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A list of books received by "Philosophy & Social Criticism" in 2006-2007 is presented which includes "The Fragmenting Family," by Brenda Almond, "Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory Between Past and Future," by Nikolas Kompridis and "On Practice and Contradiction," by Mao Tse-Tung.

This article argues that a renewed focus on how dominant international practices produce ontological insecurity can help better orient ontological security studies (OSS) to injustice in world politics, particularly as it affects structurally marginalized political actors at multiple levels. It makes this case by bringing the work of Iris Marion Young to bear on OSS, particularly her theory of justice as the elimination of domination and oppression. Drawing on Young's "Five Faces of Oppression," this paper argues that multiple injustices endemic to the international system should be understood as key producers of ontological insecurity in the international system, both in their direct ability to destabilize identities and in their undermining of disadvantaged actors' ontological security-seeking practices. On international scales, these processes transcend levels of analysis, affecting individuals, social groups, and even states in differing ways. Incorporating Young's work into OSS not only helps build a vital bridge between the oft estranged sub-disciplines of political theory and IR, but also can provide scholars a means of better theorizing how ontological insecurity is so often a product of the international system's injustices. The paper thus concludes by proposing a normative turn within OSS, asking whether global justice should be understood as a precondition for ontological security-seeking among multiple co-existing actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies a common process of mystification within academic knowledge production today: the treatment of subordinated groups as mere metaphors or rhetorical figures for academic theorizing. We witness it when academics ask what trans might teach us about transnationality, when we are invited to reflect on what might be queer about modern warfare, or when nation-states are described as subaltern. Trans, queer, and subaltern populations are routinely fetishized within scholarship on the "traditional" International Relations concerns of statecraft, migration, security, and so on. This tendency serves a mystifying function by disabling scholars from examining the social relations that shape and organize their lives and histories. This paper proceeds in three parts. First, to understand the origins and logics of this self-mystifying process, this paper returns, via Stuart Hall, to Karl Marx's methodological writings on abstraction. It contributes to the formalization of his methodology for contemporary IR scholarship by drawing a distinction between the fetishization of abstraction and the concretization of abstraction. Second, the paper explores how abstracted subject positions have been fetishized within three fields of international studies: trans studies, queer theory, and subaltern studies. Third, after elaborating a critique of this mystifying move, the paper outlines alternative approaches that instead seek to concretize the abstractions queer, trans, and subaltern by attending to their specific historical and social determinations. These strategies of demystification, we argue, carry forward a founding commitment of critical theory that is all too often abandoned within scholarly knowledge production today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified interest in alternatives to neoliberalism. One proposal that has been increasingly discussed by both academics and activists is the implementation of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). This would typically see all citizens awarded a regular cash payment, without conditionality attached. While UBI thus deserves considerable attention from sociologists, as yet critical theorists have not offered an extended engagement with the proposal. In this paper, I provide exactly such a critical theoretical perspective on UBI, subjecting the approach to an extended critique. When viewed through the perspective of critical theory, UBI emerges as a more problematic approach to social change, failing to offer what its most enthusiastic progressive proponents promise: 'a capitalist road to communism'. Rather, in this article, I argue that, when viewed through the lens of critical theory, UBI appears likely to further entrench, rather than disturb, the neoliberal social formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terms such as 'fake news' and 'post-truth' circulate freely today within the popular lexicon. It is an environment where objective facts have 'become less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief' (OED). Central here is to understand the conceptual grounding of subjective opinion as a historically specific epistemological structure of social communication. My paper will draw on the Hegelian tradition of critical theory that has in unique ways unified an analysis of the nexus between socio-economic structures and epistemological frameworks. Here I name opinion as a historically specific epistemological structure of self-certainty, which receives validation within what Adorno called the Halbbildung of industrial culture, a form of social consciousness cultivated by the spread of information and economic imperative. It will be argued that the concept of opinion becomes a vital question for understanding, in this 'post-truth' landscape, current standards of instantaneous communication and cultural transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical theory has already marked that technology often threatens civil liberties, personal autonomy, and rights. Heidegger, later Marcuse, emphasized how technology is not value-free in its own revealing power of the surrounding environment, external and inner nature. Throughout this paper, I explore how the aesthetic approach engages with critical theory and contributes to the sociology of media and communication. For this, I will theoretically survey the terms of sociality under the forces of immediate communication, ubiquitous surveillance, and the compression of time and space that Baudrillard and Virilio once problematized through the lens of critical technology theory to adapt it to media and communication studies. I contend that techno-aesthetics that converge with Rancière's dissensus can provide practical suggestions on an updated vocation of critical sociology. This article discusses the potential of aesthetic and social criticism of media for democratizing technology