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In many disciplines across the social sciences there are debates around whether research and research writing are under-theorised or over-theorised. Gorgi Krlev, argues that whilst these debates can provide insights, they fail to clarify why and when theorising can be useful at all. To promote better theory making he presents a framework for thinking through … Continued

Megan T. Stevenson (University of Virginia School of Law) has posted Cause, Effect, and the Structure of the Social World on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This Essay is built around a central empirical claim: that most reforms and interventions...

A Critical Theory of Global Justice.The Frankfurt School and World Society by Malte Frøslee Ibsen(Oxford University Press, 2023)384 pagesDescriptionThe idea of a critical theory is famous across the world, yet it is today rarely practised as originally conceived by the Frankfurt School. The waning influence of critical theory in the contemporary academy may be due to its lack of engagement with global problems and the postcolonial condition. This book offers the first systematic treatment of the idea of a critical theory of world society, advancing the conversation between critical theory and postcolonial and ecological thought. Malte Frøslee Ibsen develops a reconstruction of the Frankfurt School tradition as four paradigms of critical theory, in original interpretations of the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, and Axel Honneth, and considers how the global context has featured in their work and what might be salvaged for a critical theory of contemporary world society. Along the way, Ibsen advances new interpretations of the relationship between critical theory and justice, the idea of communicative freedom, and three conceptions of power in the Frankfurt School tradition. He further offers extended discussions of two emerging paradigms in the work of Amy Allen and Rainer Forst and argues that a critical theory of world society must combine and integrate a Kantian constructivist approach in a critique of global injustice, as Forst defends, with the reflexive check of a self-problematizing critique of its blind spots and taken-for-granted assumptions regarding the postcolonial condition, as defended by Allen. Finally, Ibsen rethinks the relationship between society and nature in critical theory, with far-reaching normative and methodological implications.Contents [Preview]IntroductionPart I: Horkheimer1. Max Horkheimer and the Original Paradigm of Critical Theory2. Horkheimer's Original Paradigm and the Idea of a Critical Theory of World SocietyPart II: Adorno3. Theodor W. Adorno and the Negativist Paradigm of Critical Theory4. Adorno's Negativist Paradigm and the Idea of a Critical Theory of World SocietyPart III: Habermas5. Jürgen Habermas and the Communicative Paradigm of Critical Theory6. Habermas's Communicative Paradigm and the Idea of a Critical Theory of World SocietyPart IV: Honneth7. Axel Honneth and the Recognition Paradigm of Critical Theory8. Honneth's Recognition Paradigm and the Idea of a Critical Theory of World SocietyPart V: Allen and Forst9. Amy Allen's Contextualist Paradigm of Critical Theory10. Rainer Forst's Justification Paradigm of Critical TheoryConclusionReview:"In this excellent book, Ibsen offers a critical reconstruction of the Frankfurt School tradition that is alert to its Eurocentric blindspots and aims to articulate the theoretical basis of a critical theory of global justice that is adequate to contemporary world society. Intellectually rich, philosophical acute and lucidly written, this is a work that should be read by all of those engaged with critical theory broadly conceived, whether within the Frankfurt School tradition or outside of it." - David Owen, Professor of Social and Political Philosophy, University of Southampton.

