Critical Realism

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

This qualitative arts-based study made use of poetic inquiry to analyze and represent the stories of non-Indigenous people recognized as allies of Indigenous peoples in Canada. I adopted a theoretical foundation in critical realism, focusing on the role of agency in the emergent realities of the participants’ ally work (Archer, 2002). I grounded the study in literatures that drew from multiple Indigenous perspectives on teaching, learning and knowledge; social justice education and awareness; and postcolonial theory and decolonization. Thematically, the areas of ally experience that interested me most were their actions, emotions, and how they related to others in the spaces they occupied. Using the ally interview transcripts as raw data, I created found poems that reflected those themes. Constructing the poems while engaging in analysis led me to attempt to decolonize language and names. Hence, I made use of a disruptive strategy to bring attention to the extent to which language reflects colonization. In the final chapter of the dissertation, I outlined implications for adult education theory and practice as suggested by the study. In addition, I made suggestions for actions that allies-in-the-making may take up and directions for future study.

[Publication is in Norwegian] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: QUESTIONS OF «ONTOLOGY»: STEPS TOWARDS A REALISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY The Norwegian Research Council has evaluated Norwegian anthropology and concluded that the discipline is ethnographically strong, but defensive when it comes to theoretical contributions. Researchers are now actively following up the critique through a series of theory-oriented projects. It is interesting to observe that none of these initiatives refers to what I term «classical Norwegian social anthropology»-the scholarly tradition of Fredrik Barth. It seems that «theory develop-ment» is interpreted as «contemporary international debate». The article is critical of this break and suggests that there may be theoretical potentials in the Norwegian tradition that are overlooked in the attempt to «keep up with the times». In particular, I endorse the realistic position that characterizes «classical Norwegian social anthropology» and suggest that a strengthening of this position in terms of Roy Bhaskar's critical realism may contribute a theoretical alternative to contemporary anthropological orientations.

This is the first in a series of blog posts on realism and social movements. The purpose of it is to refine the explanatory purchase of realist thought within social movement studies and consider what it means ‘to be realist’ about social movements. This first post is dedicated to fleshing out realist thought and making my own argument(s) a little more accessible to social movement theorists.

This book falls within the limits of academic research, certified by the order of the Romanian Ministry of Education, no. 5766 / December 15, 2021. The book represents the author's doctoral thesis modified according to the format and requirements of a book. It went through the academic process of double peer review and was recommended for publication.

How life is not a singularity, how you can truly be free, and how the conservative ideology is indeed illogical and antihuman. A thesis By: Shin-Ae Ahn Dedicated to: Steven Hawking (RIP) and those open minded enough to open up a book (that isn't a bible or some conservative hogwash), and read, instead of bullying someone to the brink of suicide (which is what conservatives do on a daily bases).

This (preprint) chapter argues that the 'thick' constructivism to which many prominent Feminist Security Studies authors currently subscribe is incapable of providing this sub-field of International Relations with adequate philosophical grounding. This is the case, it claims, because the textualist framework that results from this form of constructivism is unable to provide a basis and rationale for the kind of integrative, interdisciplinary research that is required to do justice to the events/ phenomena with which Feminist Security Studies is concerned. In contrast, the chapter contends that critical realist philosophy-especially its emergentist/stratified ontology and power-/ mechanism-based understanding of causality-does pave the way for such research. Moreover, it stresses that the heterodox and synthetic/preservative nature of this philosophical approach allows it to avoid the persistent theory/praxis inconsistencies which plague constructivist work.

These poems, composed in Somali and in English, provide a poetic reflection of the recently emerged debate on the theme of Caddaan Studies which means "White Studies". The criticism and counter-criticism contained in the debate dug so deep into life nerve of Somali Studies that over a thousand people participated. The poems, under the title "Inaugurating Caddaan Studies" were composed with a critical observation of the debate.

Umwelt, Technik & Risiko – damit verbinden wir eine Symptomatik, die für die Moderne von bestandskritischer Bedeutung ist. Soweit herrscht Einigkeit. Kontrovers sind hingegen Diagnose und Therapie. Ist die industriegesellschaftliche Risikoproblematik auf die In- und Extensivierung der Inanspruchnahme der Natur zurückzuführen? Oder herrschen kulturelle Veränderungen in der Wahrnehmung von Unsicherheiten vor? Diesen Fragen folgend werden Probleme der Forschung, der Gesellschaftstheorie und des Risikomanagements erörtert.

