This article is part of the research project ‘Representação midiática da violação de direitos e da violência contra pessoas em situação de rua no jornalismo on-line’, associated with Red Latinoamericana de Análisis Crítico del Discurso de la Extrema Pobreza, and focuses upon the ways in which electronic news media represent homeless people in Brazil. The focus is a pair of texts, related through internal hyperlinks, about the controversy concerning the installation of a social center in a middle-class neighborhood in central (...) Sao Paulo. The texts are analyzed on the theoretical basis of critical discourse analysis and considering the following analytical categories: metaphor, representation of social actors and intertextuality. Analyses show a scenario of ‘invasion by unwelcome people’, who are not perceived as rights holders, but as a threat to the rights of others. (shrink)

In light of recent advances, I reconsider Jacques Ellul's technological imperative in which he places technology in a broad framework of “technique” (including but not limited to machines) meaning any complex of standardized procedures having absolute efficiency for attaining a predetermined result. He conceptualizes technique as a self-perpetuating, totalizing, and deterministic force inevitably leading to self-destruction if not transcended. Here, I provide support for some of Ellul's claims while addressing some of the important criticisms. I suggest a different kind of (...) imperative that supersedes the technological imperative but does not diminish its importance. The new imperative is hierarchical social structures that now prevail at many levels—from global to local—and that reciprocally relate to many social forces, including technique. Central to the maintaining of social hierarchies are both individual and collective goals and beliefs. I argue the importance of ideology in both science and society, and in technological and hierarchical imperatives. Specifically, I argue the necessity to account for the mutual and reciprocal relationship among beliefs, context, and human attributes to fully comprehend technology and education. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article uses the philosophy of critical realism to overcome the problem that most contemporary guidelines for interdisciplinary research fail to provide would-be researchers with adequ...

This paper proposes a limitation to epistemological claims to theory building prevalent in critical realist research. While accepting the basic ontological and epistemological positions of the perspective as developed by Roy Bhaskar, it is argued that application in social science has relied on sociological concepts to explain the underlying generative mechanisms, and that in many cases this has been subject to the effects of an anthropocentric constraint. A novel contribution to critical realist research comes from the work and ideas of (...) Gregory Bateson. This is in service of two central goals of critical realism, namely an abductive route to theory building and a commitment to interdisciplinarity. Five aspects of Bateson’s epistemology are introduced: difference, logical levels of abstraction, recursive causal loops, the logic of metaphor, and Bateson’s theory of mind. The comparison between Bateson and Bhaskar’s ideas is seen as a form of double description, illustrative of the point being raised. The paper concludes with an appeal to critical realists to start exploring the writing and outlook of Bateson himself. (shrink)

The ontological and analytical status of Marxian social theory has been a matter of fierce controversy since Marx’s death, both within and without Marxist circles. A particular source of contention has been over whether Marxism should be construed as an objective science of the capitalist mode of production or as an ethico-philosophical critique of bourgeois society. This is paralleled by the dispute over whether Marxism ought to be considered a humanism or a structuralism. This article addresses both sides of this (...) debate. The argument is that, rather than Marx’s own social thought being split into incompatible poles, giving rise to ‘two Marxisms’, it forms a coherent unity. Marx’s social theory is neither humanist philosophy, nor structural science, but is in fact realist science, which synthesizes these apparent antinomies, and thereby transcends both. (shrink)

This article critiques R. Keith Sawyer’s theory of social causation from his 2005 book Social Emergence. It considers his use of analogy with the philosophy of mind, his account of individual agency, the legacy of Emile Durkheim, the concepts of supervenience, multiple realization, and wild disjunction, and the role of history in social causation. Sawyer’s theory is also evaluated in terms of two examples of empirical research: his own micro-sociological studies into group creativity; and Margaret Archer’s macro-sociology of education systems.

