Logical Empiricism as Critical Theory? The Debate Continues

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
John O’Neill ◽  
Thomas Uebel
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Welfare Economics ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Logical Empiricist ◽  
First Order ◽  
Classical Economics ◽  
Critical Social Science

AbstractIs logical empiricism incompatible with a critical social science? The longstanding assumption that it is incompatible has been prominent in recent debates about welfare economics. Sen’s development of a critical and descriptively rich welfare economics is taken by writers such as Putnam, Walsh and Sen to involve the excising of the influence of logical empiricism on neo-classical economics. However, this view stands in contrast to the descriptively rich contributions to political economy of members of the left Vienna Circle, such as Otto Neurath. This paper considers the compatibility of the meta-theoretical commitments of Neurath and others in the logical empiricist tradition with this first-order critical political economy.

Political Economy of Communication

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Levent Yaylagül
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
Economic Basis ◽  
Critical Social Science ◽  
The Media ◽  
Political Economy Approach ◽  
Critical Social

There are different approaches and schools in the field of mass communication. Political economy, in itself, is divided into a liberal or classical political economy and a critical—Marxist—political economy. According to the Marxist-oriented critical political economy approach, the economic basis of a society determines the superstructure of that society such as state, politics, culture, and ideology. Since media is very important in producing and reproducing existing relations of property and power in capitalist societies, it is important to analyze the media with a political economy approach. Briefly, in the context of the system of political economy of communication, the effects of capital and state on media contents are explained. In this section, after examining the origins and historical development of the field of political economy as a critical social science, the characteristics of contemporary critical political economy are put forward.

Political Economy Approaches and a Changing Rural Geography

Rural History ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-129
Author(s):  
Paul Cloke
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Theoretical Ground ◽  
Rural Geography ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Widespread Adoption ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Critical Social Science ◽  
The Subject

As a ‘rural geographer’ it has been fascinating over the past few years to witness and participate in the rather ponderous lurch being made by the subject towards new theoretical approaches. In particular, ideas and concepts within the broader movement of critical social science, and under the umbrella of political economy, are now being widely discussed, but a fundamental and widespread adoption of new ideas has been both slothful and in some cases grudging. This is not to suggest that research in rural geography has remained unchanged through the 1980s. Indeed, a growth in the scale of rural research has been evident, and this research has become more applied and policy-oriented than ever before. Until quite recently, however, rural geography has lacked a vigorous push towards new theoretical ground and towards the analytical comparisons of these theories.

Antonio Gramsci’s Contribution to a Critical Economics

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Thomas ◽  
Michael R. Krätke
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Antonio Gramsci ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Critical Social Science ◽  
To Come ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
Scientific Socialism ◽  
Widespread View

AbstractAccording to conventional wisdom, Antonio Gramsci is a political philosopher lacking in, and who avoids, a serious interest in political economy. That is a serious misrepresentation of Gramsci’s works and thought. Equally wrong is the widespread view that anything Gramsci had to say about political economy is to be found in his scattered notes on ‘Americanism and Fordism’. On the contrary, a careful rereading of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks shows that Marx’s great and unfinished project of the critique of political economy plays a crucial rôle for Gramsci’s efforts to come to grips with the basics of a critical social science that could live up to the aspirations of a ‘scientific socialism’. As Gramsci was fully aware of the everyday battles of ideas in capitalist societies to be fought about the notions and tenets of popular or vulgar political economy, he did the best he could in order to understand and clarify the bases of a ‘critical’ and ‘scientific’ political economy. A political economy that was and still is urgently needed in order to fight the strongest of the strongholds of bourgeois hegemony - the ideas of vulgar economics in everybody’s heads.

Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie im 21. Jahrhundert.

