Can a phenomenologically-founded sociology contribute to the understanding of social change? By reference to the structure of the lifeworld as it has been analyzed by Husserl and Schutz, I argue that human action is formed by temporal, spatial, and social dimensions. These are objectified by a social semantics through which they gain their intersubjective cultural shape. From this perspective, I investigate changes in the temporal, spatial, and social dimensions of this semantics, as they occur in the present transformation of post-socialist (...) societies. Finally, I consider whether these changes mark a return to Western patterns and whether they confirm the thesis of the end of history. (shrink)

This is a Political Economy study on migrants-citizens relations management in the United States of America, with special attention to the religious factor and the pendulum effect. There is a model switch, from integration policies to official persecution, under a high social opportunity cost. Also, there is a split between the State and civil society, causing civil disobedience and sanctuary network across the country. The paper focuses on the development of the Sanctuary Movement, as a case of popular action against (...) to the power elite policies and their sanctions. There was a revival of this movement during the values crisis or 2008 recession, but at the same time there was a critical division into the movement, with higher tension for the migrants. (shrink)

Whereas Phenomenology of Perception concludes with a puzzling turn to “heroism,” this article examines the short essay “Man, the Hero” as a source of insight into Merleau-Ponty’s thought in the early postwar period. In this essay, Merleau-Ponty presented a conception of heroism through which he expressed the attitude toward post-Hegelian philosophy of history that underwrote his efforts to reform Marxism along existential lines. Analyzing this conception of heroism by unpacking the implicit contrasts with Kojève, Aron, Caillois, and Bataille, I show (...) that its philosophical rationale was to supply experiential evidence attesting to the latent presence of human universality. It is a mythic device intended to animate the faith necessary for Marxist politics by showing that universal sociality is possible, and that the historically transformative praxis needed to realize it does not imply sacrifice. This sheds considerable light on Merleau-Ponty’s early postwar political thought. But inasmuch as the latter cannot be severed from his broader philosophical concerns, the prospect is raised that his entire phenomenological project in the early postwar period rested on a myth. Not necessarily a bad myth, but a myth nonetheless. (shrink)

The author considers the problem of civilization. He defines civilization as a determinate form of man’s group life, or man’s culture in its social dimension. According to the author, a plurality of civilizations is generally accepted; in civilization, one can see the foundations for the functioning of law, politics, social life, and family life; civilization also plays an essential role in the religious life of man, just as religion plays a role in civilization. The author discusses the following topics: the (...) biological theory of civilization, the historical theory of civilization, the sociological theory of civilization, the political-science theory of civilization, the civilization of death and the civilization of love, and the historical-philosophical theory of civilization. (shrink)

The luxury-versus-necessity controversy is primarily concerned with the importance of civil and political rights vis-à-vis economic and social rights. The viewpoint of political leaders of many developing and newly industrialized countries, especially China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia is that civil and political rights are luxuries that only rich nations can afford. The United Nations, transnational civil society and the Western advanced countries oppose this viewpoint on normative and empirical grounds. While this controversy is far from over, new challenges (...) of “evidence” and “marketization” are emerging. The first calls for a narrative on the history of civil and political rights in the West in the comparative context of the Industrial Revolution and the East Asian Miracle and China’s economic growth. The effects of the recent financial crisis and insulation of China from the Arab Spring further deepen this challenge. The marketization challenge looks at this controversy from the social exclusion angle. It argues that the basic needs covered by the minimum human rights agenda are becoming luxuries in a real sense for those who do not have the power to purchase these needs from the market. (shrink)

An organizing framework is set out for the diverse literature on business ethics in relation to strategic management. It consists of sets of bi-polar components, spanning themes and topical themes, with a derived typology of contributions. Then, in the spirit of classical pragmatism, the organizing framework is re-cast as an integrative conceptual model of the strategy–ethics relationship. The approach recognizes that both pragmatism and dialectics can underpin progress towards integration, encompassing both normative and empirical aspects.

