This paper critically analyses realist evaluation, focussing on its primary analytical concepts: mechanisms, contexts, and outcomes. Noting that nursing investigators have had difficulty in operationalizing the concepts of mechanism and context, it is argued that their confusion is at least partially the result of ambiguities, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the realist evaluation model. Problematic issues include the adoption of empiricist and idealist positions, oscillation between determinism and voluntarism, subsumption of agency under structure, and categorical confusion between context and mechanism. In (...) relation to outcomes, it is argued that realist evaluation's adoption of the fact/value distinction prevents it from taking into account the concerns of those affected by interventions. The aim of the paper is to use these immanent critiques of realist evaluation to construct an internally consistent realist approach to evaluation that is more amenable to being operationalized by nursing researchers. (shrink)

Computational sociology models social phenomena using the concepts of emergence and downward causation. However, the theoretical status of these concepts is ambiguous; they suppose too much ontology and are invoked by two opposed sociological interpretations of social reality: the individualistic and the holistic. This paper aims to clarify those concepts and argue in favour of their heuristic value for social simulation. It does so by proposing a link between the concept of emergence and Luhmann's theory of communication. For Luhmann, society (...) emerges from the bottom-up as communication and he describes the process by which society limits the possible selections of individuals as downward causation. It is argued that this theory is well positioned to overcome some epistemological drawbacks in computational sociology. (shrink)

This article argues against ontology as an intelligible project for social theory. Ontological questions have proliferated in social thought in the past decades mainly as a way of recasting traditional sociological questions about individuals/society and structure/agency. Far from being an advance in our understanding, however, this form of reasoning has frequently brought confusion. This is demonstrated with detailed reference to a contribution from an ongoing debate, centred on the issue whether social structures are causally efficacious. I argue that the ontological (...) project is mainly fuelled by a misconception of language and that, once this picture is exposed as incoherent, ontology loses its intelligibility. (shrink)

In the context of calls for "postpositivist" sociology, realism has emerged as a powerful and compelling epistemology for social science. In transferring and transforming scientific realism --a philosophy of natural science--into a justificatory discourse for social science, realism splits into two parts: a strict, highly naturalistic realism and a reflexive, more mediated, and critical realism. Both forms of realism, however, suffer from conceptual ambiguities, omissions, and elisions that make them an inappropriate epistemology for social science. Examination of these problems in (...) detail reveals how a different perspective--centered on the interpretation of meaning--could provide a better justification for social inquiry, and in particular a better understanding of sociological theory and the construction of sociological explanations. (shrink)

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 problematics, it is a combination of both ontologies that would facilitate the most adequate substantive account. (shrink)

Sociologists usually conceive of emotions as individual, episodic, and categorical phenomena while emphasizing their social and cultural construction. At the same time, the term emotion refers to a wide range of conceptually and ontologically distinct components and is therefore best thought of as a relatively unspecific umbrella term. This article argues that the routes leading to the social and cultural construction of emotion, for example, norms, rules, values, and discourse, are unlikely to be applicable to each of these components in (...) the same way. This is particularly true for an element of emotion that is often portrayed as being most essential and basic and therefore to some extent avoiding the formative forces of culture and society, namely, affect. Although affect is an established notion in sociology, it has remained conceptually underdeveloped. The article therefore discusses different perspectives on affect from cultural studies that emphasize its relational and bodily character. In a second step, it contrasts and reconciles these views with existing theories of affect in sociology and social psychology and considers a number of essential characteristics that can be used to circumscribe affect and its social and cultural correlates. Finally, concepts from relational sociology are introduced and concrete examples to specify the relational character of affect and to develop an understanding of affect, that is both theoretically fruitful and conducive to empirical research, are discussed. (shrink)

Professor Nicholas Rescher (1928-) is an unusually prolific philosopher who has published more than 175 books between 1960 and 2016.1 When I first came across his work I thought that it might be th...

