Political Epistemology and Social Critique

2021 ◽  
pp. 23-65
Author(s):  
Sally Haslanger
Keyword(s):  
Standard Model ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Consciousness Raising ◽  
Epistemic Practices ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
The Social ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Political Epistemology

Under conditions of ideology, a standard model of normative political epistemology—relying on a domain-specific reflective equilibrium—risks status-quo bias. Social critique requires a more critical standpoint. What are the aims of social critique? How is such a standpoint achieved and what grounds its claims? One way of achieving a critical standpoint is through consciousness raising. Consciousness raising offers a paradigm shift in our understanding of the social world; but not all epistemic practices that appear to “raise” consciousness are warranted. However, under certain conditions sketched in the chapter, consciousness raising produces a warranted critical standpoint and a pro tanto claim against others. This is an important epistemic achievement, yet under conditions of collective self-governance, there is no guarantee that all warranted claims can be met simultaneously. There will be winners and losers even after legitimate democratic processes have been followed.

scholarly journals Sociologiens problemer i en social verden uden grænser

2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Margareta Bertilsson
Keyword(s):  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social World ◽  
Expansion Process ◽  
Territorial State ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
New Vision ◽  
Different Characteristics

An unrestricted social world and the problem(s) of sociology Sociology has been characterized as an embattled science all through its century-long history. Now, by the turn of the mil¬lennium it is still considered a controver¬sial science: contemporary discussions in the USA have made it clear that so¬ciology risks implosion from the inside either because it is evolving into a science of cultural differences mirroring the ma¬ny forms of contemporary moral redresses or else as an esoteric symbol system out of touch with social reality. The article starts out with surveying some such con¬temporary arguments, raised by socio¬logists and directed against the sociolo¬gical discipline in the 90´s. Seen from within the system of the modern sciences, sociology is typically what has been called an “unrestricted” science. It harbours a wide variety of theo¬retical and methodological approaches without any real centre. Profound que¬stions have recently been raised if socio¬logy as a discipline is falling apart in various specialties with regard to sub¬stances, theories, and methods. Network arrangements among cognitive special¬ties threaten the classic disciplinary mo¬del of science today in general, and so¬ciology is especially threatened by such de-centring tendencies. But the thrust of the argument in this article is to view the alleged dissolution of sociology in light of the wider theme of an eventual dissolution of the notion of the “social”. Could it be, by the end of the 20´s century, that our social world assumes different characteristics than those contained in the old framework of the nation-state. Many different notions of the term social are then listed aiming at the question if the term social itself is but a late historic construction, pertai¬ning in particular to the glue that was to hold the territorial state together. As a “resource” the social world is a precondi¬tion of human life, but as a “topic of dis¬course”, and a theme of sociology, em¬ployments of the term social need consi¬dering a future social world without de¬finite borders. Due to the expansion not the least of mass technology, the social world has been transformed immensely. The expan¬sion process can be captured as a three¬fold process: individualization, contrac¬tualization, and mediatization. Whereas the old container theory stipulated a more or less unified model of the social, a new vision of the social requires us to accom¬modate to this overriding and threefold expansion process. However, these diffe¬rent processes may pull in different cog¬nitive directions - and the question will be raised in the end if the future of socio¬logy can find a “reflective equilibrium” and maintain its disciplinary bounda¬ries or if the discipline will dissolve as a consequence of the dissolution of its own subject-matter?

Hegel’s Political Epistemology

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-François Kervégan
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Philosophical Discourse ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Epistemology ◽  
Normative Statement ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis article proposes an interpretation of Hegel’s famous maxim in the Preface of the Grundlinien: ‘What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational’, not (as usual) as a politically conservative normative statement, but as an epistemological statement concerning the way in which philosophical discourse relates to reality. My aim is to take seriously Hegel’s claim that the purpose of philosophy is not to prescribe to the social world what it has to be but to define the mode through which it may be known.

Structural Injustice and the Tyranny of the Scales

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Kirun Sankaran
Keyword(s):  
Standard Model ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social World ◽  
Institutional Structure ◽  
Structural Injustice ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Standard Model

Abstract What features of structural injustice distinguish it from mere collections of injustices committed by individuals? I argue that the standard model of moral judgment that centers agents and actions fails to adequately articulate what’s gone wrong in cases of structural injustice. It fails because features of the social world that arise only at large scale are normatively salient, but unaccounted for by the standard model. I illustrate these features with historical examples of normatively-different outcomes driven by institutional structure rather, holding fixed characteristics of agents’ motivations. I then defend the view from reductionist objections.

scholarly journals Looking laterally: The literary utopia and the task of critical social theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 001139212096975
Author(s):  
Joe PL Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social World ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
The Social ◽  
Better Than