The following text was presented to the 1995 conference of the International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children, and is reprinted here unrevised. Unfortunately the challenges of coping with global change that it discusses have still not been addressed. Some of the facts have changed—for example, China’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions have risen significantly, although they are still far below those of the United States and most other industrialized countries. But the planet is warming faster than scientists predicted twenty (...) years ago, and little has been done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, so the problem of climate change is even more urgent than it seemed to be when the text was first presented. Therefore my arguments about the changes we need to make to the way we live are still relevant, and it is for that reason that I have accepted the editors’ invitation to reprint the article. (shrink)

Anger is often an appropriate reaction to harms and injustices, but is it a politically beneficial one? Martha Nussbaum (Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1), 41–56, 2015, Anger and Forgiveness. Oxford University Press, 2016) has argued that, although anger is useful in initially recruiting agents for action, anger is typically counterproductive to securing the political aims of those harmed. After the initial shockwave of outrage, Nussbaum argues that to be effective at enacting positive social change, groups and individuals (...) alike, must move quickly out of the state of anger. Feminist theorists (Frye, The Politics of Reality. Crossing Press, 1983; Lorde, 1997; Narayan, Hypatia 3 (2): 31–48, 1988) on the other hand have for long highlighted the efficacy of anger, as well as its moral and epistemic value, in fighting against the oppressive status quo. It might be thought therefore that for political action to be effective, a continued state of anger is preferable. Protestors must after all create and sustain a sense of moral obligation and justice. A main way of doing so is to promote successive moral shocks that trigger outrage (Jasper, Emotion Review 6 (3): 208–213, 2014). I present a novel, empirically informed defense of anger’s efficacy in political action. Nussbaum holds a traditional view on the nature of anger, inherited from Aristotle and the Stoics, which holds that anger constitutively involves a desire for retribution. The view that anger is counterproductive falls out of this and is dominant in academic work as well as in our personal and political lives. Based on work in social psychology, I argue that we need to reconsider this. In doing so, I highlight anger’s aim for recognition, rather than retribution, as key. Furthermore, I uncover conditions for anger’s political efficacy, as well as reasons for why the traditional view of anger has been so pervasive. (shrink)

Michael Reiss and John White, An Aims-Based Curriculum: The Significance of Human Flourishing for Schools. London: Institute of Education Press, 2013. 80 pp., $24.95. ISBN: 139780854739981; 10085473998X.

The purpose of the article is the analysis of the causes of the systemic crisis that hit modern civilization through the description of its main structures, identifying the relationship between its elements, assessments of their heuristic potential. This will open up opportunities for finding ways to resolve this crisis, new directions of civilizational development. Theoretical basis of the research are the systems analysis, socio-philosophical and philosophical-anthropological approaches as well as the analysis of scientific developments in the field of global studies. (...) Originality lies in the fact that this article is the first to show the connection between the main structural elements of human civilization as a system. Change in one of the parameters leads to a change in all the others, together with a change in civilization as a whole. Conclusions. The reason for the deep crisis that hit modern civilization is its imbalance as a system. The most important elements of this system are population size, resources and technology, and the core is consciousness in its individual and collective forms. The perception, processing, and use of information, which is a defining civilizational resource, as well as the stability of the entire system depend on the state of consciousness. Consciousness, based on old, obsolete principles and stereotypes, is unable to cope with the most acute challenges of time. New consciousness, since it is formed, will mark the transition to a new theoretical picture of the world and a model of human behavior, in which people will act, driven by proven knowledge, and not willfulness and prejudice. The idea of forming a productive information environment where the ideas of constructiveness and creative work will dominate rather than consumerism and destruction, as is the case at present, must become the categorical imperative of the new consciousness. (shrink)

Purpose. The research is based on the comprehension of the anthropological tendencies of the metamodernism, which presupposes the consistent solution of the following tasks: a) explication of the content of post-postmodernism in modern philosophical literature; b) identification of the ideological basis of metamodernism anthropology; c) characteristics of the problem field of metamodernism anthropology and the state of man in the modern era. Theoretical basis. Anthropology of the metamodernism for the first time defines socio-cultural context through the hesitative state between the (...) values of modernism and their rejection by the postmodernism, which makes it possible to formulate the peculiarity of the time as a desire to reconstruct a Holistic Man, impartial to the dominant worldview attitudes of a social nature. Anthropology of the metamodernism is presented as the individualization of the socio-cultural space in the form of human self-reconstruction at all anthropological levels. An era without an unambiguously expressed moral guideline is based on the ethics of all-acceptance, the only justification of which is the existence of a universal right to beingness. Digitalization as a process of digital transformation of society creates conditions for the value realization of the free choice of metamodernism man, through which a Holistic Man is accomplished. Originality. It is substantiated that metamodernism as a descriptive position of the modern cultural dominant of the digitalized era is characterized by a state of hesitation between the values of modernism and postmodernism. The anthropology of the metamodernism manifests itself in the form of the reconstruction of the holistic man and the self-reconstruction of the inner man. The peculiarities of the human metamodernism are recognized as the mutual complete determinability of the individual and the mass. Conclusions. Metamodernism is the formulation of the problem of a man in a new perspective: what to be and how to survive between the extremes of semantic poles, without losing dignity and unique intrinsic value. Proceeding from this, the fate of a metamodernism man is determined in pursuit of the endlessly receding horizons of the anthropology of incompleteness, which is carried out through post-irony, naive sincerity, optimistic openness to the world. (shrink)