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (188) ◽  
pp. 453-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Peter Büttner
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
New World ◽  
Neoclassical Economics ◽  
Price Theory ◽  
Transformation Problem ◽  
Iron Cage ◽  
Analytical Tools

While the majority of the scientific community holds Marxian Value and Price Theory to be internally inconsistent because of the so-called “transformation problem”, these claims can be sufficiently refuted. The key to the solution of the “transformation problem” is quite simple, so this contribution, because it requires the rejection of simultanism and physicalism, which represent the genuine method of neoclassical economics, a method that is completely incompatible with Marxian Critique of Political Economy. Outside of the iron cage of neoclassical equilibrium economics, Marxian ‘Capital’ can be reconstructed without neoclassical “pathologies” and offers us a whole new world of analytical tools for a critical theory of capitalist societies and its dynamics.

Gift Exchange as Narrative and Metaphor

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 229-252
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Economic Anthropology ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Commodity Exchange ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
Characteristic Features

The article deals with characteristic features of economic anthropology"s rhetoric of reciprocity and analyzes the factors that affected its formation. The authors consider two principal interpretations of reciprocity in economic anthropology that were formed under the influence of its two main founders - Malinowski and Mauss. The characteristic features of their two types of rhetoric are discussed together with the purposes for which they were used. Two different intentions were pivotal for the work of these researchers and their followers: first, to establish economic anthropology as a positivistic science; and second, to use the analysis of archaic societies as evidence for their critique of a capitalistic economy.To achieve the first task they actively used rhetoric borrowed from the natural sciences, and especially from biology as well as from economic theories that were another social science also striving for a more rigorous positivism. For the second task they turned to the rhetoric of political economy and used arguments based on a dialectical opposition between commodity exchange and gift exchange. The most prominent example of such dialectical rhetoric is in the works of Chris Gregory and Karl Polanyi in which gift exchange was interpreted as a metaphor for a utopian alternative to capitalistic commodity exchange. Because the rhetoric of economic anthropology from its inception to the present has been profoundly influenced by the language of general economic theory, the article examines the genesis of the rhetoric of economics as a science. This leads to an analysis of how the language of economics was affected by the rhetoric of the natural sciences, then of psychology and finally of law.

Feudal Europe, 800–1300: communal discourse and conflictual practices

1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Structural Theory ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Fundamental Significance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Scientific Argument

The discipline of international relations faces a new debate of fundamental significance. After the realist challenge to the pervasive idealism of the interwar years and the social scientific argument against realism in the late 1950s, it is now the turn of critical theorists to dispute the established paradigms of international politics, having been remarkably successful in several other fields of social inquiry. In essence, critical theorists claim that all social reality is subject to historical change, that a normative discourse of understandings and values entails corresponding practices, and that social theory must include interpretation and dialectical critique. In international relations, this approach particularly critiques the ahistorical, scientific, and materialist conceptions offered by neorealists. Traditional realists, by contrast, find a little more sympathy in the eyes of critical theorists because they join them in their rejection of social science and structural theory. With regard to liberal institutionalism, critical theorists are naturally sympathetic to its communitarian component while castigating its utilitarian strand as the accomplice of neorealism. Overall, the advent of critical theory will thus focus the field of international relations on its “interparadigm debate” with neorealism.

Forms of Injustice and Regression

2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 (4) ◽  
pp. 314-328
Author(s):  
Regina Kreide
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Global Poverty ◽  
Border Politics ◽  
Communicative Power

AbstractOver the last years, the debate over global justice has moved beyond the divide between statist and cosmopolitan, as well as ideal and non-ideal approaches. Rather, a turn to empirical realities has taken place, claiming that normative political philosophy and theory need to address empirical facts about global poverty and wealth. The talk argues that some aspects of the earlier “Critical Theory” and its notions of negativity, praxis, and communicative power allow for a non-empiristic link between normative theory and a well-informed social science analysis that is based on experienced injustice. The analysis of border politics and housing politics will serve as an example for a critical theory of global injustice that addresses regressive as well as emancipative developments in society.

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