Despite its central focus on human freedom and individual and social emancipation, critical realism has remained surprisingly quiet on the subject of authenticity. Drawing on a review of critical realist metatheory, and a study of authentic performance in the illuminating cultural context of Early Music, this paper seeks to address this gap by exploring the significance of authenticity in today's morphogenetic society. Real authenticity is introduced as the universal human capacity to reflexively manage the inherent contradictions that arise between and (...) across our intra- and interpersonal relationships at different levels of reality. It is this dialectical, phronetic capacity that determines whether acting in line with our ultimate concerns is both good for us as individuals and the organization of better futures for all. Managing real authenticity, therefore, must be considered at the core of any possible transition theory for human flourishing. (shrink)

In the last couple of years there have been some attempts to introduce Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts into the critical realist conception of social science. But these attempts either limit themselves to the constitution of a philosophical connection between Bourdieu and critical realism or confine Bourdieu’s theoretical contributions to analyses of human agency, whereas Bourdieu’s habitus can provide a deepening of the critical realist conception of what the ‘social’ is. We can establish a socio-ontological connection between the concept of habitus and (...) the idea of the social as a stratified reality. In this way, it may be possible to employ real-actual-empirical stratification for the purpose of defining the domain-specific ontology of social science, and to comprehend the habitus-field relation as a component of the stratification in question. To this end, the paper suggests that habitus is ‘the missing link between structure and agency’. (shrink)

In the recent methodological individualism-holism debate on explanation, there has been considerable focus on what reasons methodological holists may advance in support of their position. We believe it is useful to approach the other direction and ask what considerations methodological individualists may in fact offer in favor of their view about explanation. This is the background for the question we pursue in this paper: Why be a methodological individualist? We start out by introducing the methodological individualism-holism debate while distinguishing two (...) forms of methodological individualism: a form that says that individualist explanations are always better than holist accounts and a form that says that providing intervening individualist mechanisms always makes for better explanations than purely holist ones. Next, we consider four lines of reasoning in support of methodological individualism: arguments from causation, from explanatory depth, from agency, and from normativity. We argue that none of them offer convincing reasons in support of the two explanatory versions of individualism we consider. While there may well be occasions in which individualists’ favorite explanations are superior, we find no reason to think this always must be the case. (shrink)

To date, B&S researchers have pursued their normative aims through strategic and moral arguments that are limited because they adopt a rational actor behavioral model and firm-level focus. I argue that it would be beneficial for B&S scholars to pursue alternate approaches based on critical realism (CR) and neoinstitutional theory (IT). Such a shift would have a number of benefits. For one, CR and IT recognize the complex roots of firm behavior and provide tools for its investigation. Both approaches also (...) note the importance of social context and IT, in particular, points to tangible sites where changes in (and outcomes of) corporate practices can be assessed. CR also has an emancipatory ethos which harkens a role for scholars in social change, while IT provides mechanisms to ground this ethos in tangible activities that go beyond appealing to managers’ strategic or moral sensibilities. (shrink)

In this piece the author takes issue with Mario Bunge’s claims that conceptual and semiotic systems have "compositions, environments and structures, but no mechanisms." Structures, according to Bunge, can never be mechanisms in conceptual and semiotic systems. Contra this the author argues that in social systems, social structures (which are concept-dependent and reproduced and/or transformed, at least in part, semiotically), can be mechanisms in the sense that such structures are one of the processes in a concrete system that makes itwhat (...) it is. As such, not only may conceptual and semiotic systems have mechanisms, but they may also themselves be considered some of the mechanisms that make the social what it is. As such, they can be said to possess powers and liabilities that neither reside at lower levels nor are explainable in terms of the lower level. To hold out the prospect of social explanation by conceptual and/or semiotic mechanisms does not represent an attempt to decouple these systems from material factors. What it does mean is that conceptual and/or semiotic systems can, potentially at least, play a role in social explanation; and themselves be subject to explanation. Key Words: mechanisms • social • structures • cause • explanation • realism • emergence • reductionism. (shrink)

