Realism

About: Realism is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 10799 publications have been published within this topic receiving 175785 citations.

Non‐defensible Middle Ground for Experimental Realism: Why We Are Justified to Believe in Colored Quarks*

Abstract: Experimental realism aims at striking a middle ground between scientific realism and anti-realism, between the success of experimental physics it would explain and the realism about scientific theories it would supplant. This middle ground reinstates the engineering idea that belief in scientific entities is justified on purely experimental grounds, without any commitment to scientific theories and laws. This paper argues that there is no defensible middle ground to be staked out when it comes to justifying physicists' belief in colored quarks, and that experimental realism shifts, under analysis, into scientific realism.

Social categories and sociolinguistics:applying a realist approach

Abstract: In a previous article (Carter and Sealey 2000) we have suggested that sociolinguistics can benefit from recent developments in social theory that are broadly termed 'sociological realism.' This rests on the claim that social reality is stratified, comprising not only the activities and interactions of human beings (agency) but also the structured social relations arising from these activities and interactions (structure), as well as the products of human consciousness or thought (culture). The present article develops these ideas to argue for a close collaboration between sociolinguistics and social theory, starting with the realist claim that empirical descriptions of the world are always incomplete, since the social world is not fully or directly intelligible to its inhabitants. The article explores some of the implications of this for concept formation and methodology in sociolinguistics, using as examples social categories such as 'racial' and 'ethnic' groups. It considers how sociolinguistic research can take account of actors' own understandings and mobilizations of such categories while also embedding these within a theoretically adequate description of the social world.; Reprinted by permission of Mouton de Gruyter

Reading the Pre-Raphaelites

Abstract: Liberated from the constraints of tradition, the Pre-Raphaelites of mid-Victorian England produced distinctive representations of nature and society in paintings remarkable for their compositional vitality and hallucinatory effects of colour. This illustrated book provides an appraisal of the pre-Raphaelite artists and their radical departure from artistic conventions. Tim Barringer explores the meanings so richly encoded in pre-Raphaelite paintings and analyses key pictures and their significance within the complex social and cultural matrix of 19th-century Britain. In chapters devoted to core themes, the author discusses such artists as John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Ford Madox Brown and their engagement with medieval revivalism, nature worship, issues of class and gender, and the reconciliation of the religious image and realism. Barringer draws on an imaginative selection of paintings, drawings, and contemporary photographs to suggest that the dynamic energy of pre-Raphaelitism arose from paradoxes at its heart. Past and present, historicism and modernity, symbolism and realism, as well as tensions between city and country, man and woman, worker and capitalist, colonizer and colonized - all appear within pre-Raphaelite art. Focusing on these issues, the author casts new light on the pre-Raphaelites and their innovative work.

The realism of Realism: the state and the study of International Relations

Abstract: On the face of it, the title of this article must look rather odd, especially to any non-specialist who happens to light upon it. For ‘Realism’ surely connotes enterprises and appraisals of a realistic kind, ones which take full account of the facts and constraints of life. Accordingly, it might well be thought clearly superfluous to assert that such things, already identified as realistic, are indeed so.

Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy?: Great-Power Realism, Democratic Peace, and Democratic Internationalism

Abstract: As each power vies for its national interests on the world stage, how do its own citizens' democratic interests fare at home? Alan Gilbert speaks to an issue at the heart of current international-relations debate. He contends that, in spite of neo-realists' assumptions, a vocal citizen democracy can and must have a role in global politics. Further, he shows that all the major versions of realism and neo-realism, if properly stated with a view of the national interest as a common good, surprisingly lead to democracy. His most striking example focuses on realist criticisms of the Vietnam War. Democratic internationalism, as Gilbert terms it, is really the linking of citizens' interests across national boundaries to overcome the antidemocratic actions of their own governments. Realist misinterpretations have overlooked Thucydides' theme about how a democracy corrupts itself through imperial expansion as well as Karl Marx's observations about the positive effects of democratic movements in one country on events in others. Gilbert also explodes the democratic peace myth that democratic states do not wage war on one another. He suggests instead policies to accord with the interests of ordinary citizens whose shared bond is a desire for peace. Gilbert shows, through such successes as recent treaties on land mines and policies to slow global warming that citizen movements can have salutary effects. His theory of "deliberative democracy" proposes institutional changes that would give the voice of ordinary citizens a greater influence on the international actions of their own government.