In pursuit of the real: postmodernism and critical realism

Postmodernism is often used as the signifier for the fashionable drift into relativism and unseriousness within Western philosophy. Conference after conference, article after article, book after book have appeared describing, denouncing or celebrating the postmodern condition. Within in this context, critical realism has, by and large, positioned itself against the postmodern turn. This project re-evaluates this stance. Against the critiques which have been levelled at postmodernism I will argue that critical realism is theoretically best placed to mediate the various postmodern positions and concerns by developing a reading of critical realism which places critical realism firmly within the context of postmodernism as an alternate postmodernism. Yet if critical realism can be understood within postmodernism, postmodernism can equally be understood within a more encompassing, more mediated realism. The task then is to find a new language which brings together Apollo and Dionysus, moving towards perspectival realism and a scientific anarchism concerned with the possibility and limitations of representing a complex world characterised by intensity, difference and becoming

Governmentality in a UK local authority

PhD ThesisThe UK public sector has been subject to a succession of economic and market reforms since the early 1980s through the introduction of public choice philosophies and with the adoption of strategic business practices. This study undertakes an ethnographic mode of inquiry to investigate a period of organisational transformation in a UK local authority following the UK coalition government’s emergency budget and subsequent spending review in 2010. The focus is upon project management, an increasingly significant form of organisational knowledge and practice in the empirical context of this study and in regard to the economic management of the UK public sector more generally. Drawing from empirical material gathered over a two year period involving senior managers, freelance consultants and local government workers, the purpose is to examine project management as a technology of power in this context. The thesis draws on work building on Michel Foucault’s later theoretical insights on ‘government’ and ‘governmentality’. Within this theoretical framework project management and its associated rationalities are problematised as those which are intended to facilitate economic government ‘at a distance’. This thesis demonstrates that project management is playing a pivotal role in determining new configurations of ‘freedom’ and accountability in the context at hand. By subtly aligning personal projects with more centralised political ambitions, project management depoliticises strategic reforms by extending the effects of managerialism into new areas. Through exploring the discursive strategies of participants both in conversation and through the enactment of their work, the thesis argues that project management encourages modes of ‘personalised government’ and constitutes both freelance consultants and public servants as upholders of their own demarcated and individualised interests. Nevertheless, at the same time project management creates spaces of discretion from within which practices of resistance emerge. In these instances it provides the means by which local government workers seek to protect themselves and their departments from further budget and staff cuts by becoming ‘empowered’ with devolved managerial and budgetary responsibility. In this sense power is seen to produce, albeit at times ambivalently, new identities and positive experiences while simultaneously constraining other identities and ‘freedoms’ in this context.This thesis advances a ‘Foucauldian’ perspective on project management and seeks to assess the costs involved in a particular technology of power in the context of the UK public sector. It contributes to ‘Foucauldianism’ in organisation and management studies by demonstrating the relevance of studies of governmentality to situated organisational analysis. The study also shows that the perspective of governmentality can provide a platform from which agency and resistance can be adequately theorised from a broadly ‘Foucauldian’ perspective. A contribution is also made to studies of governmentality by going beyond the ‘programmer’s perspective’ in order to address ‘real agents’ of government amidst contested social relations

Ways of seeing: Conflicting rationalities in contested urban space - the N2 Gateway in the context of Langa

