#criticalrealism — Public Fediverse posts

Our 1. Meeting! Working Group Critical Realism & Peace Studies! Here some further informations: josefmuehlbauer.com/critical-rea... #peacestudies #peace #criticalrealism #conference #discussion #politics In case u miss it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBsj...

Critical Realism & Peace Studi...

Half way through 'view from nowhere' & parallels with Bhaskar's #CriticalRealism are striking. Nagel argues for a possibility of objectivity that assumes subjectivity and for rationality to make a priori sense of contingent empirical data. Are there any published parallels between Nagel & Bhaskar?

Can anyone point me towards reviews, studies, critiques, etc. on #CriticalRealism & its relevance to the #Philosophy & realism of Thomas Nagel (cf. View from nowhere; what it's like to be a bat, etc.)

Have found some articles in Journal of @crnetwork.bsky.social & @philosophynow.bsky.social

Thanx🙏🏼

My thoughts on "What Makes Academic Writing Human(e): A Critical Realist Response" in: Bouchard & Zotzmann, eds. #CriticalRealism in #AppliedLinguistics #CambridgeUniversityPress 2026

#AcademicWriting
#WhatMakesWritingAcademic
#WhatMakesAcademicWritingHumane
#GenAI

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/critical-realism-in-applied-linguistics/what-makes-academic-writing-humane/C0B8F2E866A5750FE9B4C19FD04FD78A

The late 2020s as the final act of modernity

In The Reflexive Imperative Margaret Archer tells an initially slightly counter-intuitive story about modernity in terms of an accumulating struggle from which ever fewer people are able to insulate themselves. Her arguments rests on an understanding of how social and cultural change was encountered and responded to by differently positioned groups. For some it cast them in a position of protecting what was slipping away. For others it created the challenge of creating something new after change was forced upon them. The different interests of groups, as well as the changing ways in which they interpret those interests, leads increasing numbers to act in pursuit of those (often mutually exclusive interests) with important conequences:

Firstly, that these initial manifestations of competitive contradictions spread to affect all social institutions – in state and civil society alike – where the actions of collective agents were a spur to acquire organisation and to articulate goals on the part of disgruntled primary agents, as I have analysed at length for education. Secondly, that this spelt increasing mobilisation of greater and greater sections of the population, though far from the majority.

Reflexive Imperative Pg 27

In other words the more groups organise themselves in pursuit of their interests, the more imperative it becomes for inactive groups to defend interests that might have until then only been latently recognised. There’s a spiral of mobilisation which happens patchily and unevenly but creates a long-term tendency to ever increasing collective activity. I think we can see the depoliticisation of late stage neoliberalism as a temporary interregnum in which countervailing forces engendered a new radicalisation but that, as Richard Hames puts it:

There was this period we talked about a lot of a very rapid atomisation from the late 60s through to the 90s and early 00s. My sense is that the internet has reversed some of that, people have stitched themselves back together in new kinds of ways. That has happened in a context where there hasn’t been much political organising on the ground, but there has been a lot of political ideas and people have attached themselves to them.

In essence social platforms offered a new infrastructure through which this tendency towards mobilisation could begin a spiral of acceleration. Archer wrote in 2012 that “Those who decline such personal involvement could remain temporarily untouched by these struggles and their associated situational logic of competition … for the time being” (pg 31). The psychic counterpart to this is what Zizek once described as the desire for “floating freely in my undisturbed balance”. It’s a fantasy of being insulated from struggle, being above the fray in an individually sovereign life which will remain undisturbed by social antagonism. That’s exactly what Covid briefly ruptured for everyone, to at least some degree.

It’s what now becomes decreasingly possible for anyone in late 2025 as the far-right rises globally. It makes me suddenly wonder if rather than seeing a social formation beyond modernity, we are instead seeing something more like the final act of the modern story. Which again brings me back to my morbid but necessary preoccupation with the explosion of antagonism which the coming crisis will inevitably bring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa0x3c42pXw

#antagonism #archer #capitalism #collectiveAgency #crisis #criticalRealism #economicCrash #modernity #reflexiveImperative

📣 Platform and Agency: Becoming Who We Are now available

The first chapter is available on Google Books here. Unfortunately the book is going to be expensive in print (though an eBook is available) so let me know if you have trouble accessing it and I’ll do my best to help.