that Feenberg inserted. It is urgent to acknowledge the changing spatio-temporal aesthetic regimes that affect the societal imagination and limits of sociality and action to determine the next steps for achieving a commons-based society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relations between self-esteem and competition. Self-esteem is a very important good and competition is a widespread phenomenon. They are commonly linked, as people often seek self-esteem through success in competition. Although competition in fact generates valuable consequences and can to some extent foster self-esteem, empirical research suggests that competition has a strong tendency to undermine self-esteem. To be sure, competition is not the source of all problematic deficits in self-esteem, and it can arise for, or undercut goods other than self-esteem. But the relation between competition and access to self-esteem is still significant, and it is worth asking how we might foster a desirable distribution of the latter in the face of difficulties created by the former. That is the question addressed in this paper. The approach I propose neither recommends self-denial nor the uncritical celebration of the rat race. It charts instead a solidaristic path to support the social conditions of the self-esteem of each individual. The paper proceeds as follows. I start, in section 2, by clarifying key concepts involved in the discussion. In section 3, I identify ten mechanisms that support individuals' self-esteem and impose limits on competition. I focus, in particular, on the challenges faced by people in their practices of work. In section 4, I outline prudential and moral arguments to justify the use of the proposed mechanisms. Section 5 concludes with remarks on the role of social criticism in the processes of change implementing the mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that fascism is an ideological form rather than an ideological system. An ideology form can best be understood as a set of overall characteristics that distinguish a class of ideologies from other classes of ideologies. This theory enhances our capacity for recognizing, problematizing, and critically analyzing both existing and potential variations of fascism. Fascist movements in different sociohistorical and geopolitical circumstances vary in terms of their belief systems, strategies, and politics, so conventional comparative methods and approaches that deduce their criteria from a particular model have restricted the area of fascism studies. I argue for a trans-spatial and transhistorical concept with flexible theoretical applications. My central claim is that fascism denotes a class of ideologies that have a similar form, just as a concept such as egalitarianism, socialism, sexism, or sectarianism makes sense as a form of ideology rather than a particular ideology or philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminism provides a worldview with innovative possibilities for scholarship and activism on behalf of families and intimate relationships. As a flexible framework capable of engaging with contentious theoretical ideas and the urgency of social change, feminism offers a simultaneous way to express an epistemology (knowledge), a methodology (the production of knowledge), an ontology (one's subjective way of being in the world), and a praxis (the translation of knowledge into actions that produce beneficial social change). Feminist family science, in particular, advances critical, intersectional, and queer approaches to examine the uses and abuses of power and the multiple axes upon which individuals and families are privileged, marginalized, and oppressed in diverse social contexts. In this paper, I embrace feminism as a personal, professional (academic), and political project and use stories from my own life to illuminate broader social-historical structures, processes, and contexts associated with gender, race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, nationality, and other systems of social stratification. I provide a brief history and reflections on contemporary feminist theory and activism, particularly from the perspective of my disciplinary affiliation of feminist family science. I address feminism as an intersectional perspective through three themes: (a) theory: defining a critical feminist approach, (b) method: critical feminist autoethnographic research, and (c) praxis: transforming feminist theory into action. I conclude with takeaway messages for incorporating reflexivity and critical consciousness raising to provoke thought and action in the areas of personal, professional, and political change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of neoliberal environmentalism was to unleash the market to protect the environment; but as it turns out, things are getting worse on our way to catastrophe. Despite persistent failures, neoliberal environmentalism remains prevalent—and apparently without alternative. This paper directs focus on an often-overlooked dimension of this apparent stasis: the nexus of self and society in advanced capitalism, as shown in the linkage between neoliberal environmentalism and the autonomous ecoconsumer. Marcuse's concept of repressive desublimation is engaged to better understand how environmentalist desire is currently being thwarted in ways that inhibit movement toward socioecological emancipation. The paper provides an illustrative example of desublimated environmentalist desire in the current recycling crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper attempts to bring to the fore the radical character of Nietzsche's critical theory. It argues that behind Nietzsche's consideration of suffering lies both a critique of one-dimensional mass culture and fetishism, and a theory of alienation that is much closer to Marx's critique of alienation in capitalism than is usually believed. Uniquely, it will also support the idea that Nietzsche holds a theory of a dialectics between content and form, that is of non-identity thinking, very similar to that of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, and will attempt to connect it to an attempt to doubt the core values sustaining capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International Relations scholars are certain about two facts: power is the defining concept of the discipline and there is no consensus about what that concept means. One explanation for this problematic state of the field is that most International Relations scholars freight their analyses of power with hidden assumptions about time. Temporality is an essential component of political analysis, as a burgeoning literature has begun to explore. This paper