Includes bibliographic references.In 2005 the South African Department of Housing announced the launch of the N2 Gateway – a housing ‘megaproject’ to pilot the Breaking New Ground (BNG) housing plan in Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa, the oldest African township in Cape Town. This historically contextualised retroductive case study asks what can be learnt from the paradigmatic N2 Gateway to propose to planning theory why such projects, planned with the aim of improving the quality of life of poor and marginal urban residents of the post-apartheid city, so often fail to realise their planned improvements and result in conflict and unintended consequences. A conceptual framework provides the theoretical basis for examining how planning and implementation of the N2 Gateway exposes the underlying rationalities shaping relations amongst and between organs of state and key non-state development actors. Although the BNG policy made provision for in situ upgrading of informal settlements, in practice the state declared war on shacks and through the N2 Gateway set out to eradicate Joe Slovo and replace it with a mix of social and subsidy housing. The case provides the basis for analysis of the clash of rationalities amongst state actors who, together with their intermediaries, sought to exercise their ‘wills to govern and improve’ on the basis of simplifications of perceived problems and their solutions. These were countered by competing ‘wills to survive and thrive’ amongst groupings of Langa residents, which in Joe Slovo were closely bound to the logics of informality. Methodologically the study draws on research methods which embrace the ‘visual turn’, utilising satellite images and photographic compilations as narrative triggers for storytelling by residents, officials and civil society actors. The study draws on more than sixty image-led interview narratives which surface the multiple iv dimensions of the case, including complex interconnections between rural and urban spaces which shape social and spatial geographies of life in Langa. These expose multifaceted struggles within and between ‘molar structures’ of the state in the implementation of the megaproject, highlighting the switch points and reversals of power in state encounters with the micropolitics of local claims on space, place and belonging. The narratives reveal how diverse and concurrent resistance pathways including ‘quiet encroachment’, street protests, ‘elite capture’ and legal proceedings which went to the Constitutional Court disrupted, diverted and redirected the state’s schemes of improvement. The findings examine how the discourses and practices of the aspirant South African ‘developmental state’ show little understanding of or regard for the deep-rooted contestations and social differentiation within Langa between ‘Cape borners’ and generations of rural migrants known as amagoduka or ‘those who return home’. The conflicting rationalities and deep differences amongst and between state agents and within the broad cast of social actors in Langa extend far beyond the simple binary of state and ‘community’. The narratives highlight the fragmented and opaque nature of the state and the bifurcated Langa socialities stratified by the micropolitics of territory, differentiation and belonging. The case study speaks back to planning theory in order to provide important cautions against homogenisation and simplification at the intersection between the apparatus of biopolitics and governmentality and the strategies of struggle of groupings of the poor and not so poor to survive and thrive. It foregrounds a contingent yet historically embedded politics of encounter which eschews homogenising notions of community and a rules-governed communicative rationality in favour of more situated sense-making through agonistic conceptions of planning and development rooted in ‘the geography of what happens’

Tragedy of Confusion: The Political Economy of Truth in the modern history of Iran (A novel framework for the analysis of the enigma of socio-economic underdevelopment in the modern history of Iran)

This study entails a theoretical reading of the Iranian modern history and follows an interdisciplinary agenda at the intersection of philosophy, economics, and politics and intends to offer a novel framework for the analysis of socio-economic underdevelopment in Iran in the modern era. A brief review of Iranian modern history from the constitutional revolution, to the oil nationalization movement, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the recent Reformist and Green movements demonstrates that Iranian people travelled full circle. This historical experience of socio-economic underdevelopment revolving around the bitter question of “why are we backward?” and its manifestation in perpetual socio-political instability and violence is the subject matter of this study. Foucault’s conceived relation between the production of truth and production of wealth captures the essence of hypothesis offered in this study. Michel Foucault (1980: 93-4) maintains that “In the last analysis, we must produce truth as we must produce wealth, indeed we must produce truth in order to produce wealth in the first place”. Based on a hybrid methodology combining hermeneutics of understanding and hermeneutics of suspicion, this study proposes that the failure to produce wealth has had particular roots in the failure in the production of truth. At the heart of the proposed theoretical model is the following formula: The Iranian dasein’s confused preference structure culminates in the formation of unstable coalitions which in turn leads to institutional failure, creating a chaotic social order and a turbulent history as experienced by the Iranian nation in the modern era. The following set of interrelated propositions elaborate further on the core formula of the model: Each and every Iranian person and her subjectivity and preference structure is the site of three distinct warring regimes of truth and identity choice sets (identity markers) related to the ancient Persian empire (Persianism), Islam, and modernity. These three historical a priori and regimes of truth act as conditions of possibility for social interactions, and are unities in multiplicities. They, in their perpetual state of tension and conflict, constitute the mutually exclusive, contradictory, and confused dimensions of the prism of the Iranian dasein. The confused preference structure prevents Iranian people from organizing themselves in stable coalitions required for collective action to achieve the desired socio-economic change. The complex interplay between the state of inbetweenness and the state of belatedness makes it impossible to form stable coalitions in any areas of life, work, and language to achieve the desired social transformations, turning Iran into a country of unstable coalitions and alliances in macro, meso and micro levels. This in turn leads to failure in the construction of stable institutions (a social order based on rule of law or any other stable institutional structure becomes impossible) due to perpetual tension between alternative regimes of truth manifested in warring discursive formations, relations of power, and techniques of subjectification and their associated economies of affectivity. This in turn culminates in relations of power in all micro, meso, and macro levels to become discretionary, atomic, and unpredictable, producing perpetual tensions and social violence in almost all sites of social interactions, and generating small and large social earthquakes (crises, movements, and revolutions) as experienced by the Iranian people in their modern history. As such, the society oscillates between the chaotic states of socio-political anarchy emanating from irreconcilable differences between and within social assemblages and their affiliated hybrid forms of regimes of truth in the springs of freedom and repressive states of order in the winters of discontent. Each time, after the experience of chaos, the order is restored based on the emergence of a final arbiter (Iranian leviathan) as the evolved coping strategy for achieving conflict resolution. This highly volatile truth cycle produces the experience of socio-economic backwardness. The explanatory power of the theoretical framework offered in the study exploring the relation between the production of truth, trust and wealth is tested on three strong events of Iranian modern history: the Constitutional Revolution, the Oil-Nationalization Movement and the Islamic Revolution. The significant policy implications of the model are explored