This paper addresses the question of why South Africa’s cultural museums and the South African Museums Association (SAMA) should take action on climate change. What is the relevance of climate change to the future of cultural museums and to SAMA? A literature survey of research on the predicted impacts of climate change on South Africa demonstrates its sociocultural effects. Museological work is considered in support of the argument that museums are social institutions with social responsibility at the core of their mission. These premises motivate the argument that cultural museums have a responsibility to engage with the impacts of climate change in their public programmes and that to do so is crucial to the social sustainability of museums in the medium to long term. The article considers why climate change has so little presence in the work of South Africa’s museums, and concludes that this is due to what Pendlebury calls the “authorised heritage discourse”. This paper contends that the development of an ecological model of heritage practice is an appropriate means through which to adapt the authorised heritage discourse to encompass climate change work. To do so is concomitant with the present socially-oriented goals of the heritage sector, and is in fact crucial to the success of the sector’s transformation project. The broad character of such a model to be developed in future work is outlined in the final part of the article, drawing on the ecocritical work that has been done in cultural studies and on the concept of cultural landscapes.

This book bridges a gap between discussions about truth, human understanding, and epistemology in philosophical circles, and debates about objectivity, bias, and truth in journalism. It examines four major philosophical theories in easy to understand terms while maintaining a critical insight which is fundamental to the contemporary study of journalism. The book aims to move forward the discussion of truth in the news media by dissecting commonly used concepts such as bias, objectivity, balance, fairness, in a philosophically-grounded way, drawing on in depth interviews with journalists to explore how journalists talk about truth.

For the Routledge Research in Journalism Series.

L'anthropologie culturelle de facture interprétativiste a fait place à une variété d'approches: réaliste et critique (le droit doit être cherché au-delà de son apparence formelle), pluraliste (l'expression du droit ne se réduit pas au droit étatique), praxéologique (le droit s'observe dans sa performance pratique ordinaire).

[Publication is in Norwegian] English abstract: «MY HAPLOGROUP»:
BIOLOGY, KINSHIP AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN THE CONTEXT OF GENETIC GENEALOGY The focus of this article is genetic genealogy, i.e., genetic testing that helps hobby genealogists to trace their «origin» in historical and pre-historical time. I discuss how the three most common methods provided – testing on the Y chromosome, mitochondrial DNA and autosomal DNA – may impact on the formation of kinship, descent and cultural identity. The article engages classical anthropological debates on the role of biology versus meaning in the constitution of kinship. I deviate from deterministic cultural perspectives that deny any form of biological «fundament», arguing for a more nuanced and realistic anthropology that rather examines the relative importance of biology in the sociocultural formation of kinship.

Uses of Heritage (2006) has been an important contribution to the development of Heritage Studies. Resting on a thorough ‘re-read’ of this modern classic, the article analyses the text applying some central concepts from Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Realism in order to review the arguments put forward. One of the linguistic features from Critical Discourse Analysis we draw on is ‘nominalization’, which refers to replacing verb processes with a noun construction. Re-reading Uses of Heritage and other succeeding publications, it is apparent that the phrase ‘Authorized Heritage Discourse’ is nominalized and reified into an entity obscuring who does what to whom, thereby making the ‘Authorized Heritage Discourse’ a self-evident unit of explanation. Furthermore, the insistence on viewing heritage as a cultural process rather than as ‘things’ is not readably compatible with Critical Realism’s non-reductionist stance. Wrapping up, we nonetheless argue that really taking Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Realism on board could provide a rule of conduct for the future developments of Heritage Studies, where multifarious conceptions of heritage can co-exist.

There is a widespread belief in the academic world—above all in the United States and in the scientific communities around the world accepting U.S. mainstream science as their standard —that »schools« have lost their grounds and their legitimacy in psychology and other sciences.

»Schools of thought« are seen as hampering freedom of thought and research, progress in science would have a better chance when free of such affiliations, and »objectivity« in science is seen to be best granted by some sort of disinterested eclecticism.

There are mainly two arguments that have been put forward against such a belief:

The first argument is that what is called »disinterested eclecticism« is a school in itself and its claim of leaving all schools behind may well be seen as nothing other than the claim of hegemony and monopoly for this very own school.

The second argument is that schools do not only still exist, but that they continue to have legitimate reasons for their existence because their
potential—when handled correctly—is capable of outweighing the problems that might be connected to them.