Taking a managerial perspective, this article presents some models of history with a view to draw lessons for leadership and management of organizations and institutions. The suggested models include: evolution of human thought in terms of religions, science and spirituality and their convergence; transitions in society from kingdom–state to nation–state to corporates as state and beyond; creativity view of history; dignity struggle and liberation view of history; ‘fall of the fittest’ view of history; and the swastika analysis of history. The (...) article explores the implications of these models for providing enlightened leadership to organizations and society by creating synergy between influences from the West and the East. (shrink)

In a recent paper in Business Ethics Quarterly Professor Jeffrey Moriarty (2005) asserted the relevance of political philosophy to business ethics. Moriarty asked whether "businesses ought to be run (more) like states" and argued why that might be beneficial. This paper on the contrary asserts that there are distinct disadvantages to businesses attempting to be run more like states. Specifically, it asserts that any such an attempt increases the likelihood of the re-emergence of a totalitarian society as businesses currently often (...) act as an intermediary between the individual and the state. The paper contemplates Moeller's ambitions in the Weimar period for the business to be run like a state and the historical outcome of those ambitions. The paper also distinguishes between two different kinds of rights and argues that different kinds of rights pertain to different sectors which preclude business being run like a state. (shrink)

This paper uses Collingwood''s methodology to attempt to understand those formative influences influencing Drucker within the Weimar Republic. It is intent on using this methodology to advance an historical thesis about both the origins and sources of Drucker''s thought. By illuminating these formative influences on Drucker, the paper hopes to portray the implications of such influences for his theory of business management.

In this global village, it is relevant to look at two educational visionaries from two continents, John Dewey and Rabindranath Tagore. Dewey observed that the modern individual was depersonalized by the industrial and commercial culture. He, thus, envisioned a new individual who would find fulfillment in maximum individuality within maximum community, which was embodied in his democratic concept and educational philosophy. Tagore's educational vision was based on India's traditional philosophy of harmony and fullness. It focused on self-realization within the context (...) of international education. This article compares the educational visions of Dewey and Tagore and demonstrates that Tagore's international educational perspective adds to Dewey's concepts of social individual and democracy and that their perspectives have implications for contemporary education. (shrink)

No other area of human activity than science and technology has achieved as much intellectually and in terms of technical innovation. Nevertheless, despite these unchallengeable advances, science and technology do not inevitably lead to moral and social progress for humanity: The dreams of reason may also imply nightmares. As this century draws to a close, the most crucial change is occurring in science and technology policy, altering in particular the special status that science has enjoyed since World War II, affecting (...) the conditions under which academic research is carried out, compelling to more collaborative international research efforts and leading at the same time to growing ethical issues at the forefront of choices in relation to the environment, to the new technologies, and even to scientific research per se. Future generations will observe the twists and turns of history partly because of and partly in spite of these choices. (shrink)

Since the 1960s, the concepts of the ‘global’ and the ‘transnational’ have challenged the state-centred orientation of several disciplines. By 1989, the ‘global’ contained sufficient ambiguity and conceptual promise to emerge as a potentially new central concept to replace the conventional notion of modernity. The consequences of the 1989 revolutions for this emerging concept were extensive. As a result of the post-communist ‘New World Order’, a new vision of a single triumphant political and economic system was put forward. With the (...) ‘globalizing of modernity’ as a description of the post-1989 reality, ‘globalization’ became the policy mantra of the Clinton and Blair administrations up until the late 1990s when ‘anti-globalization’ activists were able to question the salience of this dominant theory of ‘globalization’. In scholarly discussion, ‘globalization’ became a floating signifier to be filled with a variety of disciplinary and political meanings. In the post-9/11 era, this Western-centred ‘globalization’ has been conceptually linked to cosmopolitanism while it has played a minor role in the multiple modernities agenda. The article concludes with an assessment of the current status of the ‘global’ in theory and research. (shrink)

Towards Post-Modern Trade Relations? A Review of Dennis Patterson and Ari Afilalo, The New Global Trading Order: The Evolving State and the Future of Trade.

