Contemporary critical theory's methodology is currently taking shape under the impact both of transformative internal develops within the discipline, and of external pressures and incentives arising ...from a series of international debates.
In this book, Piet Strydom presents a groundbreaking treatment of critical theory's methodology, using as a base the reconstruction of the left-Hegelian tradition, the relation between critical theory and pragmatism, and the associated metatheoretical implications. He assesses extant positions, presents a detailed yet comprehensive restatement and development of critical theory's methodology, compares it with a wide range of current concepts of social criticism and critique, and analyzes leading critical theorists' exemplary applications of it. Besides immanent transcendence and the sign-mediated epistemology common to the left-Hegelian tradition, special attention is given to the abductive imagination, reconstruction, normative and causal explanation, explanatory mechanisms and the communicative framework which enables critical theory to link up with its addressees and the public.
Contemporary Critical Theory and Methodology is recommended reading for senior undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as professionals working within disciplines such as sociology, philosophy, political science, critical theory and cultural studies.
Gerard Delanty provides a comprehensive assessment of the idea of cosmopolitanism in social and political thought which links cosmopolitan theory with critical social theory. He argues that ...cosmopolitanism has a critical dimension which offers a solution to one of the weaknesses in the critical theory tradition: failure to respond to the challenges of globalization and intercultural communication. Critical cosmopolitanism, he proposes, is an approach that is not only relevant to social scientific analysis but also normatively grounded in a critical attitude. Delanty's argument for a critical, sociologically oriented cosmopolitanism aims to avoid, on the one hand, purely normative conceptions of cosmopolitanism and, on the other, approaches that reduce cosmopolitanism to the empirical expression of diversity. He attempts to take cosmopolitan theory beyond the largely Western context with which it has generally been associated, claiming that cosmopolitan analysis must now take into account non-Western expressions of cosmopolitanism.
Does critical theory still need psychoanalysis? In Critique on
the Couch , Amy Allen offers a cogent and convincing defense of
its ongoing relevance. Countering the overly rationalist and
...progressivist interpretations of psychoanalysis put forward by
contemporary critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and Axel
Honneth, Allen argues that the work of Melanie Klein offers an
underutilized resource. She draws on Freud, Klein, and Lacan to
develop a more realistic strand of psychoanalytic thinking that
centers on notions of loss, negativity, ambivalence, and mourning.
Far from leading to despair, such an understanding of human
subjectivity functions as a foundation of creativity, productive
self-transformation, and progressive social change. At a time when
critical theorists are increasingly returning to psychoanalytic
thought to diagnose the dysfunctions of our politics, this book
opens up new ways of understanding the political implications of
psychoanalysis while preserving the progressive, emancipatory aims
of critique.
Contemporary theorists use the term “social construction” with the aim of exposing how what's purportedly “natural” is often at least partly social and, more specifically, how this masking of the ...social is politically significant. The chapters in this book draw on insights from feminist and critical race theory to develop the idea that gender and race are positions within a structure of social relations. On this interpretation, the point of saying that gender and race are socially constructed is not to make a causal claim about the origins of our concepts of gender and race, or to take a stand in the nature/nurture debate, but to locate these categories within a realist social ontology. This is politically important, for by theorizing how gender and race fit within different structures of social relations we are better able to identify and combat forms of systematic injustice. The central chapters of the book offer critical social realist accounts of gender and race. These accounts function as case studies for a broader approach that draws upon notions of ideology, practice, and social structure developed through interdisciplinary engagement with research in social science. Ideology, on the proposed view, is a relatively stable set of shared dispositions to respond to the world, often in ways that also shape the world to evoke those very dispositions. This looping of our dispositions through the material world enables the social to appear natural. Additional chapters in the book situate a critical realist approach in relation to philosophical methodology, and to debates in analytic metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language.
Fifty years ago, the two leading German philosophers and sociologists since the Second World War, Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann, embarked on a sweeping and contentious debate that would continue ...for decades. This is the first book in English about one of the most important conflicts in social theory today.
This Critical Theory and Contemporary Society volume offers an original analysis of the role of the digital in today’s society. It rearticulates critical theory by engaging it with the challenges of ...the digital revolution to show how the digital is changing the ways in which we lead our politics, societies, economies, media, and even private lives. In particular, the work examines how the enlightenment values embedded within the culture and materiality of digital technology can be used to explain the changes that are occurring across society. Critical Theory and the Digital draws from the critical concepts developed by critical theorists to demonstrate how the digital needs to be understood within a dialectic of potentially democratizing and totalizing technical power. By relating critical theory to aspects of a code-based digital world and the political economy that it leads to, the book introduces the importance of the digital code in the contemporary world to researchers in the field of politics, sociology, globalization and media studies.
The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies provides an overview of theoretical approaches, key topics, issues, and subject specialisms in management studies, as well as a set of reflections ...on the progress and prospects of Critical Management Studies (CMS). CMS has emerged as a movement that questions the authority and relevance of mainstream thinking and practice. Critical of established social practices and institutional arrangements, it challenges prevailing systems of domination and promotes the development of alternatives to them. CMS draws upon diverse critical traditions. Of particular importance for its initial articulation was the thinking of members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. From these foundations, CMS has grown into a pluralistic and inclusive movement incorporating a diverse range of perspectives ranging from labour-process theory to radical feminism. In recent times, a set of ideas broadly labelled ‘poststructuralist’ has been developed to complement and challenge the insights of Critical Theory, giving new impetus for scholars seeking to challenge the status quo and articulate a more inclusive and humane future for management practice. The authors are all specialists in their respective fields and share a concern to interrogate and challenge received wisdom about management theory and practice. The CMS movement has grown rapidly – its ever-increasing theoretical and geographical diversity and its outreach into the public sphere. In addition to UK contributors, where CMS has developed most rapidly, there is strong representation from North American contributors, as well as from areas where CMS has taken hold more recently, such as Australasia.
This original and ambitious work looks anew at a series of intellectual debates about the meaning of democracy. Clive Barnett engages with key thinkers in various traditions of democratic theory and ...demonstrates the importance of a geographical imagination in interpreting contemporary political change.
Debates about radical democracy, Barnett argues, have become trapped around a set of oppositions between deliberative and agonistic theories-contrasting thinkers who promote the possibility of rational agreement and those who seek to unmask the role of power or violence or difference in shaping human affairs. While these debates are often framed in terms of consensus versus contestation, Barnett unpacks the assumptions about space and time that underlie different understandings of the sources of political conflict and shows how these differences reflect deeper philosophical commitments to theories of creative action or revived ontologies of "the political." Rather than developing ideal theories of democracy or models of proper politics, he argues that attention should turn toward the practices of claims-making through which political movements express experiences of injustice and make demands for recognition, redress, and re pair. By rethinking the spatial grammar of discussions of public space, democratic inclusion, and globalization, Barnett develops a conceptual framework for analyzing the crucial roles played by geographical processes in generating and processing contentious politics.
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