Showing papers on "Realism published in 1992"

Truth and Objectivity

Abstract: Inflating deflationism minimal truth, internal realism and superassertibility convergence and cognitive command appendix - the euthyphro contrast cognitive command and the theoreticity of observation realism and the best explanation of belief quietism appendix - on an argument against the coherence of minimalism about meaning.

Notes on Pragmatism and Scientific Realism

Abstract: Research" (1991) is informative for the overview it provides of scientific realism. At the outset House tells the reader that he will forgo comparisons between scientific realism and interpretivism, pragmatism, and critical theory in order to focus on "its [scientific realism's] introduction and explication" (p. 2). At the end he poses the question: "How does scientific realism compare with perspectives such as interpretivism, pragmatism, and critical theory?" (p. 9). A note of response is not the place to pursue such comparisons in detail, but a few comments, perhaps, may provide the basis for beginning such comparisons, in this case between pragmatism and scientific realism. Pragmatism and scientific realism share a number of assumptions about science, language, and the world. Both are also opposed to positivism/empiricism. Given their areas of agreement as well as some common opponents, it is surprising that these two schools of thought end up so far apart. The following comments profile a few of their affinities as well as a few dramatic differences that divide them.

Society and Nature: Towards a Green Social Theory

Abstract: Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Science, Social Science, Politics and the Environment: Some Unhelpful Dichotomies Biological Theory and the Environment * Social Theory and the Environment * Conclusion: Towards an Eclectic but Unified Approach * Notes 2. People, Nature and Social Theory People and Nature in Early Sociological Theory: Evolutionism as a False Lead * Tonnies: From Land and Community to Society * Modernity, Community and Human Nature: The Chicago School of Sociology * From Biologism to Functionalism * People and Environment: The Arguments of Later Marxism * Conclusion: Society, Nature and Social Theory * Notes 3. 'Nature as Man's Inorganic Body': Marx's Conceptual Framework Nature, Alienation and People: The Early Marxian Perspective * Marxism and the Environment: Continuing Developments and Debates * Marx and Engels on People and Nature: An Assessment and Comparison with Existing Environmental Analysis * Developing Marx's Approach * Notes 4. Arguments within Biology: From Neo-Darwinism to the Study of Organisms and Their Environments A Methodological Issue * The Neo-Darwinian Revolution * Socioecology: Organisms in Ecological Context * Organism and Environment: The Emergent 'New Biology' * Notes 5. 'Nature as Alive': Social Relations and Deep Mental Structures The Evolution of Mind * Biology and the Problematic Notion of 'Culture' * The Mind: Eroding the Culture-Nature Distinction * An Understanding of the Biologically Evolved Mind * Social Relations and Nature as 'Alive' * Alienation and Fetishisation: Returning to the Yanomami Case Study * 'Women as Nature': Consciousness, Natural Differences and Environmentalism * Notes 6. Spreading 'Man's Inorganic Body': Some Implications Space, Time and Modernity: Aspects of Giddens' Account * Society and Nature: Developing and Using Giddens' Analysis * Nature and the Time-Space Distanciation of Social Life * Time-Space Distanciation Combining with Alienation: The Instance of Food and Health * Time-Space Distanciation, Consumption and the Reification of 'Nature' * Notes 7. Nature Reified: A Contemporary Case Study Notes 8. Society and Nature: From Theory to Practice Realism: Some Areas of Debate * From Theory to Practice * Notes Epilogue Index

Some reflections on ethnography and validity 1

Abstract: The question of what are appropriate criteria for assessing ethnographic research has become a matter of considerable debate in recent years. This paper identifies four philosophical positions that have influenced ethnographers’ thinking about this issue: realism, positivism#shmethodism, relativism, and instrumentalism. The implications of these ideas for judgements about the validity of ethnographic findings are sketched in the first half of the paper. In the second half, I argue that none of these positions is adequate and outline a more satisfactory view. 1 An earlier version of this paper was given at a seminar at the Centre for Applied Research in Education, University of East Anglia. I thank the participants in that seminar for fruitful discussion of the issues covered here.