This article is focused on exploring the value of literary utopias for social theory. The literary utopia, at first glance, appears irrelevant to sociology, its imaginative descriptions of social worlds both radically different and substantively better than our own seeming to skip over the central task of sociological enquiry: the diagnosis of society as it exists. In this article, the author aims to demonstrate that this is mistaken: the tradition of literary utopianising has much to contribute to sociology. Utopian authors, from Thomas More in the sixteenth century to Ursula K Le Guin in the twentieth, have developed a sophisticated and original mode of social critique. The utopian text, in bricolating and remixing aspects of actually existing society, creates something both new and astonishing. In looking laterally at the world from the perspective of utopia, consciousness of the contradictions and repressions of the dominant relations in contemporary society is sharpened. The literary utopia achieves this in two ways: first, it demonstrates how the not yet realised norms of the author’s society can be fulfilled and, second, it discloses the hidden possibilities for new ways of living that are present but denied in the social world.

The Contribution of Enrique Pichon-Rivière: Comparisons with His European Contemporaries and with Modern Theory

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Scharff
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Modern Theory ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
George Herbert Mead ◽  
Analytic Thinking ◽  
Family Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Original Family ◽  
Kurt Lewin ◽  
Social Applications

Enrique Pichon-Rivière, a pioneer of psychoanalysis, worked and wrote in Argentina in the mid-twentieth century, but his work has not so far been translated into English. From the beginning, Pichon-Rivière understood the social applications of analytic thinking, centring his ideas on "el vinculo", which is generally translated as "the link", but could equally be translated as "the bond". The concept that each individual is born into human social links, is shaped by them, and simultaneously contributes to them inextricably ties people's inner worlds to the social world of family and society in which they live. Pichon-Rivière believed, therefore, that family analysis and group and institutional applications of analysis were as important as individual psychoanalysis. Many of the original family and couple therapists from whom our field learned trained with him. Because his work was centred in the analytic writings of Fairbairn and Klein, as well as those of the anthropologist George Herbert Mead and the field theory of Kurt Lewin, his original ideas have important things to teach us today. This article summarises some of his central ideas such as the link, spiral process, the single determinate illness, and the process of therapy.

Our Most Troubling Madness

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Defeat ◽  
Social World ◽  
Epidemiological Evidence ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Brain Alteration ◽  
Benign Course ◽  
Cultural Features ◽  
The Way

This book examines the way schizophrenia is shaped by its social context: how life is lived with this madness in different settings, and what it is about those settings that alters the course of the illness, its outcome, and even the structure of its symptoms. Until recently, schizophrenia was perhaps our best example—our poster child—for the “bio-bio-bio” model of psychiatric illness: genetic cause, brain alteration, pharmacologic treatment. We now have direct epidemiological evidence that people are more likely to fall ill with schizophrenia in some social settings than in others, and more likely to recover in some social settings than in others. Something about the social world gets under the skin. This book presents twelve case studies written by psychiatric anthropologists that help to illustrate some of the variability in the social experience of schizophrenia and that illustrate the main hypotheses about the different experience of schizophrenia in the west and outside the west--and in particular, why schizophrenia seems to have a more benign course and outcome in India. We argue that above all it is the experience of “social defeat” that increases the risk and burden of schizophrenia, and that opportunities for social defeat are more abundant in the modern west. There is a new role for anthropology in the science of schizophrenia. Psychiatric science has learned—epidemiologically, empirically, quantitatively—that our social world makes a difference. But the highly structured, specific-variable analytic methods of standard psychiatric science cannot tell us what it is about culture that has that impact. The careful observation enabled by rich ethnography allows us to see in more detail what kinds of social and cultural features may make a difference to a life lived with schizophrenia. And if we understand culture’s impact more deeply, we believe that we may improve the way we reach out to help those who struggle with our most troubling madness.

Experience of Ethnographic Fieldwork in an English Benedictine Monastery

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Irvine
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Fieldwork Experience ◽  
The Social ◽  
Peripheral Participation

What is the role of imitation in ethnographic fieldwork, and what are its limits? This article explores what it means to participate in a particular fieldsite; a Catholic English Benedictine monastery. A discussion of the importance of hospitality in the life of the monastery shows how the guest becomes a point of contact between the community and the wider society within which that community exists. The peripheral participation of the ethnographer as monastic guest is not about becoming incorporated, but about creating a space within which knowledge can be communicated. By focusing on the process of re-learning in the monastery – in particular, relearning how to experience silence and work – I discuss some of the ways in which the fieldwork experience helped me to reassess the social world to which I would return.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document