Critical theory

About: Critical theory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5372 publications have been published within this topic receiving 164765 citations.

Theory as a Factor and the Theorist as an Actor: The "Pragmatist Constructivist" Lessons of John Dewey and John Kenneth Galbraith'

Abstract: In IR theory debates, there exists a recurring tendency to draw a distinction between problem-solving and critical theory. Whereas problem-solving theory ostensibly pertains to the short term, critical theory purportedly examines the evolution of more enduring social structures over the long term. In this essay, the argument is made that this distinction obscures the ongoing role—equally in the long and the short runs—of theory in the reconstitution of social structures. To highlight such possibilities, the essay calls for a “pragmatist constructivism,” which applies a critical approach to the analysis of not only long-term policy possibilities but also to ongoing policy matters. After reviewing the arguments of two essentially pragmatist-constructivist scholars—John Dewey and John Kenneth Galbraith—each of whom recognized the social bases of political life and designed their research with an eye to highlighting unappreciated policy possibilities, the piece concludes by stressing both the disciplinary constraints on IR theorists and the opportunity that the constructivist turn in IR theory offers for a more sustained engagement with public debates.

Social theory as critique

Abstract: Structuration theory is intrinsically incomplete if not linked to a conception of social science as critical theory. The Constitution of Society , p. 287 The extensive oeuvre of Anthony Giddens is already a remarkable achievement. There are few contemporary social theorists and sociologists whose thinking exhibits comparable scope, diversity and subtlety. Giddens is in the process of attempting nothing less than a rethinking of the modern sociological tradition. He has written incisively and provocatively about Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Parsons and Habermas. He has grappled with every major sociological movement, including the varieties of structuralism, functionalism, systems theory, ethnomethodology, phenomenological sociology and symbolic interactionism. He has a keen sense of the relevance of contemporary philosophic currents for social thought ranging over Anglo-American, German and French philosophy. He has expanded the domain of sociological thinking by showing the importance of themes as diverse as Heidegger's reflections on temporality and the significance of time–space studies in human geography. He is always seeking to explore the dialectical interplay between theory and empirical research, and has confronted thorny questions – neglected by many other social theorists – such as the distinctive character and role of nationalism and the nation-state in contemporary societies. And he has done all this with rare hermeneutical skill. Giddens combines a flair for judicious sympathetic exposition with an uncanny ability to locate and specify problems, strengths and weaknesses in the positions and thinkers he examines. The most important and impressive feature of his work is not his intellectual virtuosity, but the systematic impulse that is evident even in his earliest writings, and which has become more focused and dominant in his recent books.

The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory

Abstract: The Frankfurt School, also known as the Institute of Social Research (Institut fur Sozialforschung), is a social and political philosophical movement of thought located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It is the original source of what is known as Critical Theory. The Institute was founded, thanks to a donation by Felix Weil in 1923, with the aim of developing Marxist studies in Germany. The Institute eventually generated a specific school of thought after 1933 when the Nazis forced it to close and move to the United States, where it found hospitality at Columbia University, New York. The academic influence of the “critical” method is far reaching in terms of educational institutions in which such tradition is taught and in terms of the problems it addresses. Some of its core issues involve the critique of modernities and of capitalist society, the definition of social emancipation and the perceived pathologies of society. Critical theory provides a specific interpretation of Marxist philosophy and reinterprets some of its central economic and political notions such as commodification, reification, fetishization and critique of mass culture.