Here’s the introduction to the book:

We live in a digital age. That statement can feel platitudinous, yet it expresses a defining feature of our contemporary world: an era shaped by digital technology, from smart phones and tablets to the consumer-facing internet. While the term ‘digital age’ can obscure the variety of lived experience across different contexts, it also insists upon a horizon of change that exceeds immediate empirical observation. It implies a meta-process that will be difficult to characterise without oversimplifying the empirical complexity which ultimately defines it (Archer 2013). We can point to the rapid expansion of internet access across the global population, the diffusion of smart phones as primary devices, or the rise of social platforms that now dominate what ‘the internet’ means in everyday life. The danger in talking about a ‘digital age’ is that it can obscure the fact that global internet access remains deeply uneven, with many still lacking reliable connectivity. The range of what ‘the internet’ means can too easily be subsumed into epochal generalisations about digital change. However, if we avoid terms like ‘digital age’ we risk failing to grasp an emerging reality which surpasses any single trend. Once you insist on a certain degree of empirical robustness, it becomes difficult to keep hold of the meta-process. 

The starting point for this project is that such a meta-process is unfolding, which we urgently need to grasp but that doing so is an epistemically complex undertaking. These are not isolated or easily quantified phenomena, but rather a qualitative shift in the parameters of social life (Couldry 2020). There is a change in the texture of the social which is widely felt, yet difficult to pin down in a robust or comprehensive way. Nearly three decades ago, Castells (1996: 508) noted the “unseen logic of the meta-network where value is produced, cultural codes are created, and power is decide”, suggesting that this “increasingly appears to people as meta-social disorder”. It is this ‘meta’ level that we evoke by talking about a ‘digital age’, imprecise as that term may be. Only at this higher level can we address how the “parameters of social life – of social interaction and even of socialisation” have begun to shift, rather than confining ourselves to discrete new forms of interaction (Couldry 2024: loc 1174). Otherwise we are left with “the detection of empirical patterns” in which social transformation is inferred when a pattern is “big and bold enough”. These are by their nature perspectival claims, even when methodologically robust in their statistics, relying on ‘striking’ observations which produce an intuitive sense of transformation in the analyst (Archer 2013:: loc 1232).

And this is the conclusion:

The problems with the detraditionalisation thesis arose from the grandiose poetics which left it captivated by its own pronouncements about epochal change. For this reason I believe we ought to as cautious as we can be about declaring an outcome to sociotechnical change, without dispensing with the recognition there will be an outcome. If anything the vast investment in LLMs and the data infrastructure which supports them, intersecting with a post-pandemic political economy which appears to be leaving neoliberalism behind, heralds an intensification of change rather than a diminution (Tooze 2021;, Varoufakis 2023). It’s possible this might be leading towards a perpetual polycrisis, a social order unable to stabilise itself amidst an accelerating climate catastrophe. But even this doom loop, suggested by Seymour’s notion of disaster nationalism, represents a social order of sorts, even if it’s an apocalyptic one. 

It is difficult to incorporate this horizon of crisis into our frame of reference without subordinating our analysis of the interaction phase through which it is being generated. However by approaching platformisation through the concepts of psychobiography and personal morphogenesis, I have argued that we can avoid both grandiose (and premature) pronouncements about a ‘digital age’ and dismissive rejections of the reality of genuine change. The analysis I’ve offered of distracted people and fragile movements explores how platforms reconfigure rather than replace human agency. By examining how reflexivity operates within platformised contexts, tracing its biographical unfolding rather than proclaiming wholesale transformation, we gain a more textured understanding of contemporary social life. This has meant breaking with an account of agency premised, as Savage (2021: 191) puts it,  “on this ontological temporal difference between past, enduring structures, and a contemporary contingent agency that breaks from them”. Unless we can surrender this baggage, we are left with a meta-process defined through the falling away of the past, operationalising ‘tradition’ as that which is experiencing a decline and thus squeezing out continuities through definitional fiat. The problem is not an epochal horizon, as much as ontological assumptions which lead to the epistemic mistakes of pronouncing epochal change in a grandiose and premature manner. A realist conception of the platform can acknowledge its emerging status as a condition of our social existence, while remaining clear that is we who must decide what to make of it.

#criticalRealism #digitalisation #PlatformAndAgency #platformisation

📘 Have you written a PhD using critical realism?

The critical realism network has just launched a thesis archive to collect these as a public resource:

Our thesis archive provides links to doctoral theses written by critical realist scholars, as a resource to help other researchers understand how critical realism can be employed in social research.