This article examines the concept of conflict presented by different authors on the basis of the sociology of power, while ignoring the elements that do not fit in with this theoretical proposal, and suggesting a more suitable definition. Likewise, it is understood that a large social system is made up of numerous actors that have multiple conflicts between them. This is why, in the case of international conflicts, we are not talking about one single conflict, but of a conflictual complex that requires a different kind of analytical approach to the one offered by classical theories on conflict analysis. The result is a proposal which, unlike some conflict resolution theories, pays particular attention to the structure in which the actors are immersed, and explains better both the conduct of the actual actors and the results of the conflictual complex itself, all of which are vital elements for obtaining good results in any attempt at resolution.

This article explores the relationship between ethics and metaphysics in critical theory through immanent criticism of Fabian Freyenhagen's reconstruction of Adorno. Endorsing Freyenhagen's overall defence of Adorno's position, it argues that several important features of Adorno's position as Freyenhagen interprets it can be made intelligible only on broadly Aristotelian metaphysical presuppositions. These should be thematized explicitly rather than ignored. Moreover, these metaphysical presuppositions are on independent grounds plausible, as recent Aristotelian and critical realist work has indicated, and special difficulties arising for them in the context of a radical negative critical theory can probably be overcome. Further conversation between critical theorists, Aristotelians and critical realists should prove fruitful in elaborating and defending a radical critical theory alternative to the dominant postmetaphysical paradigm. Progress in this direction, though, will entail rejecting the basic postmetaphysical premise that critical theory must proceed in a metaphysically neutral way.

Neuroscientist Donald Hoffman proposed a bold theory-that objects do not exist independently of us perceiving them and that all that really exists is conscious agents. In this critical review, Leslie Allan examines the three core components of Hoffman's new idealism: Fitness Beats Truth (FBT) Theorem, Interface Theory of Perception (ITP) and Conscious Realism. Allan proposes solutions to linguistic absurdities suffered by Hoffman's idealism before considering its most serious problems. These include oversimplifications and misunderstandings of evolutionary theory, self-refutation, heuristic sterility and dependence on the successes of scientific realism.

In my analysis of Wright's epistemology, I will focus on two research questions, namely: Does Wright’s critical-realism really succeed as a third-way to avoid the relativism from phenomenalism and the naiveté of positivism, hence is it useful in presenting Christianity as a viable answer to basic worldview questions for our era? I will answer this question by answering the following sub-questions: 1) What is Wright’s critical-realism and how is it claimed to be a solution for the dilemma of ‘positivism’ and ‘phenomenalism’ in reading? 2) How does Wright use the concept of critical-realism, narrative knowledge, and worldviews to achieve a ‘fair reading’ of New Testament taking its historical, literary, and theological character into account – without falling into the traps of either positivism or phenomenalism? I will present some critics of N.T. Wright to help me analyze this case.

This article seeks to establish six guidelines for the use of self-disclosure in clinical social work. It examines the relationship between self-disclosure and countertransference, the timing of the self-disclosure over the course of the therapeutic relationship, types of self-disclosure, the connection between assessment and self-disclosure, and how self-disclosure is related to reality testing. Objections to self-disclosure are also examined and clinical examples are used throughout.

Applied Linguistics as Social Science surveys the increasing dialogue between linguistics and social theory. The book shows how social theory, applied linguistics and sociolinguistics share a set of common concerns, and how an analysis of these to produce a social scientific account of applied linguistics helps to explain the interaction between social structures, human agents and language. Foreword . Introduction . Making connections: some key issues in social theory and applied linguistics . Sociology and ideas about language . Language as a cultural emergent property . Researching language learning: theories, evidence, claims . Social categories and theoretical descriptions . Social domain theory: interpreting intercultural communication . Language in the world: properties and powers . A social realist approach to research in applied linguistics

Liev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, or, as he was better known from some Brazilian translations, Leo Tolstoy, was undoubtedly one of the greatest writers of world literature. But, beyond his impressive literary curriculum, the author of War and Peace also became well known for his controversial ideas, in which he won admirers and followers and, also, persecutors and detractors. Within the aesthetic complex, if it is true that Tolstoy was able to figure a part of his characters with a great subjective wealth, presenting them from the social determinations that involve them and consubstantiate them; it is also a fact that he, at other times, (in a much lower literary quantity), he had mystifying and prejudiced conceptions. In the great majority of his books, Tolstoy bases his figuration on a conception that mixes, on the one hand, precepts of a materialist ontology and, on the other, elements of religious and mystification, just like a mixture of true and false ontologies. And when, in the later part of his life, in which the writer was surrounded by a resigned and, in a certain way, nihilistic religious thought, among the values prophesied by Tolstoy, one seems to have been more prominent: misogyny. The aim of this article was to present and analyze, briefly, some indications about this relationship in the works of the Russian writer. From examples extracted from the artistic figurations of this author, it could measure the degree of approximation or distance with a conception of the humanist and historical world, which was embodied by various aesthetic, philosophical and political contradictions.

