Showing papers on "Realism published in 2001"

The Question of Realism

Abstract: My aim in this paper is to help lay the conceptual and methodological foundations for the study of realism. I come to two main conclusions: first, that there is a primitive metaphysical concept of reality, one that cannot be understood in fundamentally different terms; and second, that questions of what is real are to be settled upon the basis of considerations of ground. The two conclusions are somewhat in tension with one another, for the lack of a definition of the concept of reality would appear to stand in the way of developing a sound methodology for determining its application; and one of my main concerns has been to show how the tension between the two might be resolved.

Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society

Abstract: Introduction 1 Theory after Essentialism Accounting for the Observer Observing Observers Levels of Observing Ideological Conflicts in Observation Inside and Outside Observers Value-Freedom and Disinterestedness The Myth of "Going Native" A Few Pretty Old Rules of Method The Classics Revisited, Briefly Networks and Systems Some Elements of a Working Epistemology 2 How to Sociologize with a Hammer The Crisis of Representation Underdetermination and Theory-Ladenness The Indeterminacy of Translation Empiricizing Contexts and Demarcations Incommensurability The Double Hermeneutic Things and Persons 3 Cultural Rationality After Reason Causes and Reasons The Unity of Persons What Do Persons Want and Believe? Decisions, Decisions How to Locate Rationality Some Covariates of Rationality 4 Foundations of Culture Never Minds Who Knows? No Idea! The Meanings of Meaning Observing Culture and Cultural Observers What Is in a Culture? Cultural Stratification Art Reputation From Creativity to Genius 5 Modes of Social Association I: Encounters, Groups, and Organizations The Bodies and Brains of Persons Emotional Selves Levels of Society Encounters Groups Organizations Variations in Organizational Cultures 6 Modes of Social Association II: Networks Drift Fields of Forces Power to the Networks Metabolism Renormalization Autopoiesis Self-Similarity Unity Boundaries Network Expansions Networks of Culture 7 Realism Explained A Continuum of Realism Core Expansions and Time Machines Instruction Density Monopoly and Hegemony Competition and Decentralization Literacy and Printing Orality, Perception, and Copresence Consensus Distance and Frontstages Conclusion Appendix: Theses References Index

Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction versus the Richness of Being

Abstract: A note on the editing Part one: The unfinished manuscript introduction 1 Achilles' conjecture 2 xenophanes 3 Parmenides and the logic of being interlude: On the ambiguity of interpretations 4 Brunelleschi and the invention of perspective Part Two: Essays on the manuscript's themes 1 realism and the historicity of knowledge 2 has the scientific view of the world a special status compared with other views? 3 quantum theory and our view of the world 4 realism 5 historical comments on realism 6 what reality? 7 Aristotle. Part contents.

Realism and constructivism in strategy research: a critical realist response to Mir and Watson

Abstract: Mir and Watson (2000) advocate that constructivism has the potential to inform strategy research. In their discussions, they compare constructivism with realism, and highlight certain alleged strengths of the former over the latter. Although their paper provides some insights, their version of constructivism is problematic and their understanding of realism is inaccurate. In this note we clarify some key issues concerning constructivism and realism. Moreover, we argue that Mir and Watson's insights can be accommodated within a critical realist framework. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Realist-Expressivism: A Neglected Option for Moral Realism

Abstract: Moral realism and antirealist-expressivism are of course incompatible positions. They disagree fundamentally about the nature of moral states of mind, the existence of moral states of affairs and properties, and the nature and role of moral discourse. The central realist view is that a person who has or expresses a moral thought is thereby in, or thereby expresses, a cognitive state of mind; she has or expresses a belief that represents a moral state of affairs in a way that might be accurate or inaccurate. The view of antirealist-expressivism is that such a person is in, or expresses, a conative state of mind, one that consists in a certain kind of attitude or motivational stance toward something, such as an action or a person. Realism holds that moral thoughts have truth conditions and that in some cases these truth conditions are satisfied so that our moral thoughts are true. Antirealist-expressivism holds, to a first approximation, that the distinctive moral content of a moral thought does not have truth conditions.

