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.

Feminist Social Theory Needs Time. Reflections on the Relation between Feminist Thought, Social Theory and Time as an Important Parameter in Social Analysis

1989 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 458-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social World ◽  
Multiple Time ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theoretical Issues

This paper explores the relation between feminist concerns, social theory and the multiple time aspects of social life. It is suggested that while feminist approaches have been located in classical political philosophy, the same imposed classification has not occurred with respect to social theory perspectives. Rather than seeing this as an academic gap that needs filling, it was taken as an opportunity to take note of the wide variety of feminist approaches to methodological and theoretical issues and to relate these to concerns arising from a focus on the time, temporality, and timing of social life. It is argued that a feminist social theory, as an understanding of the social world through the eyes of women, is not only complemented by such a focus on time but dependent on it for an opportunity to transcend the pervasive vision of the ‘founding fathers’.

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 Axel Honneth and The Reconstruction of Justice: An Attempt to Overcome the "Distribution Paradigm"

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Stanley Souza Marques ◽  
Marcelo Andrade Cattoni De Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Reciprocal Relationships ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Axel Honneth ◽  
The Social ◽  
Normative Reconstruction ◽  
Set Up

The article takes up the criticisms directed by Axel Honneth to the basic structure of the dominant conceptions of justice, but merely to point out the general outlines of his alternative project of justice normative reconstruction. If John Rawls and Michael Walzer structure theories of distributive justice very consistently and in order to get to the autonomy protection (already taken so) in a more sophisticated way, that to be satisfied it transcends the (mere) obligation of not interfering in the realization of individual life projects, Honneth proposes the radicalization of justice's demands. It is because he pays his attention to the mutual expectation of consideration. This point would be the new texture of the social justice. In this sense, the principles of fair distribution leave the scene to make way for principles which guidelines are directed towards the society basic institutions involved in a new goal: to set up favourable contexts for the success of plural reciprocal relationships.

scholarly journals Affective recognition and social freedom - the psychoanalytic and normative-reconstructive logics of grounding social critique in Axel Honneth’s work

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-434
Author(s):  
Werner Euler
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Individual Recognition ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Normative Reconstruction ◽  
Legal Subjects

The task of this paper is the following: how should one explain and solve the theory-immanent tension in Honneth?s recent works, i.e. the tension that reflects the difference between the concept of social freedom (a concept grounded in Hegel?s social philosophy methodologically articulated through normative reconstruction) and the concept of ?affective recognition? (which has replaced the earlier normative concept) - in other words: is there a certain logically-factually grounded path from the question of subjective-individual recognition to the intersubjective recognition of free (legal) subjects in society? My thesis is the fol?lowing: this supposed tension is a pseudo-tension. It loosens up - without completely resolving itself - as soon as we combine the two logics of grounding critique that we find in Honneth. However, unrelated to my claim about the pseudo-nature of the mentioned tension, the psychoanalytic mode of grounding critique is erroneous, since one cannot directly arrive at collective components of society starting from the empirical constellation of individual consciousnesses. The relation between subjective individuality and objective (intersubjective) generality is an objective contradiction (as opposed to a purely theoretical tension). If we still decide to pursue this path of grounding critique, we inadvertently introduce a psychologistic approach into social theory. Such an approach can be found in Honneth?s theory of intersubjective (normative) recognition as well.

scholarly journals Recovering critique in an age of datafication

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 1135-1151
Author(s):  
Nick Couldry
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Questions

This article starts out from the need for critical work on processes of datafication and their consequences for the constitution of social knowledge and the social world. Current social science work on datafication has been greatly shaped by the theoretical approach of Bruno Latour, as reflected in the work of Actor Network Theory and Science and Technology Studies (ANT/STS). The article asks whether this approach, given its philosophical underpinnings, provides sufficient resources for the critical work that is required in relation to datafication. Drawing on Latour’s own reflections about the flatness of the social, it concludes that it does not, since key questions, in particular about the nature of social order cannot be asked or answered within ANT. In the article’s final section, three approaches from earlier social theory are considered as possible supplements to ANT/STS for a social science serious about addressing the challenges that datafication poses for society.

scholarly journals The Social Life of “Scaffolds”

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bronwyn Parry
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Prosthetic Device ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Product Failure ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Systemic Drug

Technologies for enhancement of the human body historically have taken the form of an apparatus: a technological device inserted in, or appended to, the human body. The margins of these devices were clearly discernible and materially circumscribed, allowing the distinction between the corporeality of the human body and the “machine” to remain both ontologically and materially secure. This dualism has performed some important work for human rights theorists, regulators, and policy makers, enabling each to imagine they can establish where the human ends and the other begins. New regenerative products such as Infuse™ and Amplify™ subsist, as animal-derived scaffolds seeded with growth hormone implanted within a prosthetic device. They are much more materially complex, and their identities thus remain open to contestation. Following Lochlann Jain’s 2006 work, I thus attend closely to their social lives, particularly the stories that are told about them and how these are employed to construct understandings of what kind of a phenomenon they are: systemic drug, biologic, or combinatorial medical device. The significance of this classificatory project is revealed in the final section of this paper, which explores how these stories shape understandings of “product failure,” liability, and causation when such products overflow their material and ontological categorization and their recipients become disturbingly “more than human.”

scholarly journals Political praxis, social analysis and western modernization: a theoretical-political route for critical social theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-173
Author(s):  
Leno Francisco Danner ◽  
Fernando Danner
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Erich Fromm ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Praxis ◽  
Critical Social

