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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;