Critical realism and constructivism in strategy research: Toward a synthesis

Abstract: We agree with Kwan and Tsang (2001) that critical realism represents an important point of epistemological departure from mainstream realism, and that it has the potential to inform strategy research. To that end, Kwan and Tsang's argument for a critical realist perspective is valid. There however exist substantial nontrivial differences between constructivism and critical realism. While critical realism contests some of the default assumptions of empiricism and realism which treat social systems as closed systems, it is still predicated upon an inherent order of things that is graspable by research. Constructivism instead focuses on the manner in which researchers constitute theories in the act of describing them. This important distinction makes constructivism far more of a departure from empiricism than critical realism, and therefore it has a different set of implications for strategy research. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Refusing the Realism—Structuration Divide:

Abstract: This article argues against the view put forward by Margaret Archer that there is an irreconcilable divide between realist social theory and structuration theory. Instead, it argues for the systematic articulation of the two theories at both the ontological and the methodological levels. Each has developed a range of insightful and commensurable conceptualizations either missing or underdeveloped in the other. Archer's contention that structuration theory rejects the notion of `analytical dualism' central to the realist approach is shown to be mistaken; Giddens's rejection of `dualism' refers to a different conceptualization of the term. Similarly, Archer's critique of structuration's notion of a `duality' involving structure and agency is rejected by showing that Archer's own morphogenetic approach itself relies upon such a notion. A final section distinguishes between six key problematics of social analysis. It is clear that, for a large number of possible questions within the majority of these problema...

Theory of the Novel: An Historical Approach

Abstract: Contents and Contributors: Part One: Genre TheoryNorthrop Frye, from Anatomy of Criticism: Four EssaysE. D. Hirsch, from Validity in InterpretationClaudio Guillen, from Literature as System: Essays toward the Theory of Literary HistoryJonathan Culler, "Toward a Theory of Non-Genre Literature"Marthe Robert, from Origins of the NovelPart Two: The Novel as Displacement I: StructuralismWalter Benjamin, "The Storyteller"Claude Levi-Strauss, from The Savage Mind, from The Origin of Table Manners, "How Myths Die," from The Naked ManNorthrop Frye, from Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, from Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology, from The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of RomancePart Three: The Novel as Displacement II: PsychoanalysisSigmund Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams, "Family Romances"Marthe Robert, from Origins of the NovelPart Four: Grand Theory IGeorg Lukacs, from The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature, from The Historical NovelPart Five: Grand Theory IIJose Ortega y Gasset, from Meditations on Quixote, "Notes on the Novel"Part Six: Grand Theory IIIMikhail M. Bakhtin, from The Dialogic Imagination: Four EssaysPart Seven: Revisionist Grand TheoryIan Watt, from The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and FieldingMichael McKeon, "Generic Transformation and Social Change: Rethinking the Rise of the Novel"Fredric Jameson, from The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic ActBenedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of NationalismPart Eight: Privacy, Domesticity, WomenIan Watt, from The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and FieldingNancy Armstrong, from Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the NovelGillian Brown, from Domestic Individualism: Imagining Self in Nineteenth-Century AmericaPart Nine: Subjectivity, Character, DevelopmentDorrit Cohn, from Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in FictionAnn Banfield, from Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of FictionAmelie Oksenberg Rorty, "Characters, Persons, Selves, Individuals"Franco Moretti, from The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European CultureClifford Siskin, from The Historicity of Romantic DiscoursePart Ten: RealismRosalind Coward and John Ellis, from Language and Materialism: Developments in Semiology and the Theory of the SubjectMichael McKeon, from "Prose Fiction: Great Britain"George Levine, from The Realistic Imagination: English Fiction from Frankenstein to Lady ChatterleyMichael Davitt Bell, from The Development of American RomancePart Eleven: Photography, Film, and the NovelHenry James, from "Preface to The Golden Bowl"Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"Keith Cohen, Film and Fiction: The Dynamics of ExchangeAndre Bazin, "In Defense of Mixed Cinema"Part Twelve: ModernismVirginia Woolf, "Modern Fiction," "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown"Georg Lukacs, from Realism in Our Time: Literature and the Class StruggleJoseph Frank, from Spatial Form in Modern LiteraturePart Thirteen: The New Novel, the Postmodern NovelAlain Robbe-Grillet, from For a New Novel: Essays on FictionLinda Hutcheon, "Historiographic Metafiction"Part Fourteen: The Colonial and Postcolonial NovelDoris Sommer and George Yudice, "Latin American Literature from the 'Boom' On"Kwame Anthony Appiah, "Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?"Kumkum Sangari, "The Politics of the Possible"

