scholarly journals Two attempts at grounding social critique in „ordinary“ actors’ perspectives: The critical theories of Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-50
Author(s):  
Marjan Ivkovic
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Axel Honneth ◽  
The Social ◽  
Normative Criteria ◽  
Nancy Fraser ◽  
Normative Foundations

This paper analyzes two contemporary, ?third-generation? perspectives within critical theory - Nancy Fraser?s and Axel Honneth?s - with the aim of examining the degree to which the two authors succeed in grounding the normative criteria of social critique in the perspectives of ?ordinary? social actors, as opposed to speculative social theory. To that end, the author focuses on the influential debate between Fraser and Honneth Redistribution or Recognition? which concerns the appropriate normative foundations of a ?post-metaphysical? critical theory, and attempts to reconstruct the fundamental 29 disagreements between Fraser and Honneth over the meaning and tasks of critical theory. The author concludes that both critical theorists ultimately secure the normative foundations of critique through substantive theorizations of the social, which frame the two authors? ?reconstructions? of the normativity of everyday social action, but argues that post-metaphysical critical theory does not have to abandon comprehensive social theory in order to be epistmologically ?non-authoritarian?.

scholarly journals Social pathologies, false developments and the heteronomy of the social: Social theory and the negative side of recognition

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Souza
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Negative Side ◽  
Axel Honneth ◽  
The Social ◽  
Normative Reconstruction ◽  
Mature Work

The aim of this paper is to explore a tension between two concepts designed to expose social discomforts in Axel Honneth?s mature work, namely social pathologies and anomie. Particular emphasis will be given to how they contribute or obstruct Honneth?s apprehension of social tensions. In the first session of this exposition I will show that Honneth?s interpretation of social pathologies is based on a conception of society as an organic whole (I). While this interpretation represents a slight change regarding Honneth?s understanding of social pathologies in Das Recht der Freiheit, it does not change the fact that in his work subsequent to that book the concept of false developments has not been properly theorized. Accordingly, social discomforts related to deviations from expected patterns of a normative reconstruction remain largely ignored. This calls for a perspective more fully able to grasp the heteronomy of social life (II). As a result, in Honneth?s mature work there seems to be a tension between the aims of a normative reconstruction and those of social critique, mainly due to an inability of the author to combine both elements of his social theory. In its final section (III), the paper will address that tension in order to critically contribute to Honneth?s attempt to link normative reconstruction, social analysis and criticism.

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.

scholarly journals Economy, Culture, and Normativity: The Debate Regarding Social Theory between Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 209
Author(s):  
Nathalie De Almeida Bressiani
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Axel Honneth ◽  
Nancy Fraser

Axel Honneth recorre a uma teoria do reconhecimento, segundo a qual o desenvolvimento do capitalismo e das instituições sociais é o resultado de processos de comunicação nos quais conflitos sociais são determinantes. Nancy Fraser, por sua vez, desenvolve um modelo teórico dual, de acordo com o qual a desigualdade econômica tem parte de suas origens em mecanismos sistêmicos, cujo funcionamento seria relativamente independente de normas e conflitos sociais. Embora ambos vinculem os conflitos sociais a normas sociais, somente Honneth busca atrelar o próprio funcionamento da economia aos desenvolvimentos desses mesmos conflitos. Tendo isso em vista, este artigo tem como objetivo explicitar em Fraser e Honneth, a relação que se estabelece entre confl itos sociais e a economia, com vistas a entender neles a influência de normas sociais no processo de reprodução material da sociedade

scholarly journals Youth in the margin in Morocco: a qualitative approach to the perception of subjectivity and agency politics

2021 ◽  
Vol 119 ◽  
pp. 01007
Author(s):  
Ilham Sadoqi
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
Youth Agency ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Third Moment

This paper seeks to investigate the potentials of youth agency in the margin of society and understand the prospects for social action or “Hirak” as an ongoing sweeping protest wave of a marginalized population. Based on a national qualitative study about youth and marginality in Morocco, this paper will focus on three moments. First, it will examine youth perception, their representation of their subjectivities, and how the realities and experiences of exclusion and “Hogra” manifested in inequalities, injustice, and systematic violence have shaped their beliefs and desire to act. The second moment brings to the fore their apprehension of the hegemonic powers of state institutions and social actors to determine their motivations and initiatives to articulate their actions locally and nationally under conditions of domination. The third moment will shed light on the dynamics of youth agency and the nature of their actions, be it individual or collective, subjective or rational. Similarly, it will also consider the structural limitations impinging on the social, political, cultural life, and gender relations. This paper examines the relationship between youth agency in the margin and the emergence of a new quest for social action “Hirak” in different regions of Morocco and how this might pave the way towards renegotiating the existing social contract between society and state.