The Country and the City on the Copperbelt

Abstract: Themes of rurality, or "the country," have often provided powerful metaphors for the construction of indigenous critiques of urban, capitalist, industrial encroachments. In a variety of settings, notions of "the country" as natural, pure, authentic, or whole have provided powerful alternative moral images to be contrasted with urban realities conceived as artificial, immoral, corrupt, and anomic. Thus, Raymond Williams (1973) has explored the way in which concepts of country and city in England over the centuries have provided central tropes for conceptualizing the social and economic changes associated with capitalist industrialization. In the same spirit, John and Jean Comaroff (1987) have shown in their work on the Tshidi of South Africa how, where historical consciousness is not formulated according to the conventions of "narrative realism," a set of dualistic contrasts involving notions of inside versus outside, work versus labor, and rural versus urban has provided an implicit critical commentary on the exploitative system of migrant wage labor. Part I of this article will show how constructions of "the country" in Zambia have been contrasted with urban ills in similar ways, both by localist workers with strong links to rural areas, and by more cosmopolitan urbanites during the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. Part II, however, will go on to show how such critiques of contrast tended to give way in the late 1970s and 1980s to a more inwardly directed critique that located the blame for urban ills in the supposed "selfishness" of Zambians. Part III explores some of the connections between a changing political-economic situation and these changes in styles of critical apprehension of urban ills. It argues that the shift in styles of critique is linked to changes in ideas of "the country" that have come about through political-economic shifts, as urban dwellers' life trajectories have increasingly been brought into conflict with places long imagined and idealized from a certain distance.

Feudal Europe, 800–1300: communal discourse and conflictual practices

Abstract: The discipline of international relations faces a new debate of fundamental significance. After the realist challenge to the pervasive idealism of the interwar years and the social scientific argument against realism in the late 1950s, it is now the turn of critical theorists to dispute the established paradigms of international politics, having been remarkably successful in several other fields of social inquiry. In essence, critical theorists claim that all social reality is subject to historical change, that a normative discourse of understandings and values entails corresponding practices, and that social theory must include interpretation and dialectical critique. In international relations, this approach particularly critiques the ahistorical, scientific, and materialist conceptions offered by neorealists. Traditional realists, by contrast, find a little more sympathy in the eyes of critical theorists because they join them in their rejection of social science and structural theory. With regard to liberal institutionalism, critical theorists are naturally sympathetic to its communitarian component while castigating its utilitarian strand as the accomplice of neorealism. Overall, the advent of critical theory will thus focus the field of international relations on its “interparadigm debate” with neorealism.

For Reason and Realism in Marketing

Abstract: The author responds to the comments by Peter and by Zinkhan and Hirschheim on his 1990 JM article, “Truth in Marketing Theory and Research.”

Traditions of International Ethics: TWENTIETH-CENTURY REALISM

Abstract: The preceding chapter explored the roots of the realist tradition. This chapter looks at the work of twentieth-century realists who typically have seen themselves as participants in a common theoretical enterprise that reaches back at least to Machiavelli (Carr 1946, 63–64; Meinecke 1957) or Thucydides (Morgenthau 1946, 42; Gilpin 1986, 304). Realists such as E. H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau played central roles in establishing international relations as an academic discipline in Britain and the United States. In recent years realism has reestablished its predominance in the academic study of international relations. Realist arguments also remain prevalent in contemporary policy debates. All of this, as well as the continuing relevance of the realist challenge to morality in foreign policy, makes these writers an essential subject for this volume. Realist premises Rather than focus on individual theorists, however, I will consider twentieth-century realists as a group, reflecting a distinctive school or style of analysis with four central premises. Realism stresses “the primacy in all political life of power and security” (Gilpin 1986, 305). This focus arises from an account of human nature that emphasizes self-interest and the egoistic passions and an account of international relations that emphasizes the constraints imposed by international anarchy. As a result realists typically argue that “universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states” (Morgenthau 1954, 9). These realist premises concerning egoism, anarchy, power, and morality in international relations define the basic structure of the realist tradition of international ethics during the twentieth century.