This talk starts from the presumption that the quantum challenge, as a set of philosophical questions, was a dialogue far beyond the discipline of physics. Quantum sociologist Gabriel Tarde, and philosophers Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead, amongst others, were active participants in the debates over causality, time, and action at a distance, as well as the grander metaphysical questions about life raised by Bohr and Schrödinger in particular. Following Bohr and Tarde, I argue that quantum phenomena are not constrained to the subatomic, but in fact are essential components of human social and political relations.
Mostly ignored until recently, the panpsychist traditions that emerged from these early interdisciplinary debates over quantum are essential to understanding the character of contemporary terrorism, and more broadly global politics in an age of non-scalable events. By non-scalable I mean that the measurement of the brute materiality of an event does not in any predictable way translate into its effect. In our age, apocalyptic crises barely register, and statistically insignificant events shake the entire international order. In fact, International Relations theory has, from its beginning, endeavored to explain ‘spooky action at a distance’, as the relations of the international are by definition both in a no-space of the international, and habituated into the local practices and places of diplomacy, deterrence, and war. While the entangled and non-locality of global politics has always been true, I argue that media and quantum savvy organizations like ISIS succeed precisely because of their ability to leverage this characteristic of global life.
Given the difficulty of theorizing such events, it is necessary to revise Benedict Anderson’s model of the imagined community as an imaginary space of shared continuity and simultaneity in favor of a quantum-inflected notion of virtual entanglement. Here, the ‘community’ is created by the non-spatial but still real acceleration of distrust for the world, and those bearing the marks of racialized difference. Events like those that erupted in Paris, France and San Bernardino, California are only the most recent examples. The latter event had no explicit connection to ISIS, and yet this spectacular violence is an undeniable asset to the atmosphere of terror that ISIS requires to increase its international significance. In fact, no amount of discourse about the non-connection of San Bernardino to ISIS was sufficient to disentangle them. Events such as those in France and California do not operate in a three dimensional space in which we can measure something like speed or mass. Instead, contemporary terrorism takes place in an affective dimension where space/time is often irrelevant to the intensity of the consequences of an event. When a pineapple soda can becomes a ‘bomb’ and takes down a Russian airliner, the everyday objects around us provoke a sense of metaphysical doubt or skepticism most commonly known as horror. Therefore, International Relations needs a quantum turn so that we can understand the very real consequences of events and things whose capacities defy both physical and casual explanation, but far exceed constructivist concepts of discourse or ideas. Link to talk https://youtu.be/-71newlDkhI?t=13m17s

This book represents the first attempt to step inside the holiday experience of young British tourists. Using ethnographic methods such as observation, open-ended interviewing and focus groups in San Antonio, Ibiza, this book reveals the ugly truth about 'how' and 'why' young Brits get involved in deviance and risk-taking when they go abroad, exploring vivid accounts of drug use, drug dealing, violence, prostitution, and injury.

In contrast to existing knowledge and populist depictions, Briggs argues that the root of these behaviours is not pathological but rather it is more about how this social group have come to self validate what is expected of them in their leisure time and, as a consequence, how their attitudes are subtly guided and endorsed by the commodified social context of resorts which are only interested in making money at their expense.

Exploring issues of youth culture, political economy, tourism and identity, this book will appeal to scholars in sociology, criminology, cultural studies, tourism and youth studies.

In "Scientific Realism and the Issue of Variability in Behavior," J. F. Arocha (2021) proposes a (hylo)-realist method of studying behaviour and consciousness. Arocha adopts the thesis that reality consists of concrete (determinate) things, is orderly and lawful, and that it has an emergent character. I propose that furthering the critical power of the realist position requires the adoption of the thesis that human societies also have emergent properties and are determined by historically specific laws.

ABSTRACT
This article investigates how Gabriele D’Annunzio’s The Triumph of
Death brings together Nietzsche’s ideas and Wagner’s music and
interweaves them with the motifs of literary Decadence and the
author’s own particular sexual politics. The novel is an experimental
text striving to be a Gesemtkunstswerk, an integrated work that
incorporates music, painting, poetry, regional folklore, and private
thoughts about personal and national power. I discuss the novel’s
themes of violent sexuality and the anxiety of powerlessness and
explore their implications for the fascist political aesthetics in which
D’Annunzio played a pioneering role.