argues that there are two latent presumptions about time that fundamentally affect how scholars conceptualize power in world politics. First, scholars are rarely explicit in defining the temporal scope of their key causal processes. The longer the implicit temporal scope, the more expansive their definition and operationalization of power can be. Second, there is considerable variation of beliefs about the temporal returns to power: does exercising or accumulating power generate positive or negative feedback effects over time? Relying on canonical works in the field, this paper examines the hidden assumptions that different paradigms make about power and time. Illuminating these assumptions clarifies the root of cross-paradigmatic disagreements about international politics and suggests some interesting pathways for future theoretical and empirical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I respond to Lois McNay's article "The politics of exemplarity: Ferrara on the disclosure of new political worlds." After contextualizing her appraisal of my views on exemplarity within the current debate about critical theory and postcolonialism, and after clarifying my interpretation of Kant's notion of sensus communis, I defend the function that this concept plays within an immanent and experience-near approach to critical theory. Sensus communis is what makes of a subjective grievance a cogent critique. I then elucidate how the transcontextual communicability of human flourishing can be understood, along lines still compatible with Kant's theory of judgment. In the final section of the paper, McNay's suggestion to reconceptualize critique in experience-near terms is integrated as a genealogical reconstruction of sensus communis as nourished by encounters with experiences of injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As we watch COVID devastate our country, many wonder how we got here. I argue that in this paper that the crisis has been agrevated, if not a direct result of presidential missteps, and belligerence. Further, most impacted have been racialized groups. These factors, described here as elements of the perfect storm, are not by accident, but a series of miscalculations and errors, blatant disregard for reality and science, and deliberate attempts to mislead, minimize, and dismiss the severity, reality, and dangers associated with this pandemic. Early responses by President Donald Trump to COVID-19 can be characterized as inept, unfocused, and lacking leadership. Even as the first cases of COVID-19 were being identified in Wuhan, China, President Trump was working to promote his anti-science stance by dismantling the science policy infrastructure installed to advise him. Following Trump's lead, many GOP local and state leaders trivialized the significance of COVID-19 early as it ravaged the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the question of antisemitism in relation to the construction of national identity in late capitalist and post-Nazi societies. Its argument centres on the concept of 'secondary antisemitism', as developed within the Critical Theory tradition. Thus, I will elaborate on the complex relationships between post-Nazi antisemitism, the culture industry and the radical destruction of memory in late capitalist societies. The aim is to show the contemporary relevance of secondary antisemitism beyond the immediate context of the task of remembering the Nazi past. In the second section of this paper I will illustrate this by an analysis of examples from print media debates in Austria on the recent financial crisis and show that instances of secondary antisemitism are utilized for the discursive construction of an exclusive national(ist) unity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of his life, Michel Foucault wrote of 'problematization' as what he had done all along. Yet some commentators see a 'new' Foucault emerging together with this term. This essay accepts the last hypothesis and connects it with the French scene, where problematization was already familiar, and its use under tension. Starting with Bachelard, problematization was related with a polemic epistemological stance, but its reprise by Gilles Deleuze turned it into an affirmative theme dramatizing the creation of problems. Situating Foucault's problematization in this philosophical line permits us to develop the relation he proposed between problematization and the test of contemporary reality on the thinker. This paper will put problematization itself to the test of our present, that is, to the prospect of the social-ecological devastation associated with climate disorder. Both following and betraying Foucault with the help of Whitehead and Haraway, problematization will then be related to the power of sensible events, a power which requires allowing oneself to be touched, and allowing what touches us the power to modify the relation we entertain to our own reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze mindfulness in education from a critical perspective. We first examine the historical underpinnings of human capital theory, which encourages educators to view students as efficient laborers in a neo-liberal society. Using the lens of Bourdieu's capital theory, we further examine how mass media inadvertently distorts the definition of mindfulness by exploring the development of a specific mass media story and by identifying how mass media factors beyond headlines and titles reframe mindfulness. We argue that this type of reframing has created a public perception of students who practice mindfulness as not only successful in social relationships but also as valued laborers who expand economic growth. This analysis opens two doors of discourse. First, mindfulness in education should be de-capitalized and shifted toward a spiritual focus. Second, we ask educational writers and publishers to redirect mindfulness applications away from their original purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article takes into exam the current literature about Big Data and data capitalism, from the perspective of the critical Internet theory. Particular attention will be placed to the ideas of data exploitation and raw data, which will prove to betray a form of digital fetishism: in short, the focus on the final results of the production process, rather than on the social relations by which the very same process is fueled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, several fatigue failure approaches of metallic notched components under multi-axial loading in recent decades are reviewed in detail. They are classified into three categories according to their different fatigue physical mechanisms and