The usual way of discussing normativity and naturalism is by running through a standard range of issues: the relations of fact and value, objectivity, reason and emotion, is and ought, and the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacy’. This is a naturalism that is virtually silent on nature. I outline an alternative approach that relates normativity to our nature as living beings, for whom specific things are good or bad for us. Our nature as evaluative beings is shown to be rooted in and (...) emergent from this biological normativity. There is also significant downward causation, such that our brain-bodies are continually modified by our experience and thoughts. Cultures, as emergent from the affordances of our brain-bodies, create further extensive, irreducible sources of normativity, albeit ones which do not wholly escape biological normativity and can impact back on it. (shrink)

Andrew Sayer and Dave Elder-Vass are both advocates of ‘moral economy’. To this end, Elder-Vass offers a theory of appropriative practices that enables us to evaluate the enormous variety of forms...

Indigenous critiques of postcolonialism are as diverse as First Nations or Original Peoples communities themselves. Yet, within that diversity, there is often claimed to be a set of core universal teachings. My article engages this field in a three-step process that begins with examining the incorporation of two Indigenous critiques into a Handbook of Qualitative Research edited by Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln. Focusing on justice through their lens of an ethics and politics of interpretation, Denzin and Lincoln simultaneously reject (...) much of what they claim critical realism advocates. They then deny any significant emancipatory potential to critical realism. This article immanently critiques their denial. In doing so it argues a case, on the one hand, for the explanatory potential of dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of meta-Reality both generally and in the case of postcolonialism as decolonizing praxis. On the other hand, viewing Indigenous critiques within an interpretive paradigm risks ensnaring them within modernist dualist categories, postmodernist unconstrained deconstruction or poststructuralist formless flux. Such a reading thus restricts their capacity to contribute to depth-totalizing praxis. I introduce a critical realist reading of Indigenous critiques and conclude that the political programme of emancipation is strengthened through an interweaving of critical realism and Indigenous political philosophy. (shrink)

This article critiques conspicuous displays of morality within public discourse, recently framed as ‘moral grandstanding’, from the perspective of an intersubjective Critical Realist theory of ethics. Drawing on Honneth’s recognition theory as the basis of a ‘qualified explanatory critique’, I argue that these practices are not mere aberrations within moral discourse, but a necessary consequence of the neoliberal imperative to turn all aspects of the self into market assets. Neoliberal commodity fetishism also and especially involves the commodification of moral character (...) as a means of economic competition, as exemplified in recent discussions of ‘ethical capital’. This objectification categorically precludes intersubjectivity as the basis of ethical life, and produces a cognitive structure resembling narcissistic pathology, characterized by the pervasive objectification of self and other. Critical Realists should therefore reject moral grandstanding not only for its detrimental effects on public discourse, but because in subordinating morality to the market, it is fundamentally anti-ethical. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis is a lightly edited transcript of a plenary talk given at the Beyond Positivism conference, Montreal, August 8–10 2017. The talk followed others by Christopher Winship and Frédéric Van...

In this wide-ranging interview, Dave Elder-Vass discusses his main contributions to critical realist theory over two decades. In the first half, he explains his early work on emergence, agency, str...

The digital economy has provided opportunities for new forms of economic practice. At their purest, these forms deliver economic benefits as gifts and depend on cooperation without authority. Drawing loosely on Habermas, we may call this a lifeworld economy – an economy that is coordinated by communicative interaction – as opposed to the systems economy of market and state, coordinated by money and power. This formulation, however, faces both theoretical and practical challenges. On the theoretical side, the notion of a (...) lifeworld economy does not sit easily with Habermas’s own formulation of the distinction between lifeworld and systems. On the practical side, the digital lifeworld economy has been steadily colonized by capitalist businesses, which have frequently found ways to incorporate forms of gift and cooperation into profit-oriented business models. This article proposes to reformulate Habermas’s distinction as a reference to different kinds of causal mechanisms, detaching it from his functionalist framework and enabling a more flexible application to empirical cases. It then applies it to a series of iconic cases from the digital economy: Amazon, Wikipedia, and open source software, to demonstrate its continuing relevance to very current issues. (shrink)

How should critical realists do social theory? This paper considers several issues raised by this question, in response to Jamie Morgan’s recent article in this journal, and comments on his discussion of norm circles.

This is an edited transcript of a keynote paper given at IACR's 2021 Annual Conference. The paper outlines a critical realist approach to critique and illustrates its application to the contemporary economy. It argues that responsible, constructive critique depends on ethics, on causal explanation, and on the development of utopian visions. Utopias are tools, and concrete utopias are not visions of whole alternative ready-made societies, but rather partial models that can be built in practice as elements of the larger social (...) world. The argument is illustrated with three cases of digital utopianism, which help to demonstrate the practical challenges facing utopian schemes. Concrete utopias are a vehicle for combining our theoretical understandings of possibilities with an ethical analysis of needs in order to offer practical schemes for improving human flourishing. (shrink)