In 1950 Adorno et al .'s The Authoritarian Personality study warned that American society contained a minority of individuals whose characters made them prone to become fascists in certain circumstances and that this was a danger common to contemporary industrial society. After early acclaim critics argued that the main threat came from left-wing authoritarian individuals. But research in several countries failed to establish their existence. We trace and evaluate this debate, largely defending the original research. Subsequent argument suggested that the (...) concept of authoritarianism was becoming outdated in post-industrial society, a view that we strongly challenge. While defending the diagnosis and purpose of the original research, we conclude by endorsing the argument that authoritarianism is better described in terms of attitude rather than personality. This gives a clearer psychological description of political movements of the far right and offers more direct measures for their reduction. (shrink)

. Time, virtuality and the Goddess. Cultural Values: Vol. 2, No. 2-3, pp. 270-287.

This paper explores the potential for an international political theory of care as an alternative to liberalism in the context of contemporary global politics. It argues that relationality and interdependence, and the responsibilities for and practices of care that arise therewith, are fundamental aspects of moral life and sites of political contestation that have been systematically denied and obfuscated under liberalism. A political theory of care brings into view the responsibilities and practices of care that sustain not just ‘bare life’ (...) but all social life, from nuclear and extended families to local, national and transnational communities. It disrupts and challenges the individualism of liberalism, and the associated valorization of ‘freedom’, ‘autonomy’, and ‘toleration’. Instead, it emphasizes an ontology of relationality and interdependence that accepts the existence of vulnerability without reifying particular individuals, groups or states as ‘victims’ or ‘guardians’. Furthermore, by demonstrating the gendered and raced nature of caring in the contemporary world—from the household to the transnational level—an international political theory of care challenges our received assumptions about ‘dependence’ in world politics, and opens up space to interrogate politically not only gender but race and other aspects of inequality in the global political economy. (shrink)

In recent years, the notion of a ‘clash of civilizations’, first put forward by Samuel Huntington (1996), has been widely used to explain the contemporary dynamics of geo-political conflict. It has been argued that the fundamental source of conflict is no longer primarily ideological, or even economic, but cultural. Despite many trenchant and largely debilitating academic critiques of Huntington's argument, the popular appeal of the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis remains undiminished. In many parts of the world, the binary it describes (...) is often taken to be self-evident, especially after the tragic events of September 11. This paper uses the ideas of ‘social imaginary’ (Taylor, 2004) and ‘political myth’ (Blumenberg, 1984) to understand the popular appeal of the idea of civilizational conflict, and suggests that this appeal is unlikely to be punctured by theoretical arguments alone, but by an equally plausible political narrative located in an alternative social imaginary, acquired through cosmopolitan learning. (shrink)

This review essay engages critically with Heikki Patomäki's The Political Economy of Global Security: War, Future Crises, and Changes in Global Governance. The book is built around the hypothesis that the current ‘era of Neoliberalism’ shares many similarities to the era of the ‘new imperialism’ of the late nineteenth century, ending, catastrophically, in World War I and the Great Depression. Patomäki undertakes this comparison by focusing on the principal long-term historical processes, structures, tendencies and contradictions that may be responsible for (...) the similarities between these two eras. To do so Patomäki constructs an explanatory model of the underlying causal processes and mechanisms involved. The implications are ominous and urgent. The essay uses a close examination of this exemplary case of critical realism in social science to discuss critically its historical explanations, the comparative analysis it makes, and especially the question of agency as theorised in the author's ‘future scenarios’. (shrink)