Understanding how technologies contribute to social harms is a perennial issue, animating debate within and well-beyond criminology. This article contributes to these debates in two ways. Firstly, it critically examines five of the key approaches criminologists have used to think through how technologies contribute to harms. Secondly, it proposes a new approach to understanding 'technology-harm relations'. Bringing the theory of critical realism, Simondon, and Floridi into conversation, the proposed approach offers a stratigraphy of harm that enables us to excavate the different layers of human-technology and technology-harm relations. In doing so, it enables us to distinguish between four technology-harm relations that untangle the socio-technicality of harmful events: instrumental utility harms, generative utility harms, instrumental technicity harms, and generative technicity harms.

English summary (text is in German):

This paper examines the question of the utility and practical relevance of epistemological models for psychotherapy on the basis of Critical Realism, the epistemological position of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy. The narrative of an "everyday story", which raises questions about the experience of "reality" - questions which are then answered from a critical-realistic point of view - serves as an introduction to the discussion of the topic. The derivation and presentation of the central basic assumptions of Critical Realism is intended to make it plausible to what extent this explanatory model can be helpful for a differentiated understanding of the dynamics of interpersonal relationships and the associated problems.
The second part of the article deals explicitly with the presentation of some conclusions that can be derived from the critical-realistic model for practical-psychotherapeutic work. In particular, the aspects of therapeutic attitude, therapeutic relationship and practice are examined in more detail. At the same time, the article provides a psychotherapy-related framework for reading the following basic Gestalt theoretical texts on Critical Realism by Wolfgang Köhler and Wolfgang Metzger.

Zusammenfassung:

In diesem Beitrag wird der Frage nach dem Nutzen und der praktischen Relevanz erkenntnistheoretischer Modelle für die Psychotherapie anhand der Darstellung des Kritischen Realismus, der erkenntnistheoretischen Position der Gestalttheoretischen Psychotherapie nachgegangen. Zum Einstieg in die Auseinandersetzung mit der Thematik dient die Erzählung einer "Alltagsgeschichte", die Fragen zum Erleben der "Wirklichkeit" aufwirft − Fragen, die dann in weiterer Folge aus kritisch-realistischer Sicht beantwortet werden. Mit der Herleitung und Darstellung der zentralen Grundannahmen des Kritischen Realismus soll plausibel gemacht werden, inwiefern dieses Erklärungsmodell hilfreich für ein differenziertes Verständnis der Dynamik zwischenmenschlicher Beziehungen und damit einhergehender Probleme sein kann. Der zweite Teil des Beitrags beschäftigt sich explizit mit der Darstellung einiger Folgerungen, die sich aus dem kritisch-realistischen Modell für die praktisch-psychotherapeutische Arbeit ableiten lassen. Dabei werden insbesondere die Aspekte therapeutische Grundhaltung, therapeutische Beziehung und Praxeologie näher beleuchtet. Der Beitrag stellt zugleich einen psychotherapiebezogenen Rahmen für die Lektüre der nachfolgenden gestalttheoretischen Grundlagentexte von Wolfgang Köhler und Wolfgang Metzger dar.

A despeito da proliferação de pesquisas sociológicas sobre o racismo, suas origens, dinâmicas e consequências sociais ainda carecem de uma definição minimamente operacional para o termo. Além da carga política marcante e dos conteúdos que o termo assume histórica e contextualmente, há uma grande discordância sobre quais dimensões do social estão a ele relacionadas. Ora o racismo é definido: 1) como uma doutrina, ideologia ou conjunto de ideais; 2) como um conjunto de atitudes, práticas e comportamentos mais ou menos irrefletidos; 3) como uma propriedade de estruturas sociais, sistemas ou instituições. Este artigo sugere que tais divergências nascem de perspectivas parciais sobre o social, e que as pesquisas empíricas sobre o racismo têm muito a ganhar com uma integração analítica da dimensão ideológica, prática e estrutural. Contudo, para que não se perca de vista a complexidade do fenômeno e, em especial, das políticas públicas existentes para mitigá-lo, é necessário integrar essas três dimensões sem diluí-las analiticamente, isto é, sem conferir precedência de nenhuma delas em relação às outras. Daí a utilidade de uma definição realista crítica do racismo como um fenômeno tridimensional.