Summary Is it possible to discover the critical realist foundations of Gestalt theory in Berlin comparative musicology (vergleichende Kunstwissenschaft) associated above all with Erich M. von Hornbostel? The balance of natural science explanation and phenomenal experience is a useful model for overcoming Eurocentrism in comparative ethnomusicology, relying both on third-person tools and indigenous music systems. This paper uses Gestalt critical realist epistemology and methodology and a portrayal of the strata making up the understanding of a musical act with chemico-physical, phenomenal (...) and cultural components to create an “amphibian” ethnomusicology. Using this framework it is possible to understand Hornbostel and Sachs’ musical instrument classification system and Hornbostel’s account of “primitive” music as strata in a Gestalt explanatory system. The potential binding agent through the strata is isomorphism. (shrink)

I begin this article by arguing that it is justified to believe in the real presence of a civilizational crisis in the contemporary world; and that this crisis is a real, emergent phenomenon. In so...

‘Social media’ like Facebook or Twitter have become tremendously popular in recent years. Their popularity provides new opportunities for data collection by state and private companies, which requires a critical and theoretical focus on social media surveillance. The task of this paper is to outline a theoretical framework for defining social media surveillance in the context of contemporary society, identifying its principal characteristics, and understanding its broader societal implications. Social media surveillance is a form of surveillance in which different forms (...) of sociality and individuals different social roles converge, so that surveillance becomes a monitoring of different activities in different social roles with the help of profiles that hold a complex networked multitude of data about humans. (shrink)

A number of authors from different theoretical perspectives have called for new interdisciplinary ways of considering learning within the higher education context. Peter Jarvis’s lifelong learning perspective offers a viable alternative, but lacks a strong theory of the person as self, agent and actor. In response I propose that Margaret Archer’s realist social theory has a particular utility for bridging ‘common dualisms’ as part of an interdisciplinary enquiry into higher education learning, and offers a strong theory of the person.

This paper offers a realist critique of socialresearch on health inequalities. A conspectus of thefield of health inequalities research identifies twomain research approaches: the positivist quantitativesurvey and the interpretivist qualitative `casestudy'. We argue that both approaches suffer fromserious philosophical limitations. We suggest that aturn to realism offers a productive `third way' bothfor the development of health inequality research inparticular and for the social scientific understandingof the complexities of the social world in general.

The article discusses the connection between theory formation and historical research in the study of religion. It presupposes that the study of religion is conceived of as an empirical discipline. The empirical basis of theories is provided primarily by historical research, including research in the very recent past, that is, the present time. Research in the history of religions, therefore, is an indispensable part of the study of religion. However, in recent discussions on the methods, aims, and theoretical presuppositions of (...) the discipline, research in the history of religions largely is ignored. To shed some light on this blind spot, the article builds on the philosophy of science of Critical Realism. While the first part deals with the role of historical research in theoretical discourses of the discipline, the second part explains fundamental ontological and epistemological positions of Critical Realism and their implications for empirical research. On this basis, some methodological problems of theory formation in the study of religion are discussed in the third part. In particular, it is argued that it is impossible to validate empirically theories of religion that aim to explain what religion is. The concluding part sketches ways of theory formation in the study of religion that does not take religion as the explanandum but as the theoretical perspective that guides research. (shrink)

This paper proposes an integrated-structure notion of interlevel emergence, from a dynamic relational ontological perspective. First, I will argue that only the individualist essentialism of atomistic metaphysics can block the possibility of interlevel emergence. Then I will show that we can make sense of emergence by recognizing the formation of structures of transformative and interdependent causal relations in the generation and development of a particular class of mereological complexes called integrated systems. Finally, I shall argue that even though the emergent (...) structural attributes of such systems are not micro-determined nor micro-reducible, they can still be accounted for by an interlevel integrative neo-mechanistic form of explanation. (shrink)