Putting Values and Institutions Back into the Theory of Strategic Action Fields

2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack A. Goldstone ◽  
Bert Useem
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
Strategic Action ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Theory Of Social Action

Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam have presented a new theory of how collective action creates the structure and dynamics of societies. At issue is the behavior of social movements, organizations, states, political parties, and interest groups. They argue that all of these phenomena are produced by social actors (which may be individuals or groups) involved in strategic action. This allows Fligstein and McAdam to advance a unified theory of “strategic action fields.” This article takes issue with aspects of Fligstein and McAdam’s important contribution. We argue that that all organizations are not essentially the same; in addition to the location and interactions of their strategic actors, their dynamics are shaped and distinguished by differing values and norms, by the autonomy of institutions embedded in strategic action fields, and by the fractal relationships that nested fields have to broader principles of justice and social organization that span societies. We also criticize the view that social change can be conceptualized solely in terms of shifting configurations of actors in strategic action fields. Rather, any theory of social action must distinguish between periods of routine contention under the current institutions and norms and exceptional challenges to the social order that aim to transform those institutions and norms.

Reflections on Justice under the Context of Globalization

Human Affairs ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ľubomír Dunaj
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Philosophical Hermeneutics ◽  
Axel Honneth ◽  
Nancy Fraser ◽  
The Way

Reflections on Justice under the Context of GlobalizationThis paper deals with the need to change the way in which we consider justice in connection with globalisation. It analyses injustice in countries with developed capitalism, employing the work of Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser. The paper highlights the importance of using "critical theory" in relation to developing an acceptable understanding of the term justice, and using "critical theory" in conjunction with Hans Herbert Kögler's "philosophical hermeneutics". In order to adequately investigate contemporary human civilization it is necessary to enrich our knowledge by investigating "civilisational analysis" (Johann P. Arnason).

Critical Theory and the Critique of Capitalism: An Immanent Critique of Nancy Fraser's “Systematic” “Crisis-Critique” of Capitalism as an “Institutionalized Social Order”

2021 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-235
Author(s):  
Chris O'Kane
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
Alternative Possibility ◽  
Systematic Theory ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
Nancy Fraser

The predominant approach to contemporary critical theory lacks a critical theory of capitalist society. Nancy Fraser has endeavored to provide such a critical theory in her “systematic” “crisis–critique” of capitalism as an “institutionalized social order.” Yet Fraser's “systematic” theory is not systematic, but fragmentary and internally inconsistent. The Marxian premises of Fraser's theory are at odds with its ensuing Habermasian notions of capitalism, contradiction, crises, and emancipation, and her theory consequently lacks a robust explication of these dynamics. This raises the alternative possibility of developing a contemporary critical theory of the crisis–ridden reproduction of the negative totality of capitalist society that brings Adorno and Horkheimer's critical theory together with the subterranean strand of contemporary critical theory: the New Reading of the critique of political economy as a critical social theory.

‘Radical’ Social Theory of Sport: A Critique and a Conceptual Emendation

1985 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Sport Sociology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Turn ◽  
Advanced Capitalist

The social theory of sport literature has taken a new and welcome critical turn in the last few years. That turn is revealed in the emergence of a Marxist-based corpus of literature which challenges headlong the fundamental tenets of mainstream (functionalist) sport sociology. The purpose of the present paper is to critically respond to this new critical theory of sport; in particular to its two major versions—what I call, respectively, vulgar Marxist, and hegemonic sport theory. I argue that both versions of this theory are conceptually flawed, and that these conceptual flaws are themselves ideologically grounded. The point of my criticisms, however, is not to undermine or otherwise deflect the critical thrust of this theory, but to suggest that that thrust requires a new conceptual scaffolding which is more sensitive to the ideological temperament of advanced capitalist society.

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