Saving Critical Realism

Critical Realism aims to be both philosophically sophisticated and morally forward looking. Unfortunately the accepted form that this point of view has taken is flawed in both these aims. However, close attention to realist formats in science and the constraints that are required to give a social psychological application of them makes possible a revision of the Critical Realist scheme strengthening its scientific claim and removing certain moral ambiguities in its applications. What follows is a schematic outline for an alternative neo-Critical Realism. Attention to the plausibility of working models leads from a substantivalist conception of social reality to a Heraclitean social metaphysics.     

Exploring the Concept of Causal Power in a Critical Realist Tradition

This article analyses and evaluates the uses of the concept of causal power in the critical realist tradition, which is based on Roy Bhaskar's philosophy of science. The concept of causal power that appears in the early works of Rom Harré and his associates is compared to Bhaskar's account of this concept and its uses in the critical realist social ontology. It is argued that the concept of emergence should be incorporated to any adequate notion of causal power. The concept of emergence used in Bhaskar and other critical realists’ works is shown to be ambiguous. It is also pointed out that the concept of causal power should be analysed in an anti‐essentialist way. Ontological and methodological problems that vitiate Bhaskar's transcendental account of the concept of causal power are examined. Moreover, it is argued that the applications of the concept of causal power to mental powers, reasons, and social structures in the critical realist social ontology are problematic. The paper shows how these problems might be avoided without giving up the concept of causal power and the notion of structural social causation.     

The Failure of Roy Bhaskar's Explanatory Critique

According to Roy Bhaskar, social science can derive values from social facts by a process called “explanatory critique.” Bhaskar offers two different versions of explanatory critique: a belief-based version and a need-based version. Both versions are faced with a difficult objection. They seem either to employ an invalid inference or to assume the values that they are attempting to derive. I argue that at least the need-based version of Bhaskar's explanatory critique falls to the objection, and that the belief-based version on its own is insufficient. Bhaskar anticipates the objection and offers a defense. I show that his defense is unsuccessful. I also suggest a Baskar-inspired alternative explanatory critique.     

Social Policy and the Discipline of Social Administration

The last ten years have seen a spate of books analysing social policy in terms of ideologies or models of welfare. These models, which combine an explanatory or scientific and a normative or value component, offer the discipline of social administration a terrain or base of its own from which it can legitimately explore a range of normative and scientific issues. It is suggested that the central task of social policy analysis, at the highest level of generality of the discipline, is to tease out the relevant normative and factual propositions or assumptions underlying these models and subject them to close scrutiny. In this the discipline would largely be following, but also extending somewhat, the agenda for social administration outlined by Richard Titmuss in 1968.     

Towards a pragmatic approach: a critical examination of two assumptions of indigenization discourse

The current discourse of indigenization has been dominated by a normative approach that puts culture and social work values at the centre of discussions of social work's transference ‘from the West to the rest’. Taking a social constructionist perspective, this article argues that we need to critically examine some underlying assumptions of this normative approach, which may have led to misunderstandings of indigenization. The pragmatic approach, which I suggest as an alternative, views indigenization as a process in which various actors with various cultural lenses select the components of Western social work that can be integrated with, or replace, existing local social care practices. The purpose of this integration and replacement is to better serve the needs of the receiving society and its people.     

Social workers' reflexive understandings of their “everyday” communications with children

Over the past two decades, the use of ethnographic research methods, in combination with a range of discursive, conversational, and multimodal analytical approaches, have provided vivid accounts of the complex nature of social workers' everyday communication. This paper discusses the potential and the problems of combining a video‐stimulated recall methodology with an explicit theoretical framework, in order to generate critical reflexive “insider” accounts of social workers' direct encounters with children. The framework employed was based on an adaptation of Goffman's concepts of “framing” and “footing,” which were integrated into an analytical process designed to theorize social workers' critiques regarding the nature of their communication with children. Three detailed case exemplars are used to demonstrate the potential of this methodology to explore the “delicate” agency required by social workers in the practice of authentic communication in complex professional inquiries with children. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the theoretical and practical issues associated with utilizing reflexive methodologies in professional contexts.     

Assessment Frameworks: A Critical Reflection

Increasing widespread requirements that assessment practiceconforms to generic guidelines contained in assessment frameworkshas been contentious and critiques offered on individual frameworkshave been assumed to apply to the concept of assessment frameworksmore generally. After comparing four assessment frameworks currentlybeing used in the UK, this paper argues that although some generalizationscan be made, for the most part, they are highly individual documentsin terms of range and depth of content, the extent to whichthey are evidenced and the quality of that evidence and implicitexpectations as to the skill bases of assessors. Furthermore,the introduction of assessment frameworks is not in itself apanacea to ensure good practice. Even with the most comprehensiveframeworks, social workers will still need comprehensive trainingin assessment and supervision of their practice.     