It is currently common to conceive of the classic methodological individualism–holism debate in level terms. Accordingly, the dispute is taken to concern the proper level of explanations in the social sciences. In this paper, I argue that the debate is not apt to be characterized in level terms. The reason is that widely adopted notions of individualist explanations do not qualify as individual-level explanations because they span multiple levels. I defend this claim relative to supervenience, emergence, and other accounts of (...) the social world as levelled. Moreover, I discuss the consequences of this finding for the ongoing methodological individualism–holism debate. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay connects the two critical realist ideas of underlabouring and meta-theory, making the argument that the process of underlabouring and making ‘disclosure and transformation of the deep categorical structures of science and theory’ is ideal for clarifying strata of theory and therefore points of agreement between different practitioners. Using the 1980s debates over feminism in art history, I show how two important interlocutors – T. J. Clark and Griselda Pollock – used Marxist meta-theory to establish a baseline on which (...) their domain-specific concerns might diverge. A return to this sense of shared agreement and disagreement is urged. (shrink)

Corpus linguistic techniques are increasingly being used by discourse analysts whose interest is in the ‘critical’ issues of inequality and the representation of disadvantaged groups. This paper reports an extension of these approaches, where concordancing was used to analyse a corpus of 144 transcribed oral history interviews in order to explore the issue of constraint on the speakers’ goals and experiences. The analysis is of the expression I couldn't, which is contextualised with reference to research on negation and modality in (...) authentic discourse contexts. This paper explores the ways in which I couldn't is deployed to refer to constraints of three main kinds: physical, structural and cultural. The approach illustrates the advantage of maintaining an analytical distinction between the discursive and the material, so as to explore the interplay between them. (shrink)

In 2015 IACR held its annual conference at Notre Dame (USA) around the theme of Re-Imagining Social Science. It is rather fashionable to acknowledge that there is a crisis in the social sciences to...

The observation that agents and structures are co-constituted is now commonplace, yet scholars continue to struggle to incorporate this insight. Rationalists tend to overemphasize actors’ agency in the constitution of social order while constructivists tend to overstate the degree to which structures determine action. This article uses The Gift to rethink the agent–structure debate, arguing that the model of social relations Mauss outlines in this work sheds new light on basic concepts in international relations theory such as reciprocity, hierarchy, and (...) obligation. Mauss’ social theory locates the generative structure of social order in diffuse exchange relations, what he terms gift exchange, and assumes that actors are both socially positioned within hierarchical relations of exchange and reflexive agents who are able to understand and strive to change those relations. In so doing, he avoids reducing social order to either deeply internalized social norms or instrumental interests, navigating between ag... (shrink)

For advocates of critical realism emergence is a central theme. Critical realists typically ground their defence of the relative disciplinary autonomy of various sciences by arguing that emergent phenomena exist in a robust non-ontologically, non-causally reductionist sense. Despite the importance they attach to it critical realists have only recently begun to elaborate on emergence at length and systematically compare their own account with those developed by others. This paper clarifies what is distinctive about the critical realist account of emergence by (...) comparing it with an alternative. Critical realism and interactivism are shown to independently converge on the same general process (or constraint) view of emergence and develop complementary accounts of particular emergents. (shrink)

David Elder-Vass's “For Emergence: refining Archer's account of social structure,” is the latest of a number of papers which together constitute a family quarrel in the cognitive space After Postmodernism among realist social scientists. In the case under examination here in “Elder-Vass's Move and Giddens's Call”, the concern is the structure and agency problem in the social sciences. The debate continuing in Elder-Vass's paper represents the proponents of the resurrection of Durkheim's social realism under the auspices of Bhaskar's Transcendental Realism; (...) the debate that continues here as a response to the Elder-Vass paper, opposes the latter's attempt to advance the argument for social realism under the canopy of Harre's Immanental realism. The theme of this response is this: Elder-Vass fails to realize the promise of reconciling social structural realism and social relational realism. (shrink)

Let me begin by repeating two well-known features of critical realism. First, the core objective of the human species – it’s moral truth, is a sustainable, diversified global society in which the f...