Critical Theory of Technology and STS

Abstract: Introduction Long before contemporary Science and Technology Studies (STS), Marxism, pragmatism and various theories of modernity were associated with the study of technology. These were broad and often speculative theories that related technology to a social and political context. STS sought to supplant these competing approaches and has been largely successful. Today few look to Mumford or Dewey, Heidegger or Marcuse for insight into technology. However, when STS took what Wiebe Bijker called "the detour into the academy" to focus on empirically based case histories, it gave up the political concerns that had inspired these earlier approaches. This renunciation was easier to justify before the widespread controversies over medical care, the Internet and the environment directly implicated technology in so many different aspects of contemporary politics. Some STS researchers have now also become aware of the more politicized approaches favored in the developing world, especially Latin America. But how can the achievements of STS be preserved in the context of politically charged investigations of controversial issues? This talk proposes one way of doing this, the critical theory of technology. Critical theory of technology draws on fundamental methodological assumptions of STS to elaborate themes of the earlier tradition of modernity theory, specifically Lukacs’s early Marxism and the Frankfurt School. The key such assumptions are the notions of underdetermination, interpretative flexibility, and closure developed in the social constructivist tradition. In addition, the concept of co-construction drawn from actor network theory is useful methodologically, although critical theory of technology does not follow ANT to its radical ontological conclusions. The application of these notions to particular technologies is fruitful, but attempts to generalize them as a full fledged social theory, for example, in the writings of Bruno Latour, are not as successful as the case histories for which STS is famous. The attempt to build a political theory on the basis of STS needs to confront the principle insight of the earlier tradition, namely, the strange fact that modern societies have a “rational” culture. By this is meant the generalization of methods and concepts from mathematics and natural science as a framework for thought and action in every social sphere. This is not merely a subjective disposition but is reflected in the multiplication bureaucracies, technologies and technical disciplines which effectively organize and control most of social life. A phenomenon of this scope requires a broad approach. Critical theory of technology addresses this issue from the standpoint of the theory of rationality elaborated by the Frankfurt School. The articulation of this theory in the context of an STS-inspired approach requires significant revisions. Where the Frankfurt School proposed a very general critique of “instrumental rationality,” critical theory of technology looks to a more concrete critique of the social bias of technical disciplines, bureaucracies and technologies. The identification of such biases employs methods explored in STS and yields a critical approach to the culture of modern societies. Methods Following STS, critical theory of technology highlights the inherent contingency and complexity of technical artifacts masked by the coherence of technical explanations. In this context I suggest that the concept of a palimpsest can serve as a useful analogy. Technological design resembles a palimpsest: multiple layers of influence coming from very different regions of society and responding to different, even opposed, logics converge on a shared object. Marx sketched such an approach in the "Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy." There he writes that "[t]he concrete is concrete, because it is a combination of many objects with different destinations, i.e. a unity of diverse elements. In our thought, it therefore appears as a process of synthesis, as a result, and not as a starting point, although it is the real starting point and, therefore, also the starting point of observation and conception" (Marx 1857/1904, 293). In this passage Marx anticipates the genealogical method Foucault found in Nietzsche. These de-reifying approaches treat social "things," such as artifacts, institutions and laws, as assemblages of functional components held together by their social roles. The components disaggregate and recombine as society changes. Social history cannot rely on an Aristotelian model in which an essence endures through accidental changes. It must identify these ontological differences in the construction and meaning of its objects. The genealogical approach is useful in the case of technology. Devices and systems often retain the same name while changing components. Genealogy is especially applicable where the technical code imposed by the dominant actor is not alone in shaping design. In such cases the technology must serve a multiplicity of interests through more or less coherent assemblages of parts with a variety of functions. The interests are also translated into higher level meanings, such as ideologies and worldviews. The technocratic concept of efficiency is an example, at each historical stage translating particular interests and technical arrangements conducive to the exercise of technocratic authority. Technical disciplines and artifacts give a deceptively rational form to the multiple and ambiguous influences that appear clearly for what they are in other social institutions. Conclusion The writings of Marx and Foucault free us from a naive belief in the universality of technological and administrative efficiency. In this they converge with recent Science and Technology Studies which has rediscovered the interdependence of the social and the technical. The technical underdetermination of artifacts leaves room for social choice between different designs that have overlapping functions but better serve one or another social interest. The key point is the influence of the social on the content of the artifact and not merely on such external factors as the pace of development, packaging or usages. This means that context is not merely external to technology, but actually penetrates its rationality, carrying social requirements into the very workings of the device. References Feenberg, Andrew (2014). The Philosophy of Praxis. London: Verso. Feenberg, Andrew (2010). Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

The Critical Turn in Education: From Marxist Critique to Poststructuralist Feminism to Critical Theories of Race

Abstract: The Critical Turn in Education traces the historical emergence and development of critical theories in the field of education, from the introduction of Marxist and other radical social theories in the 1960s to the contemporary critical landscape. The book begins by tracing the first waves of critical scholarship in the field through a close, contextual study of the intellectual and political projects of several core figures including, Paulo Freire, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Michael Apple, and Henry Giroux. Later chapters offer a discussion of feminist critiques, the influx of postmodernist and poststructuralist ideas in education, and critical theories of race. While grounded in U.S. scholarship, The Critical Turn in Education contextualizes the development of critical ideas and political projects within a larger international history, and charts the ongoing theoretical debates that seek to explain the relationship between school and society. Today, much of the language of this critical turn has now become commonplace—words such as "hegemony," "ideology," and the term "critical" itself—but by providing a historical analysis, The Critical Turn in Education illuminates the complexity and nuance of these theoretical tools, which offer ways of understanding the intersections between individual identities and structural forces in an attempt to engage and overturn social injustice.