ABSTRACTThis article engages Bhaskar's category of absence and Foucault's notion of problematization in the context of explaining an example of the historical emergence of political activism. Specifically, it considers the emergence of the ‘psychiatric survivors’ social movement in the UK, with a focus on the ‘politics of self-harm’. The politics of self-harm refers to acts of self-injurious behaviour, such as drug over-dosage or self-laceration, which do not result in death and which bring individuals to the attention of psychiatric services. For (...) many years survivors have protested about the harmful treatment they receive from such services and have campaigned for their reform and for new, non-psychiatric understandings of the meaning of self-harm. The article explains how such activism emerged in the late 1980s. Its contribution is at the interface of critical realism and social movement studies. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, we provide guidance for the implementation of education for sustainable development in schools. We combine Bhaskar's Transformational Model of Social Activity,...

This essay reviews Theatre, Communication, Critical Realism (2010) by Tobin Nellhaus. It begins by outlining the objective of the book and proceeds to evaluate its central argument. The objective is to develop a theory of theatre founded on the premises of critical realism and thereby theoretically situate theatrical performance in its socio-cultural matrix. The argument is that critical realism is effective for developing a comprehensive account of theatrical performance because it has the capacity to reveal truths about the structure of (...) social reality (that correspond to those articulated by critical realism). In the second part of the review, employing the methods of conceptual analysis, I propose that Nellhaus’s thesis of ‘ontological doubling’ (which claims that performance doubles human agency) is undermined by certain epistemological presuppositions regarding the ontology of fictional characters. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis is an account of the emancipatory struggle that faces agents who seek to change the oppressive social structures associated with neo-liberalism. We begin by ‘digging amongst the bones’ of the calls for resistance that have been declared dead or assimilated/co-opted by neoliberal theorists. This leads us to unearth, then utilize, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness and Shiv Visvanathan's ideas; which are examples of Roy Bhaskar’s transformative dialectic. We argue, using examples, that cognitive justice – (...) a concept common to each of our chosen theorists – is vital in enabling emancipatory social learning. By embracing cognitive justice, the agents gained confidence, which led to their increased ability to champion community and non-academic knowledge. It also uncovered structural tensions – attendant in neoliberalism – around privilege. By articulating these tensions, the participants were able to ‘come closer together’. Such processes, initiated by ensuring cognitive justice, are possible steps in achieving universal solidarity; which is likely to be a necessary step along the path of achieving emancipation. (shrink)

Cultural relativism was the subject of a panel presentation at the 2005 meetings of the American Anthropological Association. In 2007, three of the four presentations were published in Anthropological Quarterly. The present article comprises what was presented in the fourth panel presentation, my own, plus a critical realist critique of the other three papers and the discussant's introduction of them. The critical realist method of immanent critique, applied here, reveals the gaps, contradictions and non-sequiturs of cultural relativism, and suggests that (...) the critical realist meta-philosophy of philosopher Roy Bhaskar, sociologist Margaret Archer, and others offers anthropologists a stronger theoretical paradigm from which to operate. (shrink)

Education is increasingly coming under the shadow of economics. In this article we engage in ideology critique by applying a critical realist analysis to conventional economic models and the teaching of students. Through a historical and philosophical interrogation, we argue that the current curriculum suffers from a diminutive understanding of human being. We argue that economics education has for a long time now worked with a highly abstracted and decontextualized idea of human being that has absented other dimensions of human (...) concerns. We examine the current English Advanced level economic curriculum and the revised curriculum which will be taught from September 2015. Using an understanding of the dynamics of structure and agency and that economics operates in open systems, we argue for retroduction as an appropriate methodology. (shrink)

Originally presented to Roy Bhaskar’s postgraduate seminar at the Institute of Education, London, in 2012, this article situates and delineates the concept of totality and the cluster of related concepts in dialectical critical realism.

This paper develops a theory of how democratic governance is possible. It analyses democracy as a laminated system consisting of three interdependent levels – the political/institutional, the socia...

In this wide-ranging interview Professor Margaret Archer discusses a variety of aspects of her work, academic career and influences, beginning with the role the study of education systems played in...

Neoliberalism, health and illness are all vast topics that range from global to local, personal to political. Critical realism offers valuable concepts, which help to extend and deepen analysis of...

Consent can only be voluntary, freely given and uncoerced. Can this legal adult standard also apply to children? High-risk surgery is seldom a wanted choice, but compared with the dangers of the un...