hypotheses: nominal stress approach, local stress–strain approach and the theory of critical distance. The accuracy, applicable range and computing complexity of these three different fatigue failure theories of metallic notched specimen under multi-axial fatigue loading are given. It is concluded that theory of critical distance accords with experimental results under multi-axial fatigue loading and it gives unambiguous explanation for physical mechanism of fatigue damage. However, the computing process is complex, especially under non-proportional fatigue loading, and the key parameter of theory of critical distance is difficult to calculate especially in engineering. These difficulties limit the application of theory of critical distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminism is well versed in conversations about engaged scholarship and has provided important critical commentary on Michael Burawoy's campaign for public sociology in recent years. This paper draws from feminist perspectives to argue for reflexivity, praxis, and interdisciplinary work as key pillars for public sociology. I then draw from my own experiences doing feminist work in community-engaged settings to consider various limitations of Burawoy's notions of traditional and organic public sociology. To move past this dichotomy, I put forward a conceptual model for understanding public sociologists as public intellectuals, community-engaged scholars, community educators, and/or advocates and activists. In considering how researchers might navigate these various roles, I argue that discussions of expertise and universities as value-laden institutions are important to build sustainable practices. Overall, the strength of public sociology is that it acknowledges these blurred boundaries and allows for the development of collaborative forms of expertise to address social problems. However, there is additional theoretical work to be done, as well as practical supports developed, to enable feminist researchers in particular to successfully navigate these roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the idea of exemplarity outlined by the Italian critical theorist Alessandro Ferrara that forms part of his general case for the centrality of disclosure to emancipatory political reasoning. Ferrara argues that "at its best" political thought should have the capacity to animate the democratic imagination by disclosing new political worlds and hence new possibilities for thought and action. I argue that Ferrara's notion of exemplarity provides important conceptual resources for a re-grounding of critical theory in the type of experientially based disclosing critique that has, post Habermas, been marginalized. Ferrara's work is significant in two respects. First, exemplary universalism provides a much-needed alternative to the assimilative paradigms of normative reasoning that dominate contemporary political theory. Exemplary normativity suggests a mode of reasoning from concrete particularity that is more inclusive than principle-based approaches of voices which, by virtue of their marginal or disempowered status, are often absent from democratic deliberation. Second, Ferrara shows us how, contra Habermas, far from being an unstable process of meaning creation, exemplary disclosure has a systematic internal rationale that renders it open to inter-subjective validation. I contend, however, that the critical promise of the idea of exemplarity is unfulfilled because of its grounding in the speculative construct of sensus communis defined as a set of trans-cultural intuitions about human flourishing. This socially deracinated abstraction blocks an adequate understanding of the asymmetrical relations of power around which social difference is always constructed. Ultimately, Ferrara is unable to demonstrate how exemplarity does in fact disclose new political worlds and new possibilities for thought so much as confirm established liberal norms. Drawing on critical race theory, I propose a re-politicized understanding of exemplarity that locates its disclosing force in the actual dynamics of struggles against oppression rather than in a socially weightless abstraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines those aspects of the epistemology and the metaphysics of Karl Popper that appear applicable to the evaluation of religious knowledge. Their relevance is illustrated by reference to two specific topics: the existence of God and St Anselm’s doctrine of atonement. It is proposed that Popper’s epistemology and metaphysics offer a satisfactory alternative to the philosophy of reductive materialism prevalent in Western society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central concern of this paper is the linkages between contradiction and social change, as developed in the work of Nishida Kitarō, a critical social philosopher who explored the nature of social contradiction vis-à-vis local agency, global structures, and social change. Building on Nishida’s conceptual framework, I trace social change to the ontological nature of social contradiction as manifest in myriad social phenomena. This then provides a critical lens for analyzing the contemporary development of community-supported agriculture (CSA). Indeed, the growing popularity of CSAs across the USA makes visible a host of social contradictions, including those between local and global food production and between local consumption and global distribution. Invoking Nishida to peel back the layers of contradiction and assess the potential social impact of CSAs, we address two broad questions. First, what is the nature of contradiction as a fundamental aspect of social life? Second, how can the notion of contradiction help us frame the role of CSAs as a force for social change? In this manner, Nishida’s interpretation of social contradiction shapes our understanding of CSAs, while our understanding of CSAs further refines our assessment of Nishida. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The task of this paper is to point out the relevance of Karl Marx for Internet Studies. Marxian concepts that have been reflected implicitly or explicitly in Internet Studies include: (1) dialectics; (2) capitalism; (3) commodity/commodification; (4) surplus value, exploitation, alienation, class; (5) globalization; (6) ideology/ideology critique; (7) art and aesthetics; (8) class struggle; (9) commons; (10) public sphere; (11) communism. The paper provides a literature overview for showing that, and how, Marxian concepts have been used in Internet Studies. Internet Studies to a certain extent analyse the Internet, economy and society in Marxist-inspired studies terms, yet do not acknowledge the connection to Marx and thus seem superficial in their various approaches discussing capitalism, exploitation and domination. We argue that it is time to actively remember that Marx is the founding figure of Critical Studies and that Marxian analyses are crucial for understanding the contemporary role of the Internet and the media in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilizes Du Bois’ double consciousness, as well as insights from feminist theory and critical pedagogy, to examine the tensions involved in being both a professional sociologist and a New Orleanian affected by Hurricane Katrina. We argue that sociologists from New Orleans face barriers that prevent us from writing and teaching about Katrina ‘objectively’, as many in our discipline demand, while simultaneously discouraging us from engaging in research and teaching that draw on personal experiences with Katrina. We are told by reviewers, editors, and colleagues that our experiences, construed as biases, are inappropriate for our writing and our classrooms. We contend that much important knowledge about Hurricane Katrina will never be created, and the knowledge that is created will be largely written and taught by those who did not experience the storm first-hand. This paper reconciles two conflicted consciousnesses by deconstructing the situation encountered by sociologists from New Orleans. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to propose a model for understanding the relation between substance and procedure in discourse ethics and deliberative democracy capable of answering the common charge that they involve an 'empty formalism'. The expressive-elaboration model introduced here answers this concern by arguing that the deliberative practical rationality presupposed by discourse ethics and deliberative democracy involves the creation of a practical medium in which certain general basic ideas of solidarity, equality and freedom are expressed and elaborated in the context of widespread moral disagreement. In the course of this paper I propose an elucidation of these ideas and argue for the thesis that they are internally related to the endorsement of deliberative practical rationality. The three basic substantive ideas contribute to the determination of the existence, the form, the topics and intended outcomes, and the effects of the practice of public deliberation. This amounts to an elucidatory defense of deliberative practical rationality by explicating its substantive significance or point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper applies Critical Theory to understand the progressive and oppressive potential of contemporary religious revival in the United States. The analysis focuses on Neopaganism as a progressive spirituality, possibly compatible with Marxist theory. Whether religion is progressive (or oppressive/reactionary) depends not on the content of beliefs, but rather, on the type of social relationship a religion establishes between the individual and society. The paper treats Neopaganism and Marxism as practices and worldviews that often inform social movements and sometimes become the basis of functioning communities. They at once correspond to political-economic agendas, but both also assert the cultural foundations of life — the symbolic expression of shared meaning as the legitimization of social relations. In conclusion, Marxism must develop a spiritual component to survive in and critique modern society, and to posit a vision of the future that might exert actual social influence. To accomplish this, the paper proposes the material-mystery thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite accusations of irresponsibility and negativity, Jacques Derrida's deconstruction has had an immense influence on contemporary social, political and cultural critique. 'Evolving negativity' offers a preliminary explanation of this influence by tracing the philosophical 'family tree' that links deconstruction to German Critical Theory via the Frankfurt School. The paper explores the origins of a certain dynamic and productive notion of negativity in Hegel's dialectic and describes its 'evolution' in the works of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno as a process of de-determination that finds its culmination in Derrida's notion of 'différance'. Set free of its totalizing, teleological force, Derrida's negativity as 'différance' is compared with Hegel's more general and generative notion of Negativität. The paper concludes that for this branch of 'critical' thinking, to flourish in the shadow of Hegel means also to be continually reinventing his respect for difference and negativity, and transforming it to respond to the questions of the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of judgment has become one of the central problems in recent social, political and ethical thought. This paper explores Hannah Arendt's decisive contribution to this debate by attempting to reconstruct analytically two distinctive perspectives on judgment from the corpus of her writings. By exploring her relation to Aristotelian and Kantian sources, and by uncovering debts and parallels to key thinkers such as Benjamin and Heidegger, it is argued that Arendt's work pinpoints the key antinomy within political judgment itself, that between the viewpoints of the political actor and the political spectator. The paper concludes by highlighting some lacunae and difficulties in the development of Arendt's account, difficulties that set challenges for those theorists (such as Seyla Benhabib and Alessandro Ferrara) who wish to appropriate and extend Arendt's contribution into the field of contemporary critical theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on the annual Philosophy & Social Science conferences, held at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, Czech Republic. He talks about his encounter with the tradition of critical theory and the work of philisopher Jürgen Habermas as an undergraduate student. He was invited to Prague by Habermas' assistant Axel Honneth in 1994. He appreciates the event directors for creating an atmosphere which encourages critical debate and search for emancipation.

The article presents the author's views on being a part of the annual Philosophy and Social Science conference, held at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, Czech Republic. He was first invited to present a paper as part of the Philosophy and Social Sciences course at the Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik, former Yugoslavia, in 1991. He talks about how the meeting relocated to Prague. He shares his experience of as a director of the event till 2004, and returning to Prague in 2015.

