of its own resources and thus “communicative reason” continues the Enlightenment project of finding a rational replacement for metaphysics/religion. I also underscore the role played in this project by the thesis of the “linguistification of the sacred”.

Turning the turn: New materialism, historical materialism and critical theory

Abstract: In many fields within the social sciences and the humanities, the ‘material turn’ has inspired fresh debates about human-nature relationships, ecology and the meaning of the social. However, the ne...

Knowledge in the Age of Digital Capitalism: An Introduction to Cognitive Materialism

Abstract: Knowledge in the Age of Digital Capitalism proposes a new critical theory concerning the functioning of capitalism and how we consider knowledge and information This ambitious book systematically and lucidly introduces contemporary phenomena into the framework of cognitive materialism to address some of the great themes of the social sciences: knowledge, exploitation and social class in an account of capitalism's totality in the present day Author Mariano Zukerfeld reinvigorates materialist study of communications, presenting a typology of knowledge to explain the underlying material forms of information, intellectual property and cognitive work in contemporary societies Using current examples the book also examines concerns such as free labour and the pivotal role of intellectual property The book offers nothing less than an introduction to the theory of cognitive materialism and an account of the entirety of the digital (or knowledge) capitalism of our time

Critical policy sociology: key underlying assumptions and their implications for educational policy research

Abstract: In recent decades, educational policy researchers have considered critical policy sociology, mostly known as ‘policy sociology’, as a useful research methodology for analysing educational policies....

Interlocuting classical realism and critical theory: Negotiating ‘divides’ in international relations theory:

Abstract: The history of the discipline of International Relations is usually narrated as a succession of theories that would pursue different ontologies and epistemologies and focus on different problems. T...

Beyond the Fragment: postoperaismo, postcapitalism and Marx’s ‘Notes on machines’, 45 years on

Abstract: The year 2017 marks 45 years since the first English publication of Marx’s ‘Notes on machines’ in Economy and Society. This paper critiques how Marx’s ‘Fragment’ has subsequently been repurposed in postoperaist thought, and how this wields influence on contemporary left thinking via the work of Paul Mason. Changes in labour lead proponents to posit a ‘crisis of measurability’ and an incipient communism. I use the ‘New Reading of Marx’, which picks up where debates in Economy and Society in the 1970s left off, to dispute this. Based on an analysis of value as a social form undergirded in antagonistic social relations, I argue that the Fragment’s reception runs contrary to Marx’s critique of political economy as a critical theory of society, with implications for left praxis today.

Critical theory of communication: new readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the age of the internet

Abstract: I remember discussing the work of Christian Fuchs with a colleague at the sidelines of an academic symposium in Oslo. ‘Oh, Fuchs … ’, my colleague exclaimed, ‘but is he not very normative?’ – ‘Yes’...

On the possibility of fostering critical management studies in South Africa

Abstract: The objective of Chapter 1 is to introduce the emergent paradigm of critical management studies (CMS) to South African businessmanagement academics with a view on interrogating specific applications of CMS in the discourse of business management in South Africa. To pursue this aim, CMS as an emerging paradigm will be expounded upon, and its applicability to the South African context will be explored. Chapter 1 follows a critical dialectic Chapter 1 On the possibility of fostering critical management studies in South Africa

Critical theory and contemporary paradigm differentiation

Abstract: Critical theory, drawing from the enlightenment tradition, considers social science to be tasked with liberation from ‘unnecessary restrictive traditions, ideologies, assumptions, power relations, identity formations, and so forth, that inhibit or distort opportunities for autonomy, clarification of genuine needs and wants’ and therefore greater and lasting satisfaction (Alvesson & Willmott 1992:435). Steffy and Grimes (1986:334) stress that, besides ‘expanding the research agenda by subjugating methodology to epistemic critique, Chapter 3 Critical theory and contemporary paradigm differentiation