In the context of the upsurge of interest in all things medieval, this essay examines the promotion in popular culture of ‘medieval’ masculine role models. It begins with an assessment of the 19th century's creation of a version of medieval masculinity which was essentially Christian and chivalric. It traces the transfer of this image from literature to cinema in the 20th century. It argues that the image remained dominant until the 1960s when it was eclipsed by a new version of (...) medieval masculinity, a violent pagan ‘Dark Age’ model. This new image triumphed because of changes in society and in the structure and strategies of the cinema industry and its audience. The essay concludes by examining possible medieval alternatives to the pagan ‘Dark Age’ image: the revived chivalric knight, the eco‐warrior and the transplanted modern rationalist. The evidence suggests that they have not yet dented the dominance of the pagan image. (shrink)

This article reviews the implications of the collapse of Communism in Europe for some themes in recent social theory. It was often assumed that 1989 was part of a global process of normalization and routinization of social life that had been left behind earlier utopian hopes. Nothing that utopia is open to various interpretations, including utopias of the everyday, this article suggests, first that there were utopian dimensions to 1989, and, second, that these hopes continue to influence contemporary social and (...) political developments. The continuing role of substantive utopian expectations is illustrated with reference to the politics of lustration in Poland and the rise of nationalist parties in Hungary. This analysis is placed in the context of the already apparent impact of the global economic crisis in post-communist countries. It concludes that the unevenness and diversity of the post-1989 world elude overly generalized attempts at theorization and demand more nuanced analyses. (shrink)

What is pragmatism's contribution, actual or potential, to contemporary International Relations theory and practice? Is there hope for constructing a pragmatist theory of International Relations? The author of this article takes up these questions by considering whether Barack Obama is a pragmatist in his handling of issues in international affairs. By examining a series of Obama speeches, the author teases out the raw material for a pragmatist theory of International Relations, demonstrating how the pragmatic practice of international diplomacy can inform (...) a pragmatist theory of International Relations. (shrink)

In this paper, attention will focus primarily on economic and financial aspects of the globalization debate, and on their implications for public policy. Nevertheless, these issues cannot be separated from their historical and political context. The current discussion of globalization can only be understood in relation to the development of economic and political institutions over the past century. Globalization is frequently discussed as a counterpoint to national sovereignty. It is commonly asserted that globalization has eroded national sovereignty or that it (...) has rendered borders obsolete. In particular, it is asserted that, in a globalised world economy, governments have no alternative but to adopt neoliberal economic policies of privatisation, deregulation and reductions in public expenditure. The analysis presented in this paper gives little support to the view of globalization as an exogenous force that has undermined domestic economic sovereignty. On the contrary, financial globalization is best interpreted as the international counterpart of domestic neoliberalism. Both in domestic and international policy, the swing to neoliberalism was a response to the actual and perceived failures of the post-1945 policy framework in which domestic Keynesianism and the welfare state were complemented internationally by the Bretton Woods system. The advocates of neoliberal reform have had only limited success in implementing their policy agenda, even in the English-speaking countries. The choice between continued neoliberal reform and a remodelled social democracy remains open. The direction chosen by democratic governments will ultimately depend on the relative success of competing economic and social models, rather than on an exogenous process of globalization. (shrink)

The article presents a conception of the end of history, developed on the basis of Giorgio Agamben’s critical engagement with Alexandre Kojève’s reading of Hegel. Departing from Agamben’s concept of inoperosity as an originary feature of the human condition, we argue that the proper or ‘second’ end of history consists not in the fulfilment of its dialectical process but rather in the radical interruption of the dialectic that terminates the teleological dimension of social praxis. Introducing the figure of the ‘workless (...) slave’ into the scenario of the Master—Slave dialectic, the article demonstrates how the dialectic of history may be ended in a non-dialectical fashion through inoperative praxis that subtracts itself from the struggle for recognition. In the conclusion, the implication of this reading of the end of history for the understanding of Agamben’s ‘coming politics’ is addressed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Educating in a convulsed political context demands a detailed analysis of the new circumstances of our times, especially the current democracy crisis. According to the latest reports issued by international evaluation organisations, one of the greatest challenges for democratic citizenship is the emergence and rise of authoritarianism within the framework of the so-called post-democracy, and also in the manifestations known as illiberal democracy. Moral and civic education has to respond to this challenge. With this in mind, we propose revitalising (...) a participative and deliberative democracy model, rethinking the basic values in citizens' education, redefining the relation between what is public and what is private, and empowering sensitivity and free creation in the new maker culture. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWidespread trade liberalization and economic integration characterize the current era of globalization. While this approach has resulted in significant job creation, improved living standards, and a wider variety of cheaper consumer goods and services, opponents question if globalization's benefits outweigh the dislocations and downsides that it causes. Protestors are intent on stalling or rolling back globalization's progression and our review of the history of globalization reveals that a backlash is not without precedent. The article carefully examines the myth and reality (...) of these two opposing positions on four key areas of the globalization debate: jobs; inequality and poverty; national sovereignty and cultural diversity; and the natural environment. This information is then utilized to derive a broad set of feasible policy recommendations that could help bring about a more sustainable form of globalization. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrevious accounts of International Relations research have extensively focused on deontological ethics in analysing Responsibility to Protect. At the same time, discourse ethics – alo...