Rawls's A Theory of Justice at 50Ed. by Paul Weithman(Cambridge University Press, 2023)377 pagesDescriptionIn 1971 John Rawls's A Theory of Justice transformed twentieth-century political philosophy, and it ranks among the most influential works in the history of the subject. This volume of new essays marks the 50th anniversary of its publication with a multi-faceted exploration of Rawls's most important book. A team of distinguished contributors reflects on Rawls's achievement in essays on his relationship to modern political philosophy and 20th-century economic theory, on his Kantianism, on his transition to political liberalism, on his account of public reason and contemporary challenges to it, on his theory's implications for problems of racial justice, on democracy and its fragility, and on Rawls's enduring legacy. Contents Introduction [preview] - Paul Weithman Part I: Rawls and History1. Taillight Illumination: How Rawlsian Concepts May Improve Understanding of Hobbes's Political Philosophy - S. A. Lloyd2. The Theory Rawls, the 1844 Marx, and the Market - Daniel Brudney3. Rawls, Lerner, and the Tax-and-Spend Booby Trap: What Happened to Monetary Policy? [paper] - Aaron James4. Rawls's Principles of Justice as a Transcendence of Class Warfare - Elizabeth Anderson5. The Significance of Injustice - Peter de MarneffePart II: Developments between A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism6. On Being a "Self-Originating Source of Valid Claims" - Stephen Darwall7. Moral Independence Revisited: A Note on the Development of Rawls's Thought from 1977–1980 and Beyond - Samuel Scheffler8. The Method of Insulation: On the Development of Rawls's Thought after A Theory of Justice - Rainer Forst9. The Stability or Fragility of Justice [paper] - Japa PallikkathayilPart III: Rawls, Ideal Theory, and the Persistence of Injustice10. The Circumstances of Justice [paper] - Erin I. Kelly11. Why Rawls's Ideal Theory Leaves the Well-Ordered Society Vulnerable to Structural Oppression - Henry S. Richardson12. Race, Reparations, and Justice as Fairness - Tommie Shelby13. On the Role of the Original Position in Rawls's Theory: Reassessing the "Idealization" and "Fact-sensitivity" Critiques - Laura ValentiniPart IV: Pluralism, Democracy, and the Future of Justice as Fairness14. Public Reason at Fifty - Kevin Vallier15. Reasonable Political Conceptions and the Well-Ordered Liberal Society - Samuel Freeman16. Religious Pluralism and Social Unions - Paul Weithman17. One Person, at Least One Vote? Rawls on Political Equality …within Limits - David Estlund18. Reflections on Democracy's Fragility [paper] - Joshua Cohen19. A Society of Self-Respect [paper] - Leif Wenar

Many people are familiar with Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (WoN), But Smith's ethical thinking was just as important. In fact, it was The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS), published 27 years earlier, on 12 April 1759, that made him famous.Just The Wealth of Nations, this book marked a complete break from the thinking of the time. Ethics had until then been widely assumed to be based on God's will (or the clerics' interpretation of it); or something that could be deduced through abstract reason; or even something that could be felt through some 'moral sense' like touch or vision. Replacing this speculative thinking by scientific method, Smith argued instead that morality stemmed from our human nature as social beings, and our natural empathy for others. By observing ourselves and others, he said, we could discover the principles of ethical behaviour. Ethics was a matter of human psychology, stemming from how we form judgements about ourselves and others, and the influence of customs, norms and culture upon it.This scientific approach to ethics was a sensation. It was very much in line with the Scottish Enlightenment, which sought to apply observation and scientific method to the study of human affairs. Old hierarchies were breaking down; industrialisation was eclipsing Scotland's feudal past; radical thinkers like Francis Hutcheson and David Hume were pushing new boundaries, and religious pluralism was creating a more active debate on virtue and morality.Smith's book explained that morality is rooted deeply in human psychology, especially the empathy we have for our fellow humans. By our nature, we understand, and even share the feelings of others. Wanting others to like us, we strive to act such that they do. Even if there is no one else around to see how we behave, we are still impelled to act honestly, says Smith, as if an 'impartial spectator' is judging us all the time, setting the standard by which we rate ourselves and others. And under this imaginary eye, every choice we make helps us appreciate that standard more clearly and act more consistently in accordance with it. It is as if an invisible hand is drawing us to act in ways that promote social harmony.TMS is mainly a descriptive account of human moral action. It examines how people actually make moral choices, and the pressures on them to do so. It also provides a guide on how we can cultivate our morality, emphasising the importance of self-reflection and self-improvement. Smith's radical scientific approach in TMS and WoN provided a foundation for the subsequent development of psychology, sociology, and economics, establishing them as distinct subjects of academic enquiry. And its suggestion that self-interested actions—wanting to be liked by others, or exchanging things we value less for others' things we value more—could produce a cooperative social and economic order, continues to have a central place in liberal thinking.All this makes the themes in The Theory of Moral Sentiments just as relevant today as they were in 1759. Through self-reflection, we can make better moral choices. Through our empathy with others, we can foster understanding and create a more peaceful society. Through an appreciation of our shared feelings and interests, we can live and work and collaborate together for the mutual benefit of the whole of humanity.