Ethnography and realism

Abstract: About the book: As ethnography enters the twenty-first century, it has been transformed from a method of research standing on the edges of mainstream social science theory and research Ethnography now attracts widespread interest, not only from anthropology and sociology but also from many other genres The four distinctive idioms of qualitative inquiry—naturalism, ethnomethodology, emotionalism, and postmodernism—each use field research to pursue different questions and concerns, posit different versions of “the field,” and specify different methods as appropriate for doing so Emerson provides comprehensive reviews of core issues, reflecting the increased acceptance of and growing divergences among current ethnographic approaches In addition, he addresses concerns central both to earlier periods of field research, particularly those marking the beginnings of the reflexive turn, and to those raised by contemporary, more radically representational and postmodern approaches to ethnography

Is Structural Realism Possible

Abstract: Structural Realism (SR) is meant to be a substantive philosophical position concerning what there is in the world and what can be known of it. It is realist because it asserts the existence of a mind-independent world, and it is structural because what is knowable of the world is said to be its structure only. As a slogan, the thesis is that knowledge can reach only up to the structural features of the world. This chapter unravels and criticises the metaphysical presuppositions of SR. It questions its very possibility as a substantive — and viable — realist thesis.

Real realism the galilean strategy

Abstract: This essay aims to disentangle various types of anti-realism, and to disarm the considerations that are deployed to support them. I distinguish empiricist versions of anti-realism from constructivist versions, and, within each of these, semantic arguments from epistemological arguments. The centerpiece of my defense of a modest version of realism – real realism – is the thought that there are resources within our ordinary ways of talking about and knowing about everyday objects that enable us to extend our claims to unobservable entities. This strategy, the Galilean strategy, is explained using the historical example of the telescope.

Consequences of Realism for Sociological Theory‐Building

Abstract: It is argued that the Achilles heel of contemporary sociology – and great parts of social science – is a) weak theory development, and b) absence of a meta-theory providing a common platform and a shared goal for its practitioners, fostering cumulativity. A meta-theory called causal realism (a variant of critical realism) is suggested for these purposes. The main tenets and key concepts of realism, such as causality and explanation, mechanism, stratified reality, are presented. Thereafter, via an analogy to the physical sciences, it is argued that a natural implication of realism and the search for causal mechanisms is a division of society into levels. The micro-macro issue is approached by a level-ontology for the development of sociological theory. Five levels are suggested, discussed and briefly exemplified. In the concluding remarks, some further positive implications of realism to sociology are touched upon. (Less)

The Realism of Russia's Foreign Policy

Abstract: (2001). The Realism of Russia's Foreign Policy. Europe-Asia Studies: Vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 7-31.

Why The Pessimistic Induction Is A Fallacy

Abstract: Putnam and Laudan separately argue that the falsity of past scientific theories gives us reason to doubt the truth of current theories. Their arguments have been highly influential, and have generated a significant literature over the past couple of decades. Most of this literature attempts to defend scientific realism by attacking the historical evidence on which the premises of the relevant argument are based. However, I argue that both Putnam's and Laudan's arguments are fallacious, and hence attacking their premises is unnecessary. The paper concludes with a discussion of the further historical evidence that would be required if the pessimistic induction is to present a serious threat to scientific realism.

International relations: the dawn of a historiographical turn?

Abstract: Books reviewed in this article: Donnelly, Jack, Realism in International Relations Dunne, Tim, Inventing International Society: A History of the English School Schmidt, Brian, The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations Tuck, Richard, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant

The Semantic or Model-Theoretic View of Theories and Scientific Realism

Abstract: The semantic view of theoriesis one according to which theoriesare construed as models of their linguisticformulations. The implications of thisview for scientific realism have been little discussed. Contraryto the suggestion of various champions of the semantic view,it is argued that this approach does not makesupport for a plausible scientific realism anyless problematic than it might otherwise be.Though a degree of independence of theory fromlanguage may ensure safety frompitfalls associated with logical empiricism, realism cannot be entertained unless models or (abstractedand/or idealized) aspects thereof are spelled out in terms of linguistic formulations (such as mathematical equations),which can be interpreted in terms of correspondencewith the world. The putative advantage of thesemantic approach – its linguistic independence – isthus of no help to the realist. I consider recent treatmentsof the model-theoretic view (Suppe, Giere, Smith), and find that although some of these accounts harbour the promiseof realism, this promise is deceptive.