Amarnath Amarasingham, ed., Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010. xv + 253 pp. ISBN 978-9-0041-8557-9, hardback £81.00/€139.00/$190.00. Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines (religious studies, sociology of religion, sociology of science, philosophy and theology) in order to critically engage with so-called ‘new atheism’. The study is a collection of essays that not so much gives primacy to discrediting the limited scholarship of new atheist (...) literature (although there is plenty of powerful critique to be found in its pages) but demonstrates where we can place new atheism in relation to generally more informed and intellectually rigorous debates about religion and atheism. This review essay examines their powerful arguments and briefly introduces possible Bhaskarian, Hegelian and Darwinian-Marxian contributions to the case against new atheism. (shrink)

Cohen employs in his book Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense in light of its recent republication. In recent years, Roy Bhaskar has provided a convincing critique of the empiricist philosophy of social science that Cohen employs, and this article tries to provide an assessment of his method from a Bhaskarian perspective. It begins with an exposition of functional explanation, followed by the Bhaskarian critique by demonstrating that functionalism is unworkable because it is dependent on an empiricist account of (...) causation. (shrink)

This paper interprets Karl Polanyi through dialectical critical realism. The paper maintains that this interpretation offers Polanyi methodological coherence and philosophical support. It further provides dialectical critical realism with an exemplar of explanatory critique. It is argued that the social theory of Polanyi aims at the demystification of market-systems as they are theoretically constructed by both orthodox and heterodox accounts of capitalism. Dialectical critical realism is best capable of situating the theoretical accomplishment of Polanyi’s historical and dialectical critiques of social (...) being. (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)

Volume 19, Issue 4, August 2020, Page 309-313.

How has the storage of information shaped human cognition? We bring together current advances in cognitive science, the neurobiology of memory, and archaeology to explore how storage of information affects consciousness. These fields strongly suggest that the increase in storage of information in the environment – which we call exosomatic storage of information – may have led to changes in human consciousness and human neurophysiology over time. To bring these findings together conceptually, we develop what we call a dialectical model (...) of the relationship between storage of information and the development of human consciousness. Using the system of dialectic philosophy, we put forward that (a) environmental changes, consciousness, and neurophysiology develop together, (b) these changes were irreversible, (c) quantitative increases in exosomatic storage of information may have led to qualitative changes in human consciousness and neurophysiology, (d) these changes in turn affected how we see ourselves. Indeed, our capacity to store information exosomatically distinguishes us from other animals, and may be a key attribute of our self-awareness and therefore self-consciousness. Because metaphors are central to human thought and can help structure scientific inquiry, we illustrate our model using a metaphor of drops of silver on the back of a glass, eventually making a mirror—where successive quantitative change leads to an irreversible qualitative development in human consciousness. The dialectic model can offer new insights into the co-evolution of material culture and human beings through its broader philosophical foundations and explanatory power. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that it is possible to have an account of shame and guilt as mature concepts in moral psychology that sit alongside immature ones. In arguing for this, I adopt the critical r...

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)

Building on the insights of the late Roy Bhaskar and the late Roger Matthews, as well as some recent developments in ultra-realist criminology, this article introduces and delineates some core inte...

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...

This article attempts to assess Mario Bunge’s important but widely neglected criticisms of dialectics. It begins by providing a contextualized interpretation of Friedrich Engels’s metaphysics of the dialectics of nature before embarking on a detailed discussion of Leon Trotsky’s and contemporary “dialectical” scientists’ views on materialist dialectics. It argues that while some of Bunge’s criticisms are eminently sensible, the principles underlying the works of dialectical scientists are compatible with Bunge’s emergentist and systemic approach and can shed light on such issues (...) as the levels of organization, the diachronic and synchronic aspects of emergence, and the individualism-holism-systemism trilemma. This article also submits that dialectics is best interpreted as a guideline for a philosophy of change instead of a magical wand that liberates the investigator from study of facts. Understood as something that serves heuristic purposes, dialectics can be sensibly utilized by scientists to shore up or refine their methodological principles and thereby to facilitate empirical research. (shrink)

The article explores the scope and the limits of virtue ethics from the perspective of critical theory and critical realism. Based on new research in moral sociology and anthro...