Theories of how religion shapes business tend to focus on dominant religious institutions. What happens in the case of minority religions, where the alignment of religion with other dominant institutions may be weak at best? To answer this question, I first develop an emergentist account of religion, explaining how macro-level conditioning shapes meso- and micro-level interactions in religious contexts, leading to either structural change or stasis in business contexts. I illustrate this account by examining how Roman Catholicism as a minority (...) religion shapes corporate capitalism in two cities: Bangalore, India, and Dubai, UAE. Drawing on in-depth interviews (N=200) and 12 months of participant observation, I show how countervailing mechanisms create both assets and liabilities for Catholic professionals’ success in workplaces, contributing to morphostasis rather than change. I argue that such processes cannot be adequately understood without specifying their “macrofoundations,” and identify corresponding macro-level influences at global and local levels. By specifying such macro-micro linkages, this article improves our understanding of how religion shapes business. (shrink)

ABSTRACTCritical realism is an established post-positivist philosophy applied by researchers in a number of fields and yet it is little used in educational leadership and management research. This article responds to calls from the field for a more critical approach to educational leadership and management research by offering critical realism as a way to address these concerns and it explores why critical realism has not featured more in the field, particularly as it could provide that more critical approach. The use (...) of critical realism as an analytical approach as well as a content enables the linkage of the calls from ELM to critical realist features and then to some constraints upon its use in the field. The theory around the application of critical realism is advanced providing insights for researchers in its use, though no claim is made that critical realism is the only way to do so. (shrink)

Taking as its point of departure Leder's phenomenological discussion of the `absent' body, this article explores the nature of human corporeality as a site of transgression. The body, I argue, using a process metaphysic, is first and foremost excessive, driven by human desire rather than animal need: a sensual mode of existence organized around the pleasure/pain axis. To be excessive/transgressive, however, implies the crossing of boundaries or limits which vary according to history and culture, time and place. These issues are (...) illustrated through a range of thinkers from Bakhtin to Kristeva, Irigaray to Deleuze and Guattari. A full-scale endorsement of the poststructuralist position is, however, rejected in favour of an approach which steers a middle ground between these transgressive, more fluid arguments and a foundationalist ontology of the emotional body as an ongoing structure of lived experience. The article concludes with some reflections on the complex pattern of corporeal `appearances', some more pleasant than others, which characterize our bodily-being-in-the-world. (shrink)

While recent scientific discoveries and theories can be taken to provide additional evidence for some of the central critical realist claims, overall critical realism seems to be in need of reassessment, revisions and further developments. First, I argue that here has been an inclination among critical realists to prefer the language and model of philosophy to falsifiable science, creating a predisposition towards somewhat sectarian practices. These tendencies also account for the relative lack of substantive research based on, or inspired by, (...) critical realism. Second, I make a case for radicalising the critique of anthropomorphism and applying it to critical realism itself. Third, and in some contrast to the second point, I argue for rethinking the subject-object relationship and the concept of the intransitive dimension of science. The critique of anthropocentrism has been taken too far. We are implicated in and are a part of the object of our study. It even seems that we humans are a part of the process of the cosmos becoming conscious of itself, also through science. (shrink)

It is currently common to conceive of the classic methodological individualism–holism debate in level terms. Accordingly, the dispute is taken to concern the proper level of explanations in the social sciences. In this paper, I argue that the debate is not apt to be characterized in level terms. The reason is that widely adopted notions of individualist explanations do not qualify as individual-level explanations because they span multiple levels. I defend this claim relative to supervenience, emergence, and other accounts of (...) the social world as levelled. Moreover, I discuss the consequences of this finding for the ongoing methodological individualism–holism debate. (shrink)

