andrew sayer_lancaster university-july2011pres.ppt

8/10/2019 Andrew Sayer_Lancaster University-july2011pres.ppt

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Whos Afraid of Critical Social

Science?

Andrew Sayer

Lancaster UniversityJuly 2011


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Early social science was

critical!

18th/early19th century

description/explanation and normative

evaluation were intermixed . . . E.g.

Adam Smith on the division of labour.

. .

The man whose whole life is spent

performing a few simple operations . . .

has no occasion to exert his

understanding . . . He naturally loses,

therefore, the habit of such exertion,

and generally becomes as stupid and

ignorant as it is possible for a human

creature to become. (Smith, 1776,

2.V.I., art.2, pp.302-3).


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The Long Decline of CSS

Slow expulsion of critique, evaluation, values fromscience over last 200 years

Not only attempted expulsion of values from science

but expulsion of reason f rom values (subjectivisationof values)

Weak capacity for normative reason in social science

Reflects rise of liberal modernism

Indifference to normative character of everyday lifede-normativized gaze


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Critical Social Science 1970s - Now:

From Audacity to Timidity . . . andback?

Emancipatorydisclosing oppression

(e.g. feminism)

Reflexivity, disclosing hidden presuppositions, scepticalunsettling-

the ever-so-slightly critical theory of today. (Barry Barnes,2000, p. 127)


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Critique in retreat?

Pierre Bourdieu Critique has . . .

retreated into the small

world of academe, where it

enchants itself with itselfwithout ever being in a

position to really threaten

anyone about anything.

(2003)


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Values as subjective and opposed

to reasonas bias, acontaminant threatening social

science?

E.g.:

Whenever the person of science introduces

his personal value judgment, a full

understanding of the facts ceases (Weber, Scienceas a Vocation, 1946, p.146).


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Positivist-radical agreement

Positivist: Social science should strive toexclude values in order to achieve objectivity

Radical: Social science is unavoidably value-laden, so it cant pretend to be objective

I.e. both agreevalues and objectivity areopposed to one anotherand confuse differentmeanings of objectivity (true and value-free)


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The Fact-Value Family of

Dualisms

isought

factvalue

reasonemotionscience - ideology

positivenormative

objective - subjective


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Values within reason?

Values as abstract,

sedimented (e)valuations of

things

Values influence/are

influenced by valuations

Open to challengebut then

so too are factual claims


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A relation to the world of

concern

Our relation to the world is one of concern/

not merely cognitive or practical

Consequence of sentience, needinesscapable

yet vulnerablecan flourish or suffer


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Between normative and positive

Positive (descriptive/explanatory) = world-

guided

Normative (evaluative, directive) = world-

/action-guiding

But which are needs, desire, flourishing,suffering, well-being?

Is - ought binary excludes evaluation


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Beyond the fact-value dichotomy:

Thick ethical concepts

E.g. oppression, domination, abuse,

racism, sexism, humiliation, suffering,kindness, etc.

(Thin ethical conceptsgood, bad)

Descriptive and evaluative content are inseparable inthick ethical descriptionsvaluation needed forobjective/adequate description


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Well-being as objectivei.e. a state of being -

of which we have partial, fallible knowledge

that we try to identify, discover and create

Pluralist, not relativisti.e. can take a variety of

forms but not merely a matter of ones point of viewor wishful thinking

E.g. being healthy, having the social bases of self-

respect; being secure from violence; being able to

give and receive care

(Sen and Nussbaums Capabilities Approach)


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Theories of value

Subjectivism/emotivismpersonal values

Conventionalismwhat we do round here

product of norms

Objectivist/relationalassessments of well- or

ill-being (eudaimonistic)


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Foucault:

a critique is not a matter of saying that

things are not right as they are. It is a matterof pointing out on what kinds of assumptions,

what kinds of familiar, unchallenged,

unconsidered modes of thought the practicesthat we accept rest.(1998, Interview with Didier Eribon, 1981. In

L.Kritzman (ed) Foucault: Politics, Philosophy,

Culture, N.Y.: Routledge, p.155).

On the contrary . . .


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Critical in What Sense?