How are we to understand the multiple overlapping crises of the present? In a superbly enlightening synthesis of Marxian (critique of) political economy and systems theory, Robert Biel presents a compelling case for the importance of an entropic perspective, regarding both thermodynamic and informational flows that constitute and transform social systems. This perspective offers an insightful analysis of neoliberalism as an attempt to harness the entropic benefits of spontaneous and complex emergence for the purposes of capitalist accumulation. The current crises (...) may thus be understood as the overflowing of the resulting complexity and the pathological response of neoliberal powers, further accelerating this process. But is capitalism itself thus exhausted? An alternative scenario of rejuvenated capitalism is outlined, together with the implications of Biel’s analysis for critical realism, critical social theory and a politics of the Left. Content Type Journal Article Category Review Essay Pages 112-128 Authors David Tyfield, Lancaster University Journal Journal of Critical Realism Online ISSN 1572-5138 Print ISSN 1476-7430 Journal Volume Volume 12 Journal Issue Volume 12, Number 1 / 2013. (shrink)

‘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)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I explain why I disagree with David Pilgrim’s claim that critical realists should deny any ‘natal male’ claim to womanhood. Specifically, Pilgrim and I have different definitions of the transitive and intransitive dimensions of reality. In my version – which I believe is in the spirit of the Bhaskarian version – the transitive dimension embraces everything that is currently being affected by human praxis. This allows for an intersectional view of gender in which it is perfectly possible (...) for the same human, in different contexts, to be an ontological woman, an ontological trans woman ; and an ontological person with a prostate gland, some might say a man. In the same way, it is perfectly possible for a room to contain 17 people for the purposes of setting out tea cups, but 18 people for the purposes of providing lecture hand-outs. For the purposes of everyday life, and even, I argue, for the fight against sexism, trans women have the same claim to being women as cis women. (shrink)

Rowland’s message in Morality by Design mirrors Kant’s ‘moral argument’ for God. As such, he is part of a global trend in philosophy towards a ‘religious renaissance’, also reflected in the work of orthodox critical realists, especially those who are drawn to (Kantian-inspired) Jurgen Habermas and/or (Pragmatist) John Dewey in addition to Roy Bhaskar. Many orthodox critical realists may not realize that their approach – which assumes the existence of an absolute, innate, embedded morality – ultimately requires the idea of (...) God to be consistent. By conflating faith with reason, this religious renaissance offers a progressive-sounding discourse that can be used to legitimise activism to achieve socially conservative, yet politically left wing, policy outcomes, norm formation and judicial interpretations. It therefore threatens the hard-won rights of women and members of the LGBTQ community. This review essay offers Bhaskar's original critical realism as an antidote to the religious renaissance in philosophy. (shrink)

Informed by a critical realist approach, this article criticizes the dearth of research on the question of the need for capital that prospective owners of modern Norwegian second homes are faced with. The main method used for theorizing capital need is the model for an applied explanatory science proposed by Bhaskar, the RRREIC schema, which helps us understand the necessary components of a second home transaction. This leads to an in-depth analysis of this phenomenon and specifically traces the mechanisms related (...) to and activated by obtaining a bank loan. Through this a paradox arises and doubt is cast on the sustainability of a loan-based second home ownership. Besides uncovering this paradox, the article concludes that a research approach such as the RRREIC schema can provide expanded understanding of the mechanisms involved in Norwegian second home ownership. (shrink)

Marketing systems research has the potential to contribute to the well-being of individuals, communities and our environment but we need to ensure that we do not mechanistically apply inadequate approaches. This article identifies tensions and limitations within the developing marketing systems theory and literature. Using the tools of critical realism, we aim to critique the omissions in the metatheory of marketing systems research and then put forward CR to reconstruct a more comprehensive basis for the development of marketing systems theory. (...) We draw attention to the failings of current metatheory in its use of conflationary approaches to theorizing before setting out the features of a CR informed study of marketing systems. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper is premised on the call to re-orientate marketing as a contributing social science. It gathers together criticisms of marketing research which identify inconsistencies that prevent our progress. It posits that we are driven to reproduce these inconsistencies because of a closed-system of practice and because of the generative absence of an effective, reflexive and integrative metatheoretical structure. In response to these problems, the paper aims to offer an integrative metatheoretical structure from which to ground our research and intervene (...) in the identified inconsistencies. The paper therefore offers a perspective on the constitution of the world, before addressing the terms and conditions on which the world is to be researched and explained. This conceptual contribution employs tools developed in the critical realist philosophy of social science to address: instances of absence within marketing research; and how these instances are generated and reproduced. It then suggests how these absences can be rectified. (shrink)