Realism, Naturalism, and Moral Semantics

Abstract: The prospects for moral realism and ethical naturalism have been important parts of recent debates within metaethics. As a first approximation, moral realism is the claim that there are facts or truths about moral matters that are objective in the sense that they obtain independently of the moral beliefs or attitudes of appraisers. Ethical naturalism is the claim that moral properties of people, actions, and institutions are natural, rather than occult or supernatural, features of the world. Though these metaethical debates remain unsettled, several people, myself included, have tried to defend the plausibility of both moral realism and ethical naturalism. I, among others, have appealed to recent work in the philosophy of language—in particular, to so-called theories of “direct reference” —to defend ethical naturalism against a variety of semantic worries, including G. E. Moore's “open question argument.” In response to these arguments, critics have expressed doubts about the compatibility of moral realism and direct reference. In this essay, I explain these doubts, and then sketch the beginnings of an answer—but understanding both the doubts and my answer requires some intellectual background.

The Highs and Lows of Teaching IR Theory: Using Popular Films for Theoretical Critique

Abstract: This article introduces an approach to IR that uses popular films to teach students how to critically analyze IR theory. By pairing IR traditions (like Realism) and the slogans that go with them (like “international anarchy is the permissive cause of war”) with popular films (like Lord of the Flies ), this approach poses questions not about the truth or falsity of IR theories but about how IR theories appear to be true. This technique works because it draws upon visual analytical skills that students already possess and transfers them to analyses of IR theory and international politics. Overall, it challenges the positioning of IR theory as beyond culture and politics rather than as part and parcel of it, transforms what we think of as doing critical IR theory, and repositions students from passive recipients of IR truths into critically active and engaged analysts of IR theory's commonsense views of the world.

European Film Theory and Cinema: A Critical Introduction

Abstract: Contents Introduction 1. Didacticism and Intuition in Russian Formalism and Weimar Film Theory 2. Determinism and Symbolism in the Film Theory of Eisenstein 3. Aestheticism and Engagement in Weimar Cinematic Modernism and Soviet Montage Cinema 4. Into the Realm of the Wondrous: French Cinematic Impressionism 5. The World Well Lost: From Structuralism to Relativism 6. From Political Modernism to Postmodernism 7. The Redemption of Physical Reality: Theories of Realism in Grierson, Kracauer, Bazin and Lukacs 8. Late European Cinema and Realism 9. Post-war Italian and Spanish Realist Cinema Conclusions Bibliography Index.

The intelligibility of the universe

Abstract: Hume famously warned us that the ‘[The] ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human curiosity and enquiry’. Or, again, Newton: ‘Hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of these properties of gravity … and I frame no hypotheses.’ Aristotelian science was concerned with just such questions, the specification of occult qualities, the real essences that answer the question What is matter, etc?, the preoccupation with circular definitions such as dormative virtues, and so on. The rise of modern science is usually seen as a break with the sterility of Aristotelianism, so what exactly is it that modern science does discover, if it is not the essential nature of matter, of force, of energy, of space and time? A famous answer was provided by Poincare: ‘The true relations between these real objects are the only reality we can attain.’ This is often regarded as the manifesto of so-called structural realism, as espoused in recent years by John Worrall, for example (cp. his (1989)). In response to the arguments of Larry Laudan (1982) against convergent realism, Worrall points to the continuity in the formal relations between elements of reality expressed by mathematical equations, while the intrinsic nature of these elements of reality gets constantly revised.

Gender and Critical Realism: A Critique of Sayer

Abstract: In a recent article in this journal, Andrew Sayer has argued that much feminist research on the gendered nature of organisations, such as bureaucracy and the market, confuses a contingent association of gender and organisational forms with a stronger claim that they are intrinsically gendered. Sayer accepts that this research has shown that the empirically found, concrete forms of organisations are gendered. However, deeper theoretical reflection, he suggests, reveals that, when considered as `abstract realist models', bureaucracy and the market are, in fact, identity-blind. He makes two claims, one concerned with explanation, the other concerned with the political consequences of social inquiry. The first is that the construction of abstract models, rather than the `associational' thinking concerned with the delineation of empirical regularities, is necessary to the proper understanding of the operation of causal mechanisms and their mode of determination in social life. The second is that this will enable a more progressive and positive politics beyond a fatalism which he attributes to associational thinking. This paper takes issue with both claims arguing that the abstract theory he defends has no positive role in social inquiry and that his political critique is misplaced.