#criticalRealism #doctoral #PhD #thesis

I'll be giving this year's keynote at #EATAW25 - alongside Suresh Canagarajah & Federico Navarro - on:

'AI Realism: Reclaiming the Human in AI-enhanced Academic Literacies' (cf abstract) {JM}
🤞
#PACEspace #AcWri #AcademicLiteracies #GenAI #CriticalRealism #OpenUniversity

www.eataw2025.com/keynote

After 16 years and 7 months I’ve finished Platform and Agency

I’ll do one more read through when it gets back from my proof reader, but the book I started in September 2008 with my PhD is now finished 👇

The virtue of the detraditionalisation thesis lay in its insistence on a meta-process, a change which exceeds empirical trends which can be measured. It provides, as Lundby (2009: 141) puts it, “a meta approach that makes it possible to integrate very different results of surveys and qualitative investigations into an overall coherent understanding”. The problems with the detraditionalisation thesis arose from the grandiose poetics which left it captivated by its own pronouncements about epochal change. For this reason I believe we ought to be as cautious as we can be about declaring an outcome to sociotechnical change, without dispensing with the recognition that there will be an outcome. If anything the vast investment in LLMs and the data infrastructure which supports them, intersecting with a post-pandemic political economy which appears to be leaving neoliberalism behind, heralds an intensification of change rather than a diminution (Tooze 2021, Varoufakis 2023). It’s possible this might be leading towards a perpetual polycrisis, a social order unable to stabilise itself amidst an accelerating climate catastrophe. But even this doom loop, suggested by Seymour’s (2024) notion of disaster nationalism, represents a social order of sorts, even if it’s an apocalyptic one. 

It is difficult to incorporate this horizon of crisis into our frame of reference without subordinating our analysis of the interaction phase through which it is being generated. However by  approaching platformisation through the concepts of psychobiography and personal morphogenesis, I have argued that we can avoid both grandiose (and premature) pronouncements about a ‘digital age’ and dismissive rejections of the reality of genuine change. The analysis I’ve offered of distracted people and fragile movements explores how platforms reconfigure rather than replace human agency. By examining how reflexivity operates within platformised contexts, tracing its biographical unfolding rather than proclaiming wholesale transformation, we gain a more textured understanding of contemporary social life. This has meant breaking with an account of agency premised, as Savage (2021: 191) puts it,  “on this ontological temporal difference between past, enduring structures, and a contemporary contingent agency that breaks from them”. Unless we can surrender this baggage, we are left with a meta-process defined through the falling away of the past, operationalising ‘tradition’ as that which is experiencing a decline and thus squeezing out continuities through definitional fiat. The problem is not an epochal horizon, as much as ontological assumptions which lead to the epistemic mistakes of pronouncing epochal change in a grandiose and premature manner. A realist conception of the platform can acknowledge its emerging status as a condition of our social existence, while remaining clear that is we who must decide what to make of it.

#biography #criticalRealism #epochalTheorising #personalMorphogenesis #PlatformAndAgency #platformStudies #socialChange #socialRealism

#bookReview; a new category of #blogs from #MoonLitPress! We review and recommend "To Travel Well, Travel Light" by Mary Coday Edwards. Edwards is at once a deep thinker and deeply spiritual. This extraordinary memoir recounts Edwards’ global quest for religious belonging.

https://blog.moonlitpress.org/To-Travel-Well-Travel-Light

#wordsByTerryl #bookwyrm #religion #sbnr
#writing
#SpiritualNotReligious
#CriticalRealism
#SurvivingChristianity
#JungianSpirituality
#JesusMovement

I liked this article for many reasons, including:

- it affords supervisors/ees a portal into #CriticalRealism

- it's written to build community through troublesome #ThresholdConcepts

Thinking like a critical realist: getting through the portal. Journal of Critical Realism https://doi.org/10.1080/14767430.2025.2458550

How did #CriticalRealism respond to Groff on truth?

[Since ditching FB, can't ask the CR community. Hoping someone here can help].

