Following on from Roy Bhaskarâe(tm)s first two books, A Realist Theory of Science and The Possibility of Naturalism, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, establishes the conception of social science as explanatoryâe"and thence emancipatoryâe"critique. Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation starts from an assessment of the impasse of contemporary accounts of science as stemming from an incomplete critique of positivism. It then proceeds to a systematic exposition of scientific realism in the form of transcendental realism, highlighting a conception of science as explanatory (...) of a structured, differentiated and changing world. Turning to the social domain, the book argues for a view of the social order as conditioned by, and emergent from, nature. Advocating a critical naturalism, the author shows how the transformational model of social activity together with the conception of social science as explanatory critique which it entails, resolves the divisions and dualisms besetting orthodox social and normative theory: between society and the individual, structure and agency, meaning and behavior, mind and body, reason and cause, fact and value, and theory and practice. The book then goes on to discuss the emancipatory implications of social science and sketches the nature of the depth investigation characteristically entailed. In the highly innovative third part of the book Roy Bhaskar completes his critique of positivism by developing a theory of philosophical discourse and ideology, on the basis of the transcendental realism and critical naturalism already developed, showing how positivism functions as a restrictive ideology of and for science and other social practices. (shrink)

Explores how the French theory of philosophy, which became popular during the last three decades of the twentieth century, spread to America and examines the critical practices that French theory inspired.

For a long time the south has been seen like an error, a negation, or a delay. To reverse this picture, the first thing that is required is to give back to the south the ancient dignity of being a subject of thought, rather than being thought of from the standpoint of others. In a similar manner, the Mediterranean has long been regarded as a sea of the past. It is in fact a central place of contemporary history - a (...) place in which the north and the west meet the east and the south of the world, and a model for understanding how multiple faiths, cultures and economies can coexist peacefully. (shrink)

In this article I argue for a transdisciplinary approach to the human or social sciences. There is little ontological or epistemological justification for a division among these disciplines. I recommend that sociology stop worrying about policing its disciplinary boundaries and begin to encourage various forms of intellectual transculturation. I then analyze barriers to transdisciplinarity by comparing disciplines to states and comparing the relations among disciplines to different sorts of imperial practice, or interstate relations. The most common interdisciplinary strategies are analogous (...) to the informal, nonterritorial imperialism practiced globally by the United States. Three other forms of interdisciplinarity are discussed: the annexation of one discipline by another — a situation that is analogous to colonialism; nonhegemonized systems of equal disciplines (analogous to the Westphalian state system); and nonimperial `traveling' and transculturation among disciplines (analogous to the practices of members of weak or declining imperial states). (shrink)

Australian universities expanded rapidly in the period after the Second World War, assisted by the national government and with a clear understanding that they would serve national purposes. Social scientists sought to participate in the enhanced opportunities for research by pressing their relevance to the nation-building project. At the same time they sought academic recognition as research disciplines by stressing the objective and authoritative character of their knowledge. This article explores the way these strategies were pursued in Australia and the (...) United States, and suggests their consequences. The institutionalization of the social sciences in the university is contrasted with the oppositional social science practised in the labour movement's independent working-class education in the early part of the 20th century, and it is argued that the expectations created by state support of research in the social sciences — and the policies imposed to serve them — are ill founded. (shrink)

In this article, presented as the Second Annual Thesis Eleven Centre Lecture in 2003, Bernard Smith discusses the practice of writing art history in, and about, Australia and Europe. Smith defends periodization, and argues for the necessity of henceforth viewing what is typically called modernism as what he calls the formalesque. Further discussion includes problems of classification, the role of theory, and the place of Aboriginal art in white art history. The article thus surveys the condition of art history in (...) Australia, its emergence and consolidation as a discipline, and its present situation as part of contemporary world culture. (shrink)

Tracing the history of the Ottoman and Safavid empires back to the Middle Period of Islamic history, this article focuses on their origins in the chieftaincies and the hybrid cultural formations of the Anatolian regions. While considering the inter/intracivilizational historical context of their respective rise to power, it is argued that the structural makeup of the empires differed primarily in their disparate forms of Sufi-knightly cultures, identified here as knightly-heroic (Ottoman) and millenarian-populist (Safavid), which is essentially tied to two distinctive (...) types of tribal political organizations: frontierchieftaincy (Ottoman) and sectarian-chieftaincy (Safavid). Although the original Ottoman and Safavid chieftaincies, based on the militant Ghazi and Qizilbash orders, dissolved once the roaming bands of warriors were replaced by more settled military formations in the course of long-term state-building processes, the influence of their Sufi-knightly cultural heritages is still manifest in modern Iranian and Turkish societies. (shrink)