This is a follow up to last month's post on the attack on education, but rather than use images of people protesting CRT I decided to post the video of the talk referred to below. As I think I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog in the spring I taught a seminar on Race, Class, and Gender. This involved an engagement with both some familiar material, Balibar's writing on race and class, and some material that I have not taught before, Stuart Hall, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Sylvia Wynter, etc. (I should say that in light of the title of this piece that I did not teach CRT specifically, but rather critical writing on race). At the same time that I was expanding my teaching and research the country, or at least parts of it were moving in the other direction, passing laws that outlawed discussions of critical race theory, intersectionality, and gender theory. This was in some sense a teachable moment, or at least should be: I kept coming back to the question of the politics of knowledge and ignorance around race.In Stuart Hall's famous lecture, "Race, The Floating Signifier" he outlines the basic point against the concept of race as a biological concept, "As we know human genetically variability between different populations, normally assigned a racial category, is not significantly greater than it is within those populations." However, as he goes onto to detail in the next section this scientific fact has never been accepted. As Hall writes, "First, [this general position] represents the by now common and conventional wisdom among leading scientists in the field. Second, that fact has never prevented intense scholarly activity being devoted by a minority of committed academics to attempting to prove a correlation between racially defined genetic characteristics and cultural performance. In other words, we are not dealing with a field in which, as it were, the scientifically and rationally established fact prevents scientists from continuing to prove the opposite."Here are my two points about Hall's two points. First, as a matter of historicization, a lot has changed since nineteen ninety seven. Race is no longer the outlier as it once was. The science of global warming, vaccines, even such basic astronomical matters as the size and shape of the Earth, all now have their doubters and alternative facts. A survey of the world of conspiracy theories and people with various crank beliefs demanding to be debated on social media only serves to illustrate Spinoza's fundamental axiom that "Nothing positive which a false idea has is removed by the presence of the true insofar as it is true." Ideas, even adequate or true ideas, have no intrinsic force or power, but must be actualized, materialized by other forces. Which brings me to my second point, if an idea or the criticism of an idea, in this case the criticism of race as a biological reality, does not take hold then the problem may have less to do with the idea itself, its own intrinsic value, than with the forces, social, political, economic, psychic, etc., that are allied against it. Sylvia WynterWhich brings me to my second point of reference, and that is Sylvia Wynter's essay (that reads like a book)"Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man Its Overrepresentation—An Argument/." In that essay which develops its own meta-intellectual history, Wynter engages with a question that seems as far as possible from the question of race, and that is why, given their mathematical sophistication were the ancient greeks incapable of developing a corresponding sophistication of physics. As Wynter writes, "In a 1987 interview, the theoretical physicist David Böhm explained why the rise of the physical sciences would have been impossible in ancient Greece, given the role that the physical cosmos had been made to play in stabilizing and legitimating the structures/hierarchies and role allocations of its social order. If each society, Böhm pointed out, bases itself on a general notion of the world that always contains within it "a specific idea of order," for the ancient Greeks, this idea of order had been projected as that of an "increasing perfection from the earth to the heavens." In consequence, in order for modern physics (which is based on the "idea of successive positions of bodies of matter and the constraints of forces that act on these bodies") to be developed, the "order of perfection investigated by the ancient Greeks" had to become irrelevant. In other words, for such an astronomy and physics to be developed, the society that made it possible would have to be one that no longer had the need to map its ordering principle onto the physical cosmos, as the Greeks and all other human societies had done. The same goes for the need to retain the Greek premise of an ontological difference of substance between the celestial realm of perfection (the realm of and the imperfect realm of the terrestrial (the realm of doxa, of mere opinion). This was not a mutation that could be easily effected. In his recent book The Enigma of the Gift (1999), Maurice Godelier reveals an added and even more powerful dimension as to why the mutation by which humans would cease to map the "idea of order" onto the lawlike regularities of physical nature would not be easily come by."In other words, progress in the physical sciences became possible only once the world, or the cosmos, ceased to play a role in the order and organizing of human social and political life, is no longer part of our sociogenesis, to cite the term that Wynter borrows from Fanon. The social order determines and limits what can be thought or asked. On this point Wynter's argument is similar to the point Marx makes regarding value in Capital. As Marx writes,"There was, however, an important fact which prevented Aristotle from seeing that, to attribute value to commodities, is merely a mode of expressing all labour as equal human labour, and consequently as labour of equal quality. Greek society was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and of their labour powers. The secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labour are equal and equivalent, because, and so far as they are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered, until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form of commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities. The brilliancy of Aristotle's genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, "in truth," was at the bottom of this equality."While the focus is different Marx, Wynter, (and I would argue) Spinoza, are all in some sense focusing on the social and political conditions of knowledge, in order for the natural sciences to become possible or in order for Value to be discovered something had to happen in society first. In the case of the former it is the general secularization of the cosmos. We could add that this process of secularization is always fragmentary and incomplete, the continued existence of flat Earthers, who, when pressed to explain why NASA and the globe industry would lie to them about the earth, they often phrase it in terms that hark back to that old theocratic order, that a round earth spinning about in a solar system of other similar planets makes them feel small and insignificant, and not, the center of God's creation. More to the point, to Wynter's point, the end of an order predicated on the cosmos is the beginning of a new order, one predicate on humanity. To quote Wynter again,"A new notion of the world and "idea of order" was being mapped now, no longer upon the physical cosmos - which beginning with the fifteenth- century voyages of the Portuguese and Columbus, as well as with the new astronomy of Copernicus, was eventually to be freed from having to serve as a projected "space of Otherness," and as such having to be known in the adaptive terms needed by human orders to represent their social structures as extrahumanly determined ones. Instead, the projected "space of Otherness" was now to be mapped on phenotypical and religio-cultural differences between human variations and/or population groups, while the new idea of order was now to be defined in terms of degrees of rational perfection/imperfection, as degrees ostensibly ordained by the Greco-Christian cultural construct deployed by Sepúlveda as that of the "law of nature, " natural law": as a "law" that allegedly functioned to order human societies in the same way as the newly discovered laws of nature served to regulate the processes of functioning of physical and organic levels of reality."Wynter's argument is that in the modern age it is humanity, the anthropos, rather than the universe, the cosmos, that is the basis of our social order. Hierarchies are no longer between the Earth and the other celestial beings, but between different aspects of humanity, or more to the point between humanity and its own internal division, between "Man" understood as the embodiment of rationality and its others. As Wynter writes,"It is this new master code, one that would now come to function at all levels of the social order - including that of class, gender, sexual orientation, superior/inferior ethnicities, and that of the Investor/Breadwinners versus the criminalized jobless Poor (Nas's "black and latino faces") and Welfare Moms antithesis, and most totally between the represented-to-be superior and inferior races and cultures - that would come to function as the dually status-organizing and integrating principle of U.S. society. So that if, before the sixties, the enforced segregation of the Black population in the South as the liminally deviant category of Otherness through whose systemic negation the former Civil War enemies of North and South, together with the vast wave of incoming immigrants from Europe, would be enabled to experience themselves as a We (that is, by means of the shared similarity of their now- canonized "whiteness"), in addition, their segregated status had served another central function. This had been that of enabling a U.S. bourgeoisie, rapidly growing more affluent, to dampen class conflict by inducing their own working class to see themselves, even where not selected by Evolution in class terms, as being compensatorily, altruistically bonded with their dominant middle classes by the fact of their having all been selected by Evolution in terms of race." I will say as something of a parenthetical aside, one that I hope to include in my actual writing this summer, and not just my blogging, that on this point Wynter is close to André Tosel's understanding of neoliberalism. As Tosel argues the more capital justifies itself in terms of an anthropology, as an expression of mankind's rationality, productivity, and individuality, the more its hierarchies are anthropologized as well, which is to say racialized. Poor countries, and the racialized poor within the country's border, are understood to be produced not by history, including the history of discrimination, but human nature. All of which may be a long, a very long way of answering the question posed by Hall, a question which has come to light in the opposition to teaching on race from the 1619 project to Critical Race Theory. The short version of this response is that a society that still needs racism in order to justify and explain itself cannot dispense with the concept of race, with the idea of racial hierarchy, no matter how many scientific studies are published disproving it. Race, and racism, are necessary parts of our social common sense, and thus any attempt to discredit and disprove them threatens that, and, as in the way CRT is represented, can only be understood as a political assault on the existing order and not additions or transformations of knowledge. Moreover, and this is something that I discuss in the podcast below, outlawing any theoretical and historical understanding of race and racism, is tantamount to legislating racism, or, at the very least to making sure that there are no official accounts that contest the dominant common sense around race. It is the modern version of putting Galileo under house arrest, to connect the dots of Wynter's essay.