Groff, R. (2000). The Truth of the Matter: Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism and the Concept of Alethic Truth. Philosophy of the Social Sciences https://doi.org/10.1177/004839310003000304

@petersuber @academicchatter the journal of #CriticalRealism has a whole list, including bluesky and mastodon - not sure if this link takes you there but click on any recent article published JCR and the share options are huge: https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tandfonline.com%2F

A humanistic approach to #GAI:

"humans communicate on the basis of word-world relationships, [...] AI technologies [are] to word-word'

#AcWri
#ArtificialIntelligence
#CompositionStudies
#Humanities
#CriticalRealism
#WhatMakesWritingAcademic
#Emancipation
#AppliedLinguistics
#HigherEd

https://rdcu.be/d3AMw

New opportunity for independent critical realist researchers

Fixed Term Opportunities for Researchers without a Permanent Academic Affiliation: Associate Membership of the Centre for Critical Realism

The Centre for Critical Realism (CCR) is a small educational charity that aims to advance the education of the general public and practitioners in the study, research and application of critical realism. Its activities include acting as the Editorial Board for the Routledge Critical Realism Series and supporting the Critical Realism Network. We now intend to extend our activities by supporting a maximum of four researchers who use the metatheory of critical realism, through the creation of an associated membership category. The intention of this associate category is to provide a continuity of academic affiliation and practical support.

These are unpaid honorary positions with no requirement to carry out any specific activities and should not impact on any existing roles. Associate membership will run for a fixed term of three years from appointment.

The expected benefits of associated membership are:

• The Centre for Critical Realism is recognised as an academic affiliation. Associate members would be able choose to cite CCR as their academic affiliation when submitting papers to journals and conferences.
• Associated members can also choose to have an @criticalrealismnetwork.org email address.
• Academic/career mentoring advice will be available from CCR trustees and members.
• Financial support can be requested for attendance at specific conferences and research events.

Requirements of role

• To act in accordance with the aims and objectives of the charity
• To provide abstracts of any articles prior to submission and an annual update on career progression
• On the completion of the role, provide an evaluation report detailing how the CCR have assisted in their career development and recommendations for improvement.

Application Process

Candidates must have already obtained a PhD, have demonstratable evidence of using the metatheory of Critical Realism and currently lack a permanent academic affiliation (i.e are without an academic post or on a short term contract).

To apply, please submit an email to [email protected] providing a current CV and answers to the following two questions:

1. What have you done to date that makes you a suitable candidate for associate membership? (500 words)
2. How do you expect to benefit from your time as an associate member? (500 words)

The CCR welcome applications from all countries. For an informal discussion on these roles please contact: Catherine Hastings ([email protected]) or Steve Ash ([email protected])

The closing date for applications for this round of appointments is 1st February 2025.

#criticalRealism #independentResearchers

This article argues that #CriticalRealism
(CR) should develop its own theory of #AcademicWriting
because of CR’s explicit commitment to #HumanEmancipation
and #StratifiedOntology
[1/n]
#AcWri

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14767430.2024.2429225#abstract

"Said contends that words are not merely passive figures but vital agents in historical and political change"
#Humanism

#ExplanatoryCritique

#CriticalRealism

#Emancipation

#AcWri

#AppliedLinguistics

#SocioLinguistics

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/humanism-and-democratic-criticism/9780231122641

Just ordered, partly because I need definitions of #humanism
to reclaim humanity & reality in ways compatible with #CriticalRealism; partly because I need historical & intellectual solace - words, arguments, guidance, visions on how to be in #Academia

#SocialJustice

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/humanism-and-democratic-criticism/9780231122641

"A rational case for a critical realist theory of academic writing" has today been accepted for publication in the Journal of #CriticalRealism

Basically, #AcademicWriting
must be emancipatory, educative, committed to truth.

Hoaxes, #IELTS, #GAI
don't meet the criteria.

#AcWri
#ExplanatoryCritique

"one must assume not only that there is a way of determining [...], what a better world might look like, but also that there is a way for this ‘concrete utopian’ vision to become shared [...]"

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14767430.2019.1638133

#normativity #SocialJustice #MoralRealism #Democracy

#CriticalRealism

[furiously writing 'contractions' instead of 'contradictions' - someone somewhere is trying to tell me something] ✍🏽✍🏽✍🏽

#AcWri #CriticalRealism

How might we flourish in this crisis of modernity?

"While promoting a more loving world is a compelling reason to write a book, it is not why Love and the Market emerged."

#Love #CriticalRealism #AcWri (and 'bad' writing) #Witches #Capitalism #Marxism

https://criticalrealismnetwork.org/2024/10/10/can-a-critical-realist-conception-of-love-help-us-to-flourish-through-the-crises-of-modernity/

Currently reading #AllAboutLove by #bellhooks

Linking it to #AcWri and #CriticalRealism

I'm reading moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre ('a short history of ethics' & 'after virtue').

I'm beginning to grasp why there are many references to him in #CriticalRealism.

He seems to be more of an aristotelian than platonist, so far, but I've got a fair amount to read before I can be sure.