This paper criticizes the emphasis placed by contemporary social theory and political philosophy on institutionalism as the basis for the understanding, legitimation and changing of institutions, or social systems, and society as a whole. The more impactful characteristic of institutionalism is its technical-logical structuring, based on an impartial, neutral and formal proceduralism that autonomizes social systems in relation to political praxis and social normativity, depoliticizing these social systems. Here, they are no longer depoliticized, but assume political centrality as the fundamental social subjects of the legitimation and evolution of institutions and society. The paper’s central argument is that it is necessary to re-politicize the institutions and the social subjects or social classes in order to ground and streamline a direct political praxis and the civil society’s social-political subjects as the basis for framing and legitimizing the current process of Western modernization. Recovering the politicity and the carnality of institutions, of social classes and of the evolution of society, is the fundamental task for a contemporary critical social theory that faces the strong institutionalism based on systemic theory. Such politicization is the unforgettable teaching of Karl Marx and Erich Fromm: the institutions have political content and political subjects, they are the result of social struggles for hegemony between opposed social classes which are political. Now, such politicity-carnality must be unveiled and used for an emancipatory democratic political praxis as the route for social analysis and political change, in opposition to the technical-logical understanding both of the institutions and of the social subjects.

Doing Critical IS Research

2011 ◽  
pp. 141-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dubravka Cecez-Kecmanovic
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Information System Design ◽  
Is Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Process ◽  
Critical Social

Critical information systems (IS) research denotes a critical process of inquiry that seeks to achieve emancipatory social change by going beyond the apparent to reveal hidden agendas, concealed inequalities and tacit manipulation involved in a complex relationship between IS and their social, political and organisational contexts. It has its philosophical and theoretical roots in critical social theory (Held, 1980; Fay, 1987; Morrow and Brown, 1994). As a critical social researcher studies the social life of people in order to help them change conditions and improve their lives, so too does a critical IS researcher. By demystifying technological imperatives and managerial rationalism justifying a particular information system design, the critical IS researcher helps both IS practitioners and users understand its social consequences, envisage desirable alternatives and take action.

RECONHECIMENTO E AUTONOMIA NA TEORIA DA JUSTIÇA DE AXEL HONNETH

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (137) ◽  
pp. 401
Author(s):  
Denilson Luis Werle
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Mutual Recognition ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Axel Honneth ◽  
The Social ◽  
Relational Concept ◽  
Normative Reconstruction ◽  
Normative Foundations

O artigo pretende examinar a relação entre reconhecimento e autonomia na teoria da justiça de Axel Honneth construída a partir da reconstrução normativa das relações intersubjetivas de reconhecimento mútuo presentes nas práticas sociais e instituições políticas e jurídicas das sociedades modernas. Para entender tanto seus fundamentos normativos quanto para examinar suas possibilidades concretas de realização, a questão da justiça não deve ser formulada em termos meramente distributivos e alocativos, mas sim do ponto de vista da reconstrução de suas gramáticas implícitas nos conflitos sociais e políticos e sedimentadas na estrutura básica da sociedade. A justiça deve ser vista como um conceito relacional orientado para o diagnóstico crítico das relações de dominação social e política arbitrárias, tendo como objeto primário os diferentes contextos e práticas de socialização das pessoas e grupos, tendo em vista primeiramente as estruturas e relações intersubjetivas, e não os estados subjetivos ou supostamente objetivos de provisão de bens e de satisfação de necessidades.Abstract: The article aims to examine the relations between recognition and autonomy in Axel Honneth´s theory of justice. This theory is based on the normative reconstruction of the interpersonal relations of mutual recognition which are present in the social practices and political and legal institutions of modern societies. To understand its normative foundations as well as examine its practical possibilities of realization, the question of justice should not be made on purely distributive and allocative terms, but by reconstructing the “grammars” of justice, that are implicit in social and political practices and sedimented in the basic structure of society. Justice must be seen as a relational concept designed for the critical diagnosis of arbitrary relations of social and political domination. The primary subject of justice is the different contexts and practices of individual and group socialization. It should first bear in mind the structures and interpersonal relations and not the subjective or putatively objective states that provide goods and satisfy needs.

scholarly journals After Practice? Material Semiotic Approaches to Consumption and Economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 340-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Material Forces ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theories Of Practice ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cultural Turn

The ‘turn’ to practice in social theory is proving influential in the sociological study of consumption (following Warde, 2005). This article joins current debates that appraise the contributions of this growing body of work, specifically its relationship with – and possible mode of succession to – cultural studies of consumption. It considers two claims about the impact and status of practice theoretic repertoires in consumption scholarship (Warde, 2014). First, that they invite greater attention than the cultural turn to objects and technologies as material forces. Second, that they have not yet found ways to locate consumption in the context of wider economic processes. My central argument is that theories of practice offer a partial reading of materiality, and that engagement with a greater range of material semiotic approaches can help in making better links between consumption and economy. This argument is illustrated through reference to market agencements, the social life of things, and ontological politics. I suggest these perspectives are compatible with practice theoretic approaches and that taken together, they represent some promising responses to a suite of fundamental challenges confronting consumption studies. I conclude that theories of practice – plural – have not yet run their course as an approach to consumption and economy. The parameters of consumption scholarship are also considered alongside the relationships between political economy and cultural analysis.

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