1. Critical of other research

2. Critique as scepticism

3. Critique as partisanleft/right, defendingsubjugated knowledges

4. Critique as de-naturalisation

5. Critique highlights the way discourseshapes the social world, including subjects


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Critical in What Sense? (contd)

6. Critical of false beliefs and practices based on them.

7. Critiqueof false beliefs and practices based on them,incorporating explanations of why they are held

(Marxist concept of critique) - should be able toexplain the apparent truth of the theory that it showsto be false(Bourdieu, 2005, p.215)

8. Critique of irrationality/contradictions

9. Critique of injustice, avoidable suffering, involvingstandpoint of well-being, ethics.


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Telling others what to do? . . .

The role of an intellectual is not to tell otherswhat they have to do. By what right would hedo so? The work of the intellectual is not to

shape others political will: it is, through theanalyses that he carried out in his own field, toquestion over and over again what ispostulated as self-evident, to disturb peoples

mental habits, the way they do and thinkthings. Foucault (1997a, p.131).


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Conclusions

A critical social science worthy of the name is

about suffering, restricted flourishing and its

causes.

Its critical standpoint requires some conception ofwell-being, flourishing/suffering.

Its political orientation follows rather than

precedes it. We need to re-unite social science and normative

thought (e.g. moral and political philosophy) . . .


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Is and Ought and the

Naturalistic FallacyIt is hard to think of any other widely used phrase in the history of philosophy

that is such a spectacular misnomer (Bernard Williams, 1985, p.121).

Factual statements dont logically entail value statements . . . So?

Not a matter of logic

Logical deduction not the only form of inference Valuey facts

Ought >> Is relationships a problem?

Only dogmatically-heldvalues are a problem (Anderson)


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Critical Standpoints (1): Reduction

of Illusion - Truth

False consciousness? Or are people infallible?!


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Critical Standpoints (3): Need,

reduction of suffering, restrictedflourishing

People as capable of well-being or ill-being, vulnerable, dependent social beings

Rights?

Needs?


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Critical Standpoints (2) Freedom

Foucault? E.g. implicit in studies of power?

- problem of crypto-normativity

[C]ritique is understood as an interrogation of the terms

by which life is constrained

(Judith Butler, Undoing Gender)

[Why should constraint be a problem?]

Critique as the identification of unwanted determinations(Roy Bhaskar)

[Which ones should we want?]


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Four Conceptions of Action and

Society

1. Causal - material

2. Hermeneuticmeaningful

3. Causal-hermeneutic (e.g. Weber, CR)4. Needs*-based

- people as sentient, needy, desiring beings, capable of

flourishing or suffering, forming attachments and

commitments, suspended between things as they are andas they might become, for better or worse, and as they

need or want them to become;

* includes cultural(ly-autonomous) needs


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Qualified Ethical Naturalism

The meaning of good and bad ultimately relate to

needs, capacities for flourishing and suffering . . .

But:

1. Cultures influence bodies.2. Needs, flourishing and suffering always culturally

interpretedfallibly.

3. Some goods and needs are wholly culturally constructed.


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We feel that even when all possible scientific

questions have been answered, the problems of

life remain completely untouched.

(Wittgenstein, 1922, Tractatus Logico-

Philosophicus, 6.52).


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Evaluative judgement and the work

of attention . . . if we consider what the work of attention is like, how

continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds upstructures of value round about us, we shall not be surprisedthat at crucial moments of choice most of the business of

choosing is already over. This does not imply that we are notfree, certainly not. But it implies that the exercise of ourfreedom is a small piecemeal business which goes on all thetime and not a grandiose leaping about unimpeded at importantmoments. The moral life, on this view, is something that goes

on continually, not something that is switched off in betweenthe occurrence of explicit moral choices. What happens inbetween such choices is indeed what is crucial. (Murdoch,1970, p. 36).


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Capabilities Approach (Sen,

Nussbaum)

Substantive freedoms to choose a life one has

reason to valueto have access to

functionings beings and havings that are

intrinsically important:

E.g. being healthy, having the social bases of

self-respect; bodily integrity - being secure

from violence;

andrew sayer_lancaster university-july2011pres.ppt

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