Realism or Relativism for Marketing Theory and Research: A Comment on Hunt's “Scientific Realism”:

Abstract: Hunt's 1990 interpretation of scientific realism is compared with the relativistic/constructionist view previously introduced in this journal. Though some similarities are found, the two views diff...

Vital Signs: Medical Realism in Nineteenth-Century Fiction

Abstract: "Vital Signs" offers both a reinterpretation of the 19th-century novel and a methodological challenge to literary historians Rejecting theories that equate realism with representation, Lawrence Rothfield argues that literary history forms a subset of the history of discourses and their attendant practices He demonstrates in particular how clinical medicine provided Balzac, Flaubert, Eliot and others with narrative strategies, epistemological assumptions and models of professional authority, and he traces the linkages between medicine's eventual decline in scientific and social status and realism's displacement by naturalism, detective fiction and modernism

Sequel to history : postmodernism and the crisis of representational time

Abstract: Sequel to History offers a comprehensive definition of postmodernism as a reformation of time. Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth uses a diversified theoretical approachdrawing on post-structuralism, feminism, new historicism, and twentieth-century scienceto demonstrate the crisis of our dominant idea of history and its dissolution in the rhythmic time of postmodernism. She enlarges this definition in discussions of several crises of cultural identity: the crisis of the object, the crisis of the subject, and the crisis of the sign. Finally, she explores the relation between language and time in post-modernism, proposing an arresting theory of her own about the rhythmic nature of postmodern temporality. Because the postmodern construction of time appears so clearly in narrative writing, each part of this work is punctuated by a "rhythm section" on a postmodern narrative (Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy, CortNBzar's Hopscotch, and Nabokov's Ada); these extended readings provide concrete illustrations of Ermarth's theoretical positions. As in her critically acclaimed Realism and Consensus in the English Novel, Ermarth ranges across disciplines from anthropology and the visual arts to philosophy and history. For its interdisciplinary character and its lucid definition of postmodernism, Sequel to History will appeal to all those interested in the humanities.

Realism, Neorealism, and American Liberalism

Abstract: Neorealism has recently been portrayed as an attempt to systematize the insights of classical realism in order to put them on a more solid theoretical foundation. This essay rejects this common characterization of the emergence of neorealism by arguing that neorealism constitutes a fundamentally different conceptualization of international politics than that provided by classical realists. Neorealism is best understood as an alternative to classical realism shaped by enduring liberal traditions in the United States, which is where neorealism emerged and thrives.

Rethinking criminology : the realist debate

Abstract: Reflections on realism, Roger Matthews and Jock Young ten points of realism, Jock Young the analysis of crime, John Lea the free market experiment, Ian Taylor realist criminology: a critique, Vincenzo Ruggerio rediscovering crime, John Lowman.

Institutional Realism: Social and Political Constraints on Rational Actors

Abstract: Grafstein offers critiques of the conventional arguments, challenging their view that institutions are human creations automatically reformed or replaced as society's beliefs and preferences dictate He argues that institutions are distinct physical entities not subject to human authorization

Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic

Abstract: Foreword Translator's note Introduction Postscript Part I. Cacaphony at the First Writers' Congress of 1934 on the Subject of 'Socialist Realism' 1. The congress 2. Socialist realism Part II. The Realist Obsession in Nineteenth-Century Russia: 3. Interdiscursivity and filiations 4. The discursive base of realism in Russia 5. The course of criticism 6. The course of fiction: from the superfluous man to the earliest representation of the new man 7. Displacements and repetitions: the discursive pedestal of realism consolidated Part III. The Obsession With Transparency: 8. The establishment of monologism 9. In search of the new realism: battles over the discursive base 10. The new figural trajectory of the hero 11. Socialist realism and its figures: fictional constraints on the 'positive hero' Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index of names.