The term emergence, or irreducibility, has been used in a great variety of senses over the years, and different senses are useful in different discursive contexts. In this paper the focus is on one specific context, that of methodologically oriented social theory, and the question to answer is, what might be the most useful sense of emergent irreducibility in that field? To answer that question, key intuitions of emergence are first abstracted from the concept’s history. Three main senses of the (...) term are distinguished based on those different intuitions. Then the likely linguistic functions of emergence in each of those main senses are gauged in social theory and methodology. It is argued that one of the senses – here called “contingently epistemological irreducibility” – is in fact more useful as regards social scientific methodology than the others. (shrink)

. Vindicating Archer’s concepts of educational systems – centralized and decentralized – as exemplars of critical realist theorizing. Journal of Critical Realism: Vol. 18, Sustainability, Interdisciplinarity and Transformative change: A Critical Realist Response to the Crisis System, pp. 453-473.

This article argues that the tradition within the individualism-holism debate of importing arguments from the micro–macro discussion in other disciplines significantly has hampered our understanding of the “individual-social” relationship. While, for example, the “neural-mental” and “atomic-molecular” links represent empirical “gives rise to” relationships, in the social sciences the micro–macro link is a purely analytical “qualifies as” type of relationship. This disanalogy is important, since it has significant implications for the individualism-holism debate: it implies a phenomenally monist social ontology and it (...) disqualifies the notion of social macro causation. (shrink)

This article is a response to Ray Pawson’s critique of critical realism, the philosophy of science elaborated by Roy Bhaskar. I argue with Pawson’s interpretation of critical realism’s positions on both natural and social science and his charges concerning its totalizing ontology, its arrogant epistemology and its naive methodology. The differences between critical realism and realist evaluation are not as significant as Pawson contends. The main differences between the two realisms lie in their approaches to the relationship between social structures (...) and human agency, and between facts and values. I argue that evaluation scientists need to clearly distinguish structure and agency. They should also make their values explicit. The uncritical approach of realist evaluation, combined with its underplaying of the importance of agency, leaves it open to implication in the abuses of bureaucratic instrumentalism. (shrink)

This article scrutinizes some theoretical procedures prevalent in the philosophy of social science. These procedures are exemplified in Elder-Vass’s critical realism, which promises to place the social sciences on a sound ontological footing. The article focuses on the way that Elder-Vass’s general emergentist ontology is constituted and on the methods through which it is applied to society. It is contended that the ontology is not and could not be grounded in science and that its philosophical use distorts what it is (...) applied to. The incoherent methods that social ontological projects constitutionally rely on entail that they cannot ground social scientific explanation. (shrink)

This article focuses on emergence in social systems. The author begins by proposing a new tool to explore the mechanisms of social emergence: multi agent–based computer simulation. He then draws on philosophy of mind to develop an account of social emergence that raises potential problems for the methodological individualism of both social mechanism and of multi agent simulation. He then draws on various complexity concepts to propose a set of criteria whereby one can determine whether a given social mechanism generates (...) emergent properties, in the sense that their explanation cannot be reduced to a mechanistic account of individuals and their interactions. This combined account helps to resolve the competing claims of methodological individualists and social realists. The author’s conclusion is that the scope of mechanistic explanation may be limited due to the extreme complexity of many social systems. Key Words: emergence • mechanism • computer simulation • methodological individualism • social realism. (shrink)