There is remarkably little rigorous evidence demonstrating social and emotional learning's academic benefits. SEL can also be a vehicle for promoting critical race theory ideology.
The post Does Social and Emotional Learning Work? Let's Hope Not appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

In this 300th year after the birth of Adam Smith, much of the focus has been on Smith's economics, as recorded in The Wealth of Nations (1776). But Smith's ethical thinking was no less profound. Indeed, it was The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) that made him famous.Like The Wealth of Nations, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) was a complete break from the thinking of the time. Ethics had until then been widely assumed to be based on God's will, or the clerics' interpretation of it; or something that could be deduced through abstract reason; or even something that could be felt through some 'moral sense' like touch or vision. Smith, by contrast, argued that morality stemmed from our human nature as social beings, and our natural empathy for others. This replaced speculative thinking by scientific method. Smith maintained that by observing ourselves and others, we could discern the principles of ethical behaviour. It was a matter of psychology: how we form judgements about ourselves and others, and the influence of customs, norms and culture upon those judgements. This scientific approach was very much in line with the Scottish Enlightenment, which stemmed in part from the exchange of ideas between Scotland and England following the 1707 Act of Union, and sought to apply observation and scientific method to the study of humankind. Old hierarchies were breaking down, with industrialisation replacing Scotland's old feudal lifestyles, and with religious pluralism, leading to a more active debate on morals and virtues. New thinkers, like Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, were role models for Smith's intellectual radicalism.TMS argues that morality is rooted deeply in human psychology, especially the empathy we have for our fellow humans. By nature we understand, and even share the feelings of others. We want others to like us, and we strive to act so that they do. Even if there is no one else around to see our actions, we are still impelled to act honestly, as if an 'impartial spectator' is judging us at all time, setting the standard by which we judge ourselves and others. Every choice we have to make helps us see that standard more clearly and act according to it more consistently. All of which leads us, as if drawn by an invisible hand, to create a harmonious social order.TMS is primarily a descriptive account of human moral action. It examines how people actually make moral choices, and the pressures on them to do so. But it also provides a guide on how we can cultivate our morality, emphasising the importance of self-reflection and self-improvement.It is no exaggeration to say that TMS laid the foundations for the subsequent development of psychology, sociology and economics, helping establish them as distinct subjects of scientific enquiry. His idea that self-interested actions—wanting to be liked by others, or exchanging things we value less for others' things we value more—had a profound effect on the rise of liberal thought. Smith's approach is just as relevant today as it was in 1759. Through self-reflection, we can make better moral choices. By sharing the feelings of others, we can foster understanding between individuals and groups and create a more peaceful humanity. By understanding our shared interests we can live and work and collaborate together for the mutual benefit of us all, both in economics and in life in general.

Dr. Jennifer Forestal, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Loyola University Chicago, discusses how digital platforms can be approached from an architectural perspective. Dr. Forestal shares insights from her latest book, Designing for Democracy, where she evaluates digital platforms’ democratic potential from the lens of political theory. The episode breaks down a framework for how...
The post #166: Democracy, Architecture, and Social Media, with Dr. Jennifer Forestal appeared first on Social Media and Politics.

Gindo Tampubolon, Lecturer in Poverty, Global Development Institute In his treatise on justice, The Idea of Justice (2009), Amartya Sen explains that from Hobbes through Kant to Rawls, the theory of justice is concerned principally with the task of elucidating the hypothetical social contract or ideal social arrangement under which people of diverse world views […]
The post Measuring social injustice under climate shocks to persons with disability appeared first on Global Development Institute Blog.

Gindo Tampubolon, Lecturer in Poverty, Global Development Institute In his treatise on justice, The Idea of Justice (2009), Amartya Sen explains that from Hobbes through Kant to Rawls, the theory of justice is concerned principally with the task of elucidating the hypothetical social contract or ideal social arrangement under which people of diverse world views […]
The post Measuring social injustice under climate shocks to persons with disability appeared first on Global Development Institute Blog.

Post #5 in our symposium on Joanne Yao's The Ideal River, from Dr Giulia Carabelli. Giulia is a lecturer in Sociology and Social Theory in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London. She is interested in affect theory, nonhuman agencies, and social justice. Her current research project, Care for Plants, … Continue reading What Difference Does a River Make?

In yesterday's decision in Missouri v. Biden, the Fifth Circuit (Judges Edith Clement, Jennifer Elrod, and Don Willett) held that the federal government violated the First Amendment by causing social media platforms to block posts on various topics (including "the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, pandemic lockdowns, vaccine side-effects, election fraud, and the Hunter Biden laptop story").…

Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, Associate Professor in Strategic Communication at Lund University, joins a discussion of cross-cutting expression and its implications for digital campaigning on Facebook. On the theory side, we discuss concepts of online self-expression and cross-pressures. We also discuss how political ideology can be inferred from Facebook reactions such as ‘likes’ and ‘loves’....
The post #163: Cross-Cutting Expression on Social Media: Brexit on Facebook, with Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten appeared first on Social Media and Politics.

David Pettinicchio (University of Toronto) has posted Tracing the Welfare-Rights Connection in American Disability Policymaking (Elgar Handbooks in Social Policy and Welfare 2023) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The movement to incorporate disability rights within national social policy objectives...