I🧡Laurel Richardson's approach to academic writing generally and this, specifically, because of the focus on writer agency, choice, & the complexities of referring to the 'world' (or REALITY).

#AcWri
#AcademicLiteracies
#ResearchWriting
#AcademicChatter
#PhD
#ArtificialIntelligence
#CriticalRealism

Following our recent symposium we are inviting short blog posts (750-1500 words) reflecting on the intellectual legacy of Margaret Archer. These will be published on the Critical Realism Network blog. Here are some examples of themes these posts could address:

1. Archer’s Place in Sociological Theory:  the ways in which Archer’s ideas have been received, challenged, and transformed within the discipline. 
2. Archer’s Work within the Larger Dialogues of Critical Realism: the ways in which Archer’s ideas have contributed to and challenged the critical realist tradition. 
3. The Global Reception of Archer’s Work: the ways in which Archer’s ideas have been received, interpreted and adapted in different places. We want to explore both Archer’s role in the internationalization of British sociology, as well as the reception of her work in different countries of the Global North and Global South.
4. Archer’s Work Beyond Critical Realism: the ways in which Archer’s work has been influenced by and has influenced traditions, debates and issues beyond critical realism, such as pragmatism, moral philosophy and the philosophy of science.

We welcome submissions from scholars at all stages of their careers, including graduate students and early-career researchers. We also encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and contributions from scholars working in related fields, such as philosophy, anthropology, and political science.

If you’re interested in submitting a post, please contact Mark Carrigan with your idea initially.

https://markcarrigan.net/2024/08/08/%f0%9f%93%8dcall-for-blog-posts-the-legacy-of-margaret-archer/

#criticalRealism #margaretArcher #MorphogeneticApproach #socialMorphogenesis #socialRealism

What do you understand by the verbs 'construe' & 'construct'?

Which would you use & why to describe the way language (or we/#AI) refers to/represents reality?
#CriticalRealism

#Hermeneutics

#CriticalDiscourseAnalysis

#Contructionism

#CriticalTheory

#PostStructuralism

#Deconstruction

#Discourse

#LLM

August 3rd, 10am-5pm at the University of Warwick

Margaret Archer’s work has had a profound impact on social theory, challenging and reshaping our understanding of agency, structure, culture and their interplay in producing social change. Her contributions to the discipline have been wide-ranging, from critical interventions in conceptual debates to discussions about the nature of our times. Archer’s engagements with other thinkers, both within and outside the critical realist tradition, have shaped contemporary sociological debates.

Karim Knio – The Immanent Causality Morphogenetic Approach (TBC)

Juan David Parra – Archer’s Morphogenesis and the Political Economy of Education Systems

Krzysztof Wielecki – The presence of Margaret Scotford Archer in Polish sociology

Lakshman Wimalasena – Reflexivity in Practice: Advancing the Working Experience through a Reflexive [Co-Design] Intervention

Richard Remelie – Measuring reflexivity

Ka Lok Yip – Archerian Realism and Phenomenology: Friends or Foes?

Anzhela Popyk – Structure and Agency: Transnational and School Transitions of Ukrainian Forced Migrant Adolescents in Poland

Catherine Hastings – Developing critical realist empirical research using Archer’s explanatory framework

https://markcarrigan.net/2024/07/18/%f0%9f%93%8djoin-us-on-august-3rd-to-celebrate-the-intellectual-legacy-of-margaret-archer/

#criticalRealism #margaretArcher #MorphogeneticApproach #socialRealism

"[...] if our need for fossil fuels is an addiction, the addicts are being told to stop while the dealers are getting government support!" 🔥
(Andrew Sayer, p. 334)

#WhyWeCantAffordTheRich - a book on #SocioEconomics that keeps on giving

#ClimateEmergency
#CostOfGreedCrisis

#CriticalRealism

Thank you:

- Reviewer 2: "an important contribution to critical realism, critical realist research, & academic writing"

- Reviewer 1: "thank you for allowing me the opportunity to read & learn from your text"

- Editors, for inviting me to review & re-submit

#CriticalRealism #AcWri #AcademicPublishing

Sharing 2 talks I'll be giving in the coming months because they both excite me & terrify me.

I'd welcome informed critical & constructive reactions to both abstracts.

#IACR2024
#METM24

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/events/iacr-2024

https://www.metmeetings.org/en/keynote-speakers:1606

#CriticalRealism #AcWri #WhatMakesWritingAcademic #GAI