Volume 52, Issue 12, November 2020, Page 1233-1242.

This article deals with the notion of honor and its relation to the willingness to make sacrifices. There is a widely shared feeling, especially in Western countries, that the willingness to make sacrifices for the greater good has been on a reverse trend for quite a while both on the individual and the societal levels, and that this is increasingly problematic to the military. First of all, an outline of what honor is will be given. After that, the Roman honor-ethic, (...) stating that honor is a necessary incentive for courageous behavior and that it is something worth dying for, is contrasted with today's ruling view in the West, which sees honor as something obsolete and archaic and not as a legitimate motive for courageous behavior. The article then addresses the way honor continues to have a role in today's military, despite its diminishing role in Western society at large. (shrink)

The History of the World travels from East to West for Europe is absolutely the end of History, Asia the Beginning (Hegel, 1956, p. 103).In 1721 Christian Wolff gave a lecture on Confucius at Halle...

Derrida's Specters of Marx asks whether and how we could inherit Marx today: whether we might find, in a certain spirit of Marx, the critical resources to challenge resurgent liberal ideals, without this challenge assuming a dogmatic or totalitarian form. Derrida's own response to this question involves a curious move: a material transformation of Marx's text, in which Derrida first foreshadows, and then carries out, the excision of a single sentence from the pivotal passage in which Marx christens the commodity (...) fetish. The excision subtly transforms the meaning of Marx's text and, in the process, acts out a vision of inheritance as an active, transformative performance, rather than as a passive transmission of inherited content to its heirs. In this paper, I explore the way in which Derrida foreshadows and then effects this curious elision. I highlight the distinctive understanding of transformative inheritance at the heart of Derrida's text, and also pose the question of why Derrida should effect this particular transformation in the search for a certain deconstructive spirit in Marx's work. (shrink)

Beginning with a reconsideration of what the school is and has been, this paper explores the idea of the school to come. Emphasizing the governmental role of education in modernity, I offer a line of thinking that calls into question the assumption of both the school and education as possible conduits for either democracy or social justice. Drawing on Derrida’s spectral ontology I argue that any automatic correlation of education with democracy is misguided: especially within redemptive discourses that seek to (...) liberate education from its present enclosure. This rereading of the field of education in the light of an account of the fundamental ontology of its key institution problematizes all rhetorics of education as social salvation. Education, it proposes, cannot be conceived as the ideal soul of a corrupted or as yet defective body, the school. Education—having taken on the character of an ontotheological principle—has become a governmental instrument as much as its specific institutions. This ontological condition can be understood within various accounts of the nature of contemporaneity. This paper considers the monstrous proposal that education be abandoned as the grounds for social, ethical and cultural redemption. The good news is that this abandonment opens the possibility for thinking beyond education, a beyond that is also beyond the strictures of instrumental rationality. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is a critical reflection on the field of educational administration and its varied and often conflicting epistemologies. It is argued that the field of educational administration is a community of diverse epistemologies. Although epistemological heterogeneity has been persistently vilified by both theorists and pragmatists with their own discursive agendas, it is this precise environment of critical dialogue and diversity that is conducive to new frontiers in the field. A phenomenology of recognition is thus presented as (...) a showcase for the possibility of approaching and expanding the field topically rather than treatise-like generalizations at the macro level, which are mostly dated discussions on philosophy of science. The principal value of the article is showing alternative pathways—not limited to the discussions about theory of recognition—to new frontiers in educational administration by demonstrating the possibility of thematic theory developments in the field and defending the diversity of existing epistemologies in the field as an asset rather than a liability for further development in the field. (shrink)