In this article I look at CR (critical realism)1 as chiefly exhibited in the seminal theory of Ron Bhaskar – in particular, his early theory of transcendental realism. I examine its mechanisms of thought and pick out some difficulties with the theorisation relative to its deployment by OS theorists and relative to recent attempts to deploy CR as a theory which can bridge the fork in the constructivist and realist areas known as a form of ‘divide’ in the discipline (fault (...) line). I also try and attempt a more in-depth philosophical analysis of the ideas of CR to gain an insight into its nature and what it can offer both as an apodictic system of philosophical insights with aspects of a belief system – but also relative to its realist-related claims towards veridical knowledge of kinds. I make comparisons with other theorists and philosophers including Kant, Derrida, Hume and Aristotle. I close with insights into how a closer scrutiny of CR thought as it is entering OS is necessary to understand the evolving nature of the inter-relationship of ontology and the ontic, in relation to the fault line described. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFaced with the marketization of Higher Education in England, pedagogy is under pressure in ways that often undermine lecturers’ deeply held values. For instance, this pressure results in the reduction of significant aspects of teaching to narrow metrics and requires universities to operate within intrusive structures that subordinate their pedagogical aims to profit-orientated objectives. In this paper, I analyse the way that people can preserve their agency in this pedagogical context. I guide my analysis with a framework that combines critical (...) realism with Aristotelian virtue ethics and MacIntyre’s ideas of qualities within human practices. I suggest the kinds of qualities that might assist faculty to preserve and advance rich pedagogical projects in the current circumstances. Finally, I use a critical realist morphogenetic approach to argue that people may be able to resist losing their way when faced with ubiquitous performativity regimes. (shrink)

Negation has occupied a unique place in the history of ideas. Negation as opposed to truth-conditional affirmation has been very much present in Indian and Western thought from very early times. R. S. Bhatnagar of happy memory (1933–2019) in his “Many Splendoured Negation” (Bhatnagar in J Indian Counc Philos Res XXII(3):83–906, 2006) had shown many a facet that could be construed in “negation”. This paper is an attempt to revisit the notion of negation that R. S. Bhatnagar brought to light (...) and to further the germane thought that he had outlined in his concise exposé. Though Bhatnagar had stated that there could be negative and positive functions of negations, a vigilant reading of his article shows that the primary import of Bhatnagar is to examine the positive function of negation. According to R. S. Bhatnagar, even death, which could be the negative in its most feared form, the reality of which, has the positive effect on the soul force in its commitment to live well and die well. R. S. Bhatnagar’s engagement with negation is not complete unless one takes into consideration “negation” as an integral part of philosophizing in India, whether it is the Buddhist tradition or any other tradition. One encounters the philosophical “exercise” on negation enormously in Buddhist thought. The first part of the paper is a brief discussion on the views of Bhatnagar in his essay mentioned with the author’s considerable add-on, while the second part brings home the Buddhist facet and paradigm of negation, the missing link in Bhatnagar. The third part of the paper is an unveilment of the cogitation of R. S. Bhatnagar on “death” in terms of negation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper describes a critical realist intensive case study, which develops and tests a ‘dialectic process model of transformative learning’. The model is inspired by Bhaskar's onto-axiological chain as outlined in his formulation of dialectical critical realism. The study describes transformative environmental learning processes focusing on food security in two primary schools in rural South Africa. The model elaborates on the four links in the onto-axiological chain by describing four knowledge interests across the two cases: knowledge of ‘what is and (...) what is not’, knowledge of ‘what could be’, knowledge of ‘what should be’, and knowledge of ‘what can be’. The model also highlights the emergent nature of epistemic relations in transformative learning processes. The paper discusses the model in relation to a transformative, open-ended and context specific approach to Environmental Education /esd. The paper illustrates that Bhaskar’s MELD is a robust schema for investigating learning-led change in EE and suggests its relevance in other research contexts concerned with societal transformation. (shrink)