While the vital contribution of feminist scholarship is acknowledged, it has been criticized for overly relying on the influence of society upon women’s lives. In this paper, I demonstrate the usefulness of also considering the influence of agency upon women’s lives, specifically agential reflexivity. Using the work and life histories of a group of Sri Lankan women, I use Margaret Archer’s morphogenetic approach to show how investigating reflexivity can provide greater insights into the subtleties associated with women’s agency in relation (...) to how they consciously organize their life journeys and react to oppression, demonstrate resistance and effect emancipation. My research reveals latent aspects of women’s agency within a postcolonial Third World social context, where an enduring patriarchal social system intersects with modernity and subjects women to complex social and occupational circumstances. This paper contributes to the field of women’s studies by showing how the morphogenetic approach can address the problem of conflationary theorizing within feminist scholarship. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the dominant view of reflexivity in contemporary social science is overly decontextualized, despite the value that reflexivity scholars have placed on the dynamic and active nature of individual thought and action. While this problem has been highlighted before, in terms of how habitual actions shape the way that individuals engage in reflexive thought, little attention has been given to the ways in which non-internalized elements of the environment condition this process. I illustrate my argument (...) with examples from Tocqueville’s classic text Democracy in America. I demonstrate how Tocqueville provided a framework for analyzing the way that societal-level norms and opportunity structures impact personal reflexive capacities. In this respect, his work is unparalleled and as such remains relevant to contemporary debates. I therefore argue for the application of Tocqueville’s work into arenas it has seldom entered. (shrink)

This article employs the basic tenets of critical realism to provide a philosophical foundation for understanding and resolving the dualisms of activity theory. Its argument follows in four parts. First I develop an immanent critique that shows the problems within activity theory; it reveals that several dualisms were present from the onset, and further that an implicit ontology allows activity theorists to presuppose critical realism in practice. I claim that the historical development of activity theory is marked by attempts to (...) resolve contradictions, which are signalling devices pointing to the need for theoretical expansion. To shed light on attempts to mend dualisms, I then introduce the notion of a ‘patch’ because it functions as a mechanism that sustains dualisms and gaps in practice. An omissive critique identifies the key omitted element that causes the dualisms; namely, the omission of a critique of Humean philosophy and classical empiricism. Finally,, after effectively isolating and explaining the source of dualisms, I prepare the ground for a protoexplanatory critique to rectify them. (shrink)

When education is jointly managed by a workplace and academia, causal mechanisms in the culture, structure and agency of these two contexts may unintentionally generate discourse that conveys conflicting messages for learners regarding some of the priorities of the profession. Using the concepts of culture, structure and agency as they are used in critical realism to analyse the discourse generated in two teaching and learning contexts (a radiography division in a university and a radiography workplace in a large state tertiary (...) academic hospital), this paper attempts (i) to identify possible causal mechanisms that generated discourse concerning the role and value of writing competency for radiographers, such that this discourse possibly influenced learners not to be motivated to improve their writing competency to their lecturers’ satisfaction; and (ii) to suggest what practices and influences might successfully generate an alternative emancipatory discourse. Drawing on Margaret Archer’s (1995) morphogenetic approach, the paper argues that the radiography lecturers have the primary agency to address this unsatisfactory situation, as it is through their interaction – both as a team and with other relevant stakeholders – that an alternative emancipatory discourse may be generated. (shrink)

Dewey’s understanding of democratic school life is regarded as the early foundation of democratic education (Cohen et al. 2009). Similarly, Biesta (2007) underlines the significant role of schools...

Learning and development are often linked in the organization studies literature. To understand the dynamics of organizational moral development, this paper utilizes the notion of organizational moral learning (OML). It is explored using three perspectives: organizational learning, Islamic and critical realist perspectives. The perspectives are then synthesized together to form a single framework, called the OML by ‘spiritual hearts’ framework. At the centre of the framework is the spiritual heart, the seat of profound understanding and moral consciousness. The heart plays (...) a central role in organizational moral development, especially with regard to its potential to be ‘purified’ and corrupted. Two extreme parameters then are created: on one side is the ‘purified hearts’ with high moral consciousness contributing towards OML, and on the other is the ‘corrupted hearts’ with high immoral consciousness contributing towards organizational immoral learning. Between the two extremes are the ‘diseased hearts’, possessing a mixture of moral and immoral consciousness to various degrees, and have the potentials to contribute to both moral and immoral developments. The paper further suggests strategies to facilitate OML and simultaneously inhibits organizational immoral learning. (shrink)