Moral Facts and Best Explanations

Abstract: Do moral properties figure in the best explanatory account of the world? According to a popular realist argument, if they do, then they earn their ontological rights, for only properties that figure in the best explanation of experience are real properties. Although this realist strategy has been widely influential—not just in metaethics, but also in philosophy of mind and philosophy of science—no one has actually made the case that moral realism requires: namely, that moral facts really will figure in the best explanatory picture of the world. This issue may have been neglected in part because the influential dialectic on moral explanations between philosophers Gilbert Harman and Nicholas Sturgeon has focused debate on whether moral facts figure in relevant explanations. Yet as others have noted, explanatory relevance is irrelevant when it comes to realism: after all, according to the popular realist argument, it is inference to the best explanation of experience that is supposed to confer ontological rights. I propose to ask, then, the relevant question about moral explanations: should we think that moral properties will figure in the best explanatory account of the world?

Has Realism Become Cost-Benefit Analysis?: A Review Essay

Abstract: Has Realism Become Cost-Beneat Analysis? Contemporary realism is at a crossroads. If realist claims are deaned speciacally—predicating particular responses by nations to deaned patterns of international power—they cannot be fully sustained. Nations do not respond predictably when confronted by superior power; nor do they always act as if a zero-sum game existed between countries. The amount of cooperation in the international system is not a constant. If, on the other hand—as has been happening recently—realist claims are deaned more generally—and preferences, beliefs, and institutions are admitted to have a causal role—the distinctive contribution of realism is lost in a welter of other variables. Deaned generally, realism is in danger of being reduced to cost-beneat criteria in which empirical outcomes are unclear. In Ruling the World, Lloyd Gruber furthers these generalist conceptions by interpreting modern international and supranational institutions in a new way in which national self-interest, rather than power compulsions, determines the outcome. His synthesis seeks to explain why institutions should be growing in power and membership and yet—from his point of view—large numbers of participants should be dissatisaed, preferring a now-unobtainable status quo ante. The points I seek to make are as follows: (1) Realism is moving away from relatively speciac, clear, and testable claims about the nature of the international system to a more generalist formulation in which outcomes are increasingly indistinct or opaque; (2) the original formulation—”speciac realism,” as I shall call it—laid great stress on the balance of power and balancing operations

After Augustine: The Meditative Reader and the Text

Abstract: Introduction 1. Reading and Self-Knowledge 2. Ethical Values and the Literary Imagination 3. Later Ancient Literary Realism 4. The Problem of Self-Representation 5. Petrarch's Portrait of Augustine 6. Two Version of Utopia 7. Lectio Spiritualis Notes Index Acknowledgments

Postclassical realism and Japanese security policy

Abstract: The recent domestic constructivist studies characterize Japanese security policy as a serious anomaly to realism and a crucial case vindicating their approach to the larger study of world politics. The present paper challenges this view. It advances a postclassical realist interpretation of Japan's core security policy in the past quarter century. Japan's military doctrine expressed in the 1976 National Defense Program Outline (NDPO) is consistent with postclassical realism's predictions, as opposed to neorealism's predictions, which focus on the dynamics of the regional security dilemma and the question of financial burden resulting from military build-up. In addition, postclassical realism offers a more compelling theoretical guide for understanding Japan's core security policy than defensive realism or mercantile realism. This paper backs up its argument with the empirical evidence that Takuya Kubo, the author of the NDPO, himself intentionally based the NDPO on a postclassical realist line of thinking.

The Art of Creating Subjective Reality: An Analysis of Japanese Digital Pets

Abstract: A variety of digital pets can be found in Japan, from virtual pets on palm-top game screens to physical entertainment robots. They are successful because they succeed in promoting a sense of reality in users' minds. While visual reality is a familiar element of realism, a subjective sense of reality can also prove effective. By designing interaction in a mode that takes users' psychology into account, such a sense of reality can be enhanced, especially when a user perceives an independent personality in his/her digital pet. Japanese traditional culture, which allows treating animals on an equal basis with human beings, is behind this psychology.