The concept of trusts, absent from the classical writings of Marx and Weber on capitalism, was introduced by Frederic Maitland and John Locke as an explanatory framework for the central institutions of capitalism. While these two theorists offered compelling arguments, they relied on intuition and utilized the concept primarily to justify the existing social structure. This paper aims to bring analytical rigor to this intuitive theory and proposes that critical theory embraces the idea of trusts as a critical conceptual tool to unravel the nature of capitalist institutions. Examining limited liability corporations, the modern state, and public debt, the incorporation of trusts into critical theory provides key advantages. First, it facilitates analyzing capitalist institutions in terms of rights and responsibilities, unveiling moral dynamics. Second, it highlights the role of personhood in distributing rights and responsibilities. Third, it can help understand why modern society is ensnared by the shackles of debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article author Douglas Kellner has outlined the origins of the neo-Marxist theory and critique of the consumer society in the Frankfurt School, examine developments of their positions in contemporary Marxist theories of the consumer society and then sketch out his own perspectives. Since he recently published a paper highlighting the Frankfurt School's theory of mass culture and communications, its impact on subsequent theories and research, and its problems and deficiencies which require new critical theories of culture and communication (Kellner 1982), he shall center his analysis in this paper on a discussion of critical theories of the commodity and consumption with only tangential references to mass culture and communications. In sociologist Herbert Marcuse's view, the most striking feature of advanced industrial society is its ability to contain all social change and to integrate all potential agents of change into one smoothly running, comfortable and satisfying system of domination. This "one-dimensional society" is made possible by "new forms of social control" which plant needs and help create a consciousness that accepts and conforms to the system, thus systematically suffocating the need for liberation and radical social change. He believes that, "the most effective and enduring form of warfare against liberation is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete forms of the struggle for existence"

In December 2022, a scientific breakthrough in fusion energy resulted in widespread media attention with a focus on fusion as a key strategy to mitigate climate change. In this article, we draw from Herbert Marcuse's work on technological rationality to examine fusion technology in this context. We explore if fusion is seen as a way to master nature, if it protects current power relations, and if a focus on fusion might detract attention and resources from alternatives. Illustrating technological rationality, much attention is being given to the potential achievement of fusion energy, it is being championed by already powerful economic actors, and despite that it is unlikely to be ready in time to support necessary climate mitigation, it may be detracting support for more effective and just strategies that already exist. In this context, framing fusion as a solution to climate change represents what Marcuse calls 'one-dimensional thinking'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I take issue with Rainer Forst's claim that his account of the demand for justification that is at the core of the idea of justice provides our political thinking with a final “fundamentum inconcussum”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I express enthusiastic solidarity with Axel Honneth's inheritance and transformation of several core Hegelian ideas, and express one major disagreement. The disagreement is not so much with anything he says, as it is with what he doesn't say. It concerns his rejection of Hegel's theoretical philosophy, and so his attempt to reconstruct Hegel's practical philosophy without reliance on that theoretical philosophy. This attitude towards Hegel's Science of Logic – that it involves a “mystification” of essentially practical notions - has been typical of the Critical Theory tradition since Marx, and is disputed here. It also helps to raise the large issue of the proper understanding of the relation between theoretical and practical philosophy. The implications of ignoring the Hegelian understanding of this dependence of the latter on the former are further developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adorno's social theory is enjoying renewed attention, as is the debate to what extent is it Marxist. A central issue remains Adorno's concept of social totality: capitalism as a fully integrated society in which every difference is levelled. One problem this raises is why is he still committed to the Marxist concept of class. And second, how to understand his critique of the idea of proletarian class-consciousness, which seems to leave his critical theory without an addressee. The article suggests that, for Adorno, capitalist society exhibits what is termed here "differential integration." It is predicated both on the labor/capital distinction and, at the same time, on sufficient homology between the two, such that the qualitative class divide is experienced as mere quantitative variance. This efficacious gap between social structure and social experience is at the center of his concept of ideology. Ideology-critique for Adorno is mainly the critique of symptomatic misconceptions of how ideology functions, due to lack of attention to how the class structure is in fact not experienced as such. Adorno's alternative to proletarian class consciousness is "differential solidarity": consciousness of social domination that is on the one hand found across class divides yet is experienced differentially between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The editors of the special issue, in their call for papers for this special issue, expressed a degree of disquiet at the current state of International Relations theory, but the situation is both better and worse than they suggest. On the one hand, in some areas of the discipline, there has been real progress over the last decade. The producers of liberal and realist International Relations theory may not have the kind of standing in the social/human sciences as the ‘Grand Theorists’ identified by Quentin Skinner in his seminal mid-1980s’ collection, but they have a great deal to say about how the world works, and the world would have been a better place over the last decade or so if more notice had been taken of what they did say. On the other hand, the range of late modern theorists who brought some of Skinner’s Grand Theorists into the reckoning in the 1980s have, in the main, failed to deliver on the promises made in that decade. The state of International Relations theory in this neck of the woods is indeed a cause for concern; there is a pressing need for ‘critical problem-solving’ theory, that is, theory that relates directly to real-world problems but approaches them from the perspective of the underdog. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite penning nearly 2000 pages on international politics, the works of the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon simply do not feature in either the historiography or the study of contemporary IR theory. I argue that this is unjustified by illustrating his compelling and enduring insights into the history and nature of 'the international'. Proudhon employed a sociological and psychological theory of justice; he saw war and conflict as the motors of change in society; and he saw order as emergent from the deep anarchy of (global) society. The paper provides a contextualised reading of his works to illustrate its historical importance, and demonstrates its potential to contribute to current IR theory through a comparison with contemporary Critical Theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative working using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) systems in construction has become a reality as many activities are performed globally with actors located in various geographical locations. Computer Integrated Construction (CIC) is the type of ICT system that binds a fragmented and geographically distributed set of construction stakeholders collaborating together. Although the concept of CIC has been the subject of research for many years, its uptake has been very limited due to the development of the technology and its effective implementation. Research in this area is still premature and does not pay much attention to the development and implementation of the prototypes in the industry. As a result, the research developments have remained as prototypes although they have captured industrial interest. However, ongoing research within the field of construction IT is stressing that it is crucial to define research methodologies for human centred and adaptive CIC developments through industry-wide knowledge sharing. The aim of this paper, through triangulated research strategy of interviews, surveys and case study is to justify the need for a requirements engineering process as a CIC development methodology for adaptive and user-centred systems developments and as a guideline to bridge the gap between industry and the research community. The case study project is the DIVERCITY system development undertaken by researchers and practitioners across Europe to develop a shared virtual construction design and briefing environment that enables the construction industry to better undertake the client briefing and design review phases of a construction project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the implications of Pierre Bourdieu's recent reformulation of his social theory as a critique of 'scholarly reason'. This reformulation is said to point towards a definition of social theory as a sociologically informed version of the Kantian concept of 'critique'. It is argued that, by this means, Bourdieu is able to extend and develop the critique of 'intellectualism' in the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty and, furthermore, to ground this critique by showing how the intellectualist error arises from a failure to reflect on the 'social conditions of possibility' of reason. The three forms of the critique of scholarly reason (pertaining to the theoretical, the moral-practical and the aesthetic forms of reason) are then briefly presented. In the final section, the critique of scholarly reason is shown to provide the basis for a convincing response to critiques of Bourdieu's work from critical theorists drawing on Habermas's conception of discursive rationality. In particular, it is argued that critical theorists influenced by Habermas typically confuse 'practical reflexivity' with 'intellectual reflection' -- the standpoint of 'scholarly reason'. Finally, it is shown that Bourdieu's own account of the unity of theory and practice is nonetheless deficient, and must be supplanted with an account centred on the idea of existential clarification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a widespread fascination with drones, the materiality of aerial warfare – its bodies, embodied experiences, technologies – has received increasing attention in International Relations (IR) scholarship. This article pushes for a deeper, political theorisation of air in the study of war in its material and embodied dimensions through a critical reading of the Abyssinian War (1935–1936) – a central yet largely neglected conflict in the colonial history of world politics. Exploring the joint deployment of aeroplanes and mustard gas in Ethiopia via a mosaic of sources – literature, strategic thought, cartoons and memoirs – I argue that aerial relations expose the production of a racialised global order underpinned by more-than-human war experiences. Bringing together geographer Derek McCormack's concept of 'envelopment' and Black Studies scholar Christina Sharpe's idea of 'the weather', I show how Italy's imperial desires – and their international perceptions – cannot be theorised in separation from aerial experiences that are conceived as excessive of human bodies, sensing and imagination. This analysis thus makes two central contributions to the critical study of war in IR. First, an aerial reading of the Abyssinian War highlights the political importance of war experience beyond the human. Second, it challenges studies of drone warfare that reduce discussions of air to either the strategic, technical and ontological plane or to the intimate, embodied and phenomenological one. Instead, the more-than-human aerial experiences of the Abyssinian War call for a theorisation of air as both material and affective, technical and embodied, and grand strategic and intimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparisons between digital media and narcotic drugs have become increasingly common in the vigorous discussion on smartphone addiction and technology addiction. Commentators have used evocative terms such as "digital heroin," "electronic cocaine," and "virtual drugs" when discussing users' growing dependence on their devices. This article looks at the spreading discourse comparing digital media with drugs from a set of interdisciplinary perspectives including media studies, political economy, critical theory, science and technology studies, and addiction studies. It engages several key questions: To what extent can heavy smartphone use be considered an addiction, and how is it similar or different from drug addiction? How do the analogies between media and drugs fit within prevalent imaginaries of information technologies, and within the greater cultural themes and preoccupations of late capitalism? And finally, what can drugs teach us about the possible escape routes from our society's current predicament? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of a 'Foucaultism' to contemporary critical analysis is by no means an easy task and Poster's book contains many valuable insights into the functioning of Foucault's work -- particularly as it relates to modern Marxisms -- within critical theory. Yet there remain a number of important themes which Poster appears merely to gloss over (eg, the precise nature of 'historicity', the relation between the dialectic and reason, etc) providing no solution to the dilemmas thrown up by grounded theory attempting to work within the field of a discursive analysis. The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the particular nature of `history' as it appears in Marx and in Foucault and to indicate some of the main characteristics of Foucault's analytical tools. The logic of the paper follows the logic of Posters book, dealing with Marx first, Foucault second, and closes with an examination of some analytical implications of adopting a discursive/genealogical approach to the study of contemporary social phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Habermas has argued that many of the endemic socio- economic problems of Western society are either symptoms or prod ucts of a 'lopsided' process of cultural rationalization, one that has emphasized instrumental forms of rationality over communicative. But other than presenting a rather general typology of lifeworld pathologies, Habermas has not done much to specify what these problems might be, nor has he provided any 'middle-range' analysis of the mechanisms through which they might be generated. This paper discusses some of the ways in which, consistent with Haber mas's general framework, rational choice theory can be used for pre cisely this task. In this analysis, rational choice theory is not presented as a comprehensive theory of action, but is employed as a critical- diagnostic tool that allows the theorist to identify undesirable social interaction patterns that arise from a broader instrumentalization of the lifeworld. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Numerous garbage dumpsites worldwide have been closed down to address the safety, health and environmental hazards facing waste pickers, such as potential landsides, diseases and pollution. As a result, the environment surrounding the (former) waste pickers may have been safer and cleaner. While the closure of garbage dumpsites may be an act of social justice to protect waste pickers, however, in some cases, the incomes and living standards of former waste pickers who continue to reside at these sites have been aggravated. Drawing on critical theory, and using observations and interviews, this case study examined the post-dumpsite-closure situation of Payatas in the Philippines. This study augments previous research on critical urban and regional studies through the presentation of a meta-critical theory by expanding, critiquing and reconceptualizing critical theory to address the problematic post-dumpsite situation created through the closure of the dumpsite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that the problem of normative foundations is insoluble. I discuss how and why the apparent problem arose, particularly within the Frankfurt School. Then, I describe various theories of normative foundations and the criticisms that such theories have faced, such as ethno- and andro-centrism, imperialism, and the failure to fulfill their own aims. I make my main argument by way of an analogy: theories of knowledge have wrestled with the question of whether a "given"' could act as a certain foundation for knowledge. The conclusion is often that no given can function in that way, because the given, which supposedly does not require justification, is therefore necessarily unable to justify knowledge. For similar reasons, I argue, nothing can function as a normative foundation for a critical social theory, because any such normative foundation would have to both stand in no need of normative justification but also justify normative social criticism. I conclude by suggesting that more recent critical theory that does not focus on normative foundations can be understood as justifying their critique by appeal to what people do actually want, rather than what they should rationally want. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While philosophy has been defined as a critical endeavour since Plato, the critical potential of rhetoric has been mostly overlooked. In recent years, critique itself – as a means of enlightenment and emancipation – has come under attack. While there have been various attempts to renew and strengthen critical theory and practice, rhetoric has not yet played a part in these attempts. Addressing this lacuna, the article argues that rhetoric can function as a critical force within philosophy. The rhetorical perspective confronts the claim to rational discourse and universal knowledge with the contingency of philosophical languages, means of representation, and social practices. Moreover, it allows us to think of critique as an activity of a subject that is at the same time constituted and transformed by it. This opens up the possibility of a rhetorical philosophizing that meets its critical standards by taking into account both the conditions of its own speaking and what it must exclude as its 'other' in order to function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay challenges the prevailing view among critical theorists that laughter's emancipatory power stems from its ability to speak the truth. The disparate accounts of laughter offered by Plato, Hobbes, and Nietzsche exemplify an alternative strategy for theorizing laughter as a performance of deception, or an experience that mystifies rather than enlightens. While a view of laughter as deceptive may at first appear to reduce laughter's critical leverage over ideology, I argue that this approach offers a stronger account of its emancipatory power. Speaking the truth does little more than reveal the falsity of ideology, and laughter's capacity to actually transform society hinges on how it deceives differently – namely, in such a way that prompts the imagination and construction of more democratic institutions and modes of relating. The essay concludes by considering the implications of this argument for how we understand the role of truth in critical theory today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phrase 'To perish from absolute knowledge' from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil runs like a red thread throughout Foucault's reading of Nietzsche, spanning a period of 20 years in which Foucault continuously turned to Nietzsche as his main philosophical and methodological role model. Beginning with his first lectures on Nietzsche in the early 1950s, Foucault repeatedly alluded to this phrase as the key to Nietzsche's philosophical critique which anticipated the philosophical shift to ontology in the 20th century. Drawing on a host of unpublished essays from Foucault's archive, it will be shown that this phrase holds the key to Foucault's Nietzsche interpretation and explains his reliance on historicity as the transcendental basis for his critical project. The article will rely on Foucault's dynamic analysis of this phrase to narrate the development of his historical methodology between the 1950s and the mid-1970s, and will argue for the continuity and coherence of Foucault's critical project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]