Approximate Truth and Scientific Realism

Abstract: This paper describes a theory of accuracy or approximate truth and applies it to problems in the realist interpretation of scientific theories. It argues not only that realism requires approximate truth, but that an adequate theory of approximation also presupposes some elements of a realist interpretation of theories. The paper distinguishes approximate truth from vagueness, probability and verisimilitude, and applies it to problems of confirmation and deduction from inaccurate premises. Basic results are cited, but details appear elsewhere. Objections are surveyed, including arguments by Miller, Laymon, and Laudan. Comparison is made with Niiniluoto's theory of verisimilitude, and the utility of his theory for realism assessed.

Realism, Empiricism and Social Constructionism Psychological Theory and the Social Dimensions of Mind and Action

Abstract: This article attempts to characterize scientific realism as a viable alternative metatheory for psychological science that is superior to traditional empiricism. It is suggested that scientific realism provides a richer conception of psychological theory than traditional empiricism, and enables the theoretical psychologist to acknowledge the respects in which human actions and psychological states may be said to be social in nature, without abandoning the traditional scientific virtues of linguistic and epistemological objectivity that have been rejected by social constructionist and relativist theorists.

Realism, Imperialism, and Democracy A Response to Gilbert

Abstract: R ALISM IS NO DIFFERENT from other social science theories in its effort to provide both analysis and prescription. Alan Gilbert finds the analytic aspects of realism inadequate and its normative implications unfortunate if not reprehensible. Gilbert argues that realism is self-contradictory and antithetical to a world order based on democracy that could lead to peace and prosperity. He maintains that an internationalist perspective would oppose "aggression, colonialism, and neocolonialism, and sustain democracy abroad" (p. 10). He criticizes realism for endorsing concern with the life and well-being of the citizens of one's own state while ignoring the material and political condition of individuals in other states. Realism, Gilbert asserts, endorses the development of a national security apparatus that can be used to suppress the freedom of ordinary individuals domestically as well as in other countries. These are serious issues, worthy of careful consideration. In my view, Gilbert misunderstands the basic analytic claims of realist theory because he confuses domestic politics arguments, which are not realist, with international systems arguments, which are. He misrepresents the normative implications of realism by suggesting that it is an approach that encourages imperialism and expansionism, while, in fact, both the logic of the theory and its most prominent exponents, such as Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz, and Robert Gilpin, argue exactly the opposite. Gilbert does, though, raise more serious concerns about the relationship between realism and democracy both domestically and internationally. Given the Machiavellian tradition from which realism springs, these concerns cannot easily be dismissed. Neverthe-

Varieties of Realism: Thucydides and Machiavelli

Abstract: Realists have dominated the postwar study of international politics, but they have not always taken seriously the problems of realism as a moral theory. One such problem is the difficulty of reconciling realism with devotion to ethics in any sphere, including domestic politics. This problem was taken seriously by two originators of the realist school, Thucydides and Machiavelli. I explore the thought of these two authors with special attention to their views of the relation of international realism to general ethical skepticism and to domestic politics in particular. Examining their respective views of international realism, of the origin of societies, of the overall relation between justice and amoral necessity, I conclude that while for Machiavelli international realism is only a part of a more general ethical skepticism. Thucydides tries to manage a difficult if not tragic tension between the requirements of international realism and domestic morality.

The Realists and Saint Augustine: Skepticism, Psychology, and Moral Action in International Relations Thought

Abstract: The political thought of Saint Augustine contributed, primarily through the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr, to the development of political realism in the twentieth century. Augustine and the realist share a fundamental skepticism regarding the prospects of moral and political progress. It is this skepticism that is the characteristic and even definitional attribute of realist thought. But Augustine's realism is more radical than that of the modern. Modern realism assumes a certain stylized psychology that allows the realist to portray world politics as an arena of strategic interaction. Augustine's more radical skepticism doubts the possibility of rational strategic action. Yet, building on this more radical skepticism, Augustine demonstrates the possibility and the need for moral action in a realist world. Augustine challenges the modern realist to explore more systematically the skeptical foundations of realist thought.

The coherence theory of truth : realism, anti-realism, idealism

Abstract: Clarifies the coherence theory and critically discusses the standard objections to it as well as those who can be interpreted as advocating it. This book should be of interest to students of philosophy and epistemology and professional philosophers.