Critical Realism and Causality: Tracing the Aristotelian Legacy

Rom Harré's generative account of causality has been drawn on heavily by advocates of critical realism. Yet Harré argues that critical realists often exaggerate the extent to which powerful causal explanations of social phenomena can be developed. Certain proponents of critical realism have responded to Harré's criticisms by suggesting that it is useful to consider the relevant issues in relation to the familiar Aristotelian classification of four causes. In this paper I contribute to this debate and pursue a similar strategy. The paper adds to existing contributions in two ways. Firstly, I outline how Harré sees his generative account of causality as linking up with Aristotelian themes. It emerges that Harré at times conceives of his generative theory as part of an alternative to the Aristotelian system while at other times he draws connections between it and a reformulated account of formal causality. Secondly, I argue that when we consider the positions of Harré and proponents of critical realism on the scope of causal explanation in the social realm in relation to the interpretation of final causes offered by another philosopher profoundly influenced by the Aristotelian tradition, namely Charles Peirce, we can see both as limited in certain respects.     

Critical understandings of child development: the development of a module for a post-qualifying certificate course in child protection studies

This paper explores the dilemmas involved in selecting appropriate theoretical and research material to help social workers in practice. Concentrating on the needs of those working in child care and protection, the paper uses the example of the area of child development knowledge to illustrate a process of presenting theory for practice. Specifically, the focus is on the redevelopment of a child development module for a post-qualifying certificate course in child care and protection that aims to encourage students to make critical use of current research and theory. The paper explains the reasoning behind the choice of attachment theory as the underpinning theoretical framework. It also addresses possible pitfalls in an uncritical use of such theory. The paper finally sets out how the module addresses the need social workers have for a framework to guide intervention in individual cases. The dimensions described are those of individual vulnerability or resilience and factors in the environment that are adverse or protective.     

Needs as Claims

People “need” things if they will suffer negative effects without them. Needs are based in problems, but they are not only problems; they have to be understood in terms of a relationship between functional problems and resources. Needs are a form of claim made against services. The concept of “need” is not decisive in the allocation of resources, and this paper argues that the concept has to be understood as a form of claim-language. Once needs are understood in terms of claims, many of the apparent difficulties in conceptualizing the issues dissolve; the main conflicts are between different types of claims, rather than contested definitions of need. Similarly, the establishment of priorities between greater and lesser needs depends on the strength of the claim which the needs present, and the context in which services operate, rather than on intrinsic comparisons between different levels of need. It follows that need is often not the sole, or even the primary, determinant of the legitimacy of a claim. Greater needs only have priority over lesser ones if they also constitute a claim of a different, and stronger, kind.     

Ethnicity,Race and Nationalism in Australia: Some Critical Perspectives

Over the last 15 years or so, a number of writers have undertaken critical analyses of Australian immigration that have challenged prevailing social science paradigms and raised issues of the representation of social and power relations in a very diverse society. These analyses have located Australian immigration within the context of international capitalism, exploring class segmentation and solidarity, the relation between policies and practice and questions of racism and nationalism.     

Institutional Violations,Costs and Attitudes

The paper proposes an alternative approach to the ontology of social institutions by systematizing various normative institutional influences and identifying processes that distinguish between conforming and violating behaviour. The prevailing – cost-based model – suggests that an agent's conformity to a specific institutional rule can be represented by a single measure – cost. The model is limited in its explanatory potential since it accounts for varieties of institutional behaviour in terms of single parametrical changes in the agents' utilities. The central argument shows that normative attitudes represent a distinctive normative structure capable of explaining crucial aspects of institutional behaviour. These attitudinal aspects provide the structure necessary for understanding institutional normativity and its violations.     

The Nature of the Political Reconsidered

I present an immanent, and explanatory, critique of reflections on the nature of politics and of power within political science. I argue that these reflections are problematic, to the extent that they presuppose an actualist conception of the political, and that this is generated by an empiricist way of thinking on the one hand and a constructivist way of thinking on the other. I show how re‐defining politics, power, and the political on the basis of a dialectical critical realist ontology resolves these problems and, thereby, allows us to understand the conditions for social change and the relationship between the political and the economic. My argument has two, important implications: first, that the proposal that those who study politics professionally should celebrate philosophical diversity is dangerous–at least if it makes it difficult to sustain a distinct, emancipatory form of political inquiry; and, second, that the nature of social reality justifies the need both for specialized forms of inquiry, such as politics and economics, and integrative forms of inquiry, such as political economy.     

Where's the beef? A response to Gray and Webb's ‘The return of the political in social work’

Gray and Webb's article 'The return of the political in social work' is a welcome contribution to current debates. In its critique of the dominance of calculative reason, its rejection of postmodernism and identity politics, and its insistence on the need for social work to openly address issues of power and conflict, it is a useful addition to the growing critical literature concerned with challenging dominant forms of practice. That usefulness is limited, however, first by an excessively opaque style and, second, by problems associated with the writers' argument and approach. These include: an over-reliance on Heidegger's ontology; an over-estimation of the potential of art to act as alternative paradigm; and a particularly content-less version of politics, derived from the work of Alain Badiou, which is likely to prove to be of limited value in the project of developing alternative forms of social work.     