Australia is a suburban nation, with 85 percent of the 20 million people clinging to the coastal fringes of the world's largest island and oldest continent. This article explores Australian suburbia as the `third space' that mediates urbanism to `nature'. It draws on the thought of George Seddon, an important initiator of ecological history, regional geography and sub/urban politics in Australia. Seddon's insights on Australian ecosystems and Australian interpretations, namings, perceptions and shapings of their natural environment since the beginning of (...) European colonization in 1788 are used to think about the `nature of suburbia', `nature in suburbia' and suburbia in Australian `nature'. Its central argument is that nature is always culturally mediated and that the dominant ecological imaginary in Australia is suburban. The suburbs are the sites of economic, ecological and cultural trafficking about nature. It is argued here that the `bush', at least since the Second World War in Australia, has been more determinative of the suburban social imaginary than the `city'. In recent years, the meaning of the `bush' has transmuted from the `country' into the `wilderness', and from a valorization of the historic settlement process to myths of pure, aboriginal nature unadulterated by human imaginings and interventions. Though the meanings of the `bush' have changed in each case, its interpreter and maker is the socialized gardener of suburbia. The future of Australian nature is to be played out in the suburbs. (shrink)

Whereas the Mediterranean has not submitted easily to strong theories, still it has inspired a certain kind of theorizing from the ground. The setting of the Mediterranean viewed from the land's edge gave the world theoria, which Greek etymology and usage associates with looking onto a scene with amazement, viewing drama, being sent as an emissary to consult the oracle, or traveling for the purposes of sightseeing. The present essay explores some connections between the Mediterranean and theoria. Following a brief (...) survey of how theoria functioned in antiquity, it studies the case of 20th-century Greek poet Angelos Sikelianos and American director and choreographer Eva Palmer - husband and wife - who sought to revive ancient ideas of theoria. They organized revivals of the Delphic Festivals in 1927 and 1930 as a prelude to re-establishing Delphi as a world center for people with a vision for the world. Their work rivaled that of the Olympic Revivals, except that the Delphic Revival was linked to a particular Mediterranean site and pursued the course of art, music, social thought, and especially tragedy together with athletics. A spectacular, imaginative, ambitious, but stillborn effort, it gives evidence of both the potential and limits of Mediterranean theoria. (shrink)

Much has been made of the ‘Southern difference’ in cultural and sociological images of the North American landscape. Everything isdifferent there: the cuisine, the music, the religion, and the politics. Moreover, the South was the crucible in which two of the definitive North American experiences were formed: the Civil War (1861–5) and the Civil Rights Movement a century later. This article poses another important category, in addition to ‘race and space’ – namely, the concept of tragedy, and the correlative rendering (...) of the South as ‘America's tragic landscape’. (shrink)

Little appears to have changed in the western imagining of the Pacific region since ancient times. While metaphors of redemption and condemnation, paradise and paradise lost, utopia and dystopia persist, Australia's place in the Pacific will remain elusive and insecure. The essay is in two parts. The first half discusses the metaphors implicit in the names given to the region, the South Seas, the Pacific and Oceania, and relates their imagining in the early European expeditions of Balboa and Magellan, in (...) Hodges' paintings done on Cook's second voyage in the 18th century, and in conceptualizations of Australian identity from the colonial period to the mid-20th century writing of historians such as Hancock, Barnard and Manning Clark. The second half of the essay traces the repetition of the same metaphors in the theories of de Certeau and Baudrillard, and in the writings of contemporary Australian critics, including McKenzie Wark, Ross Gibson and Paul Carter. (shrink)

Following in the wake of a certain epistemological and analytical crisis in positivism (its methodology is mercifully in good shape), a revival in the popularity and `scientific' legitimacy of various `comprehensive' analytical approaches in the social sciences has been witnessed over the last ten years. However, by insisting on the significant subjective dimension of action, these interpretive approaches have brought the problem of normativity inherent in the research object, as well as the problem of the `ideological' implication of the human (...) sciences, back into the centre of epistemological preoccupations. The question now is to know to what extent the so-called human sciences are prepared to accept, from a theoretical point of view, this dual objective and subjective dimension of their cognitive practice, seen in critical relationship with society. It is also a question as to whether the human sciences have at their disposal an adequate model for recognizing this normative dimension in its ontological and epistemological specificity. This article sets out to outline just such a model from a philosophical point of view in order to identify some main ideas relating to a pedagogical reorientation, introspective rather than dogmatic, of the normative task which has fallen to the human sciences in contemporary society. (shrink)