Social Network Analysis and Critical Realism

Social network analysis (SNA) is an increasingly popular approach that provides researchers with highly developed tools to map and analyze complexes of social relations. Although a number of network scholars have explicated the assumptions that underpin SNA, the approach has yet to be discussed in relation to established philosophies of science. This article argues that there is a tension between applied and methods‐oriented SNA studies, on the one hand, and those addressing the social‐theoretical nature and implications of networks, on the other. The former, in many cases, exhibits positivist tendencies, whereas the latter incorporate a number of assumptions that are directly compatible with core critical realist views on the nature of social reality and knowledge. This article suggests that SNA may be detached from positivist social science and come to constitute a valuable instrument in the critical realist toolbox.     

Explaining Violence ‐ Towards a Critical Friendship with Neuroscience?

The neurosciences challenge the ‘standard social science’ model of human behaviour particularly with reference to violence. Although explanations of violence are interdisciplinary it remains controversial to work across the division between the social and biological sciences. Neuroscience can be subject to familiar sociological critiques of scientism and reductionism but this paper considers whether this view should be reassessed. Concepts of brain plasticity and epigenetics could prompt reconsideration of the dichotomy of the social and natural while raising questions about the intersections of materiality, embodiment and social action. Although violence is intimately bound up with the body, sociologies of both violence and the body remain on the surface and rarely go under the skin or skulls of violent actors. This article argues for a non‐reductionist realist explanation of violent behaviour that is also interdisciplinary and offers the potential to generate nuanced understandings of violent processes. It concludes that sociology should engage critically and creatively with the neuroscience of violence.     

Increasing Choice and Control for Older and Disabled People: A Critical Review of New Developments in England

This paper critically examines new policies currently being implemented in England aimed at increasing the choice and control that disabled and older people can exercise over the social care support and services they receive. The development of these policies, and their elaboration in three policy documents published during 2005, are summarized. The paper then discusses two issues underpinning these proposals: the role of quasi‐markets within publicly funded social care services; and the political and policy discourses of consumerism and choice within the welfare state. Despite powerful critiques of welfare consumerism, the paper argues that there are nevertheless very important reasons for taking choice seriously when considering how best to organize and deliver support and other services for disabled and older people. A policy discourse on consumerism, however, combined with the use of market mechanisms for implementing this, may be highly problematic as the means of creating opportunities for increased choice and, on its own, risks introducing new forms of disadvantage and social exclusion.     

Not Thinking Ethnicity: A Critique of the Ethnicity Paradigm in an Over-Ethnicised Sociology

The many critical approaches to an 'ethnicity framework' have fallen short of a very possible conclusion—that the language of ethnicity provides, for the most part, a poor paradigm with which to work. In the present paper we seek not only to re-state some key weaknesses of this paradigm but also to suggest that these weaknesses are more general in an over-ethnicised sociology. There are numerous critiques of particular models or elements of ethnicity thinking, including critiques of primordialist approaches (Fenton 2003), of multiculturalism ( Barry 2000 ), and of the over-objectification of groups (Brubaker 2004; see also Jenkins 2008). The major critiques constitute a strong case against 'thinking with ethnicity'; the broader weaknesses are more general in contemporary 'identitarian' sociology. From this position we turn to the question of offering an alternative approach in a sociology which emphasizes agency, and is grounded in an analysis of actors in material situations. This is allied to the concept of ideational resources, social categories and identities upon which actors draw, and a middle-range view of causality and tendency in social change. Ideas of ancestral belonging are among those ideational resources, and these ideas and assumptions are played out in a context of material and political change. The subject of study is not ethnicity, but power, resources, social relations and institutions (which may and may not be) informed by cultural identities and ideas of ancestry. The strategy of the paper will be first to re-state the deficiencies of 'ethnicity thinking' and second to offer an alternative framework for thinking about social action and social structure.     

Elderly Consumers and Social Care Policy

The development of social care policy for elderly Australians is proceeding with little regard for the preferences and perspectives as expressed by the elderly themselves. The likely consequence is a continuation of policies based largely on other people's assumptions about what elderly people actually need and the extension of service categories into which many elderly people do not easily fit. Discussions with 71 elderly consumers during 1983 in Queensland established that they have input to make into policy and service delivery issues such as the provision of information on services, the determination of needs, the extension of choices between alternative services and choice of appropriate service providers. Social care policy should not continue to develop around singular and untested assumptions concerning what elderly people need and prefer.     

The logical structure of applied social science

In the present article the logical structure of applied social sciences will be discussed. Applied sciences don't regard causes and effects but only means and ends. Therefore the logical structure of means-end-argumentations in social sciences will be shown. One can perceive also the important part of normative statements. In summarizing, we can declare that in social sciences there is partly a need to reflect on the postulate of a value-free social science. But it is not our purpose to introduce normative statements as scientific ones. What counts is a liberal attitude towards all realizable norms.