Exploring justice in professional mediation : a systemic intervention in Colombia

This thesis explores how an action research approach based on a critical systemic perspective can benefit the practice of mediators in dealing with issues of justice during mediation processes. First, methodological reflections on critical systems thinking are presented, and a new development is proposed based on the ethics of Levinas. Also, a new synergy of methods and tools is developed. This brings together boundary critique, action science, statistics, system dynamics, alternative dispute resolution games, and interviewing. A description is then provided of how the methodology was used at a Colombian mediation centre. Here, the staff members and the author began the transformation of their professional mediation practice by reflecting on alternative perspectives on how they currently deal, and might deal in the future, with issues of justice. A critique was developed of several basic assumptions that are deeply ingrained in the mediation literature of the English speaking countries of the western world - in particular, that disputants are primarily concerned with their own private interests, and that mediation should therefore be considered successful if these interests are satisfied. In the mediation centre studied, most disputants prioritised justice principles over personal gain. Additionally, a new way of organising the interpretations of mediation presented in the literature is developed that can help mediation practitioners to be more conscious of the assumptions informing their professional practice. Finally, drawing upon both a literature review and the action research results, reflections are provided on the relevance of the notion of justice to mediation practice

The utility of analogy in systems sciences

The structure of the thesis reflects the three main areas of investigation. The legitimacy of analogy as a systems concept, the derivation of a model of analogy for systems thinkers and the description of a framework for practice. In the first section we are concerned with establishing an appreciation and understanding of the potential utility in the concept of analogy for systems thinkers. Having briefly surveyed the history of analogy in systems thinking and acknowledging the CUITent methodological interest in metaphor we note that our interest in analogy has been a target for our critics and led to a loss of credibility. The thesis calls for a re-evaluation of this situation and we hence describe a system thinker's view of science as the grounds on which the utility of analogy is normally dismissed. The first three chapters show that the basis on which science attacks analogy as invalid and inappropriate is itself contentious and that identified 'weaknesses' in the scientific framework can become strengths in the re-conceptualisation of a model of analogy. We consider and distinguish the dynamic relationships between analogy, model and metaphor. In the second section having established the potential value of analogy as a concept, the thesis develops an explanation of how a model of analogy for systems thinkers can be conceptualised. In the development of the model we will consider particular implications of three types of analogy, 'positive', 'negative' and 'neutral' analogy and discuss the suggestion that they reveal possibilities for exploring different and contrasting rationalities; these issues will be discussed looking at the relationship between analogy and rationality and in this context the validity of the argument from analogy. In the final section the thesis asserts that that systems thinking should not shy away from explicit use of analogy and shows how can use the framework of analogy to reconceptualise systems concepts

Broadcasting regulation and the public-private dichotomy

This thesis is a theoretical and methodological engagement with the extent to which the public-private dichotomy is an appropriate and effective framework within which to critically approach the history of broadcasting regulation in the UK. The critical literature on the subject tends to present a narrative of decline, from an ethos of public service and citizenship, which is presumed to have enabled the public sphere, to a neoliberal faith in market logic and consumer choice, which is accused of undermining it. Much of this discussion is theoretically weakened, however, by a lack of engagement with the relevant literatures, and by the reduction to unitary oppositions between commonsensical terms of what are actually protean distinctions between contentious concepts. Taking this claim as its starting point, the thesis will attempt to clarify the ambiguity of the key concepts of debate on broadcasting regulation, recognising the need for the complexification of distinctions rather than their simplification or abandonment

A critical study of communicative rationality in Habermas's public sphere

This interdisciplinary research examines the public sphere as a communicatively-constructed realm and challenges Habermas’s model of public sphere communication based on the “public use of reason”/communicative rationality. It questions the model’s counterfactual normativity and its emancipatory potential in revisiting core concepts such as reason, power and consensus, while also considering social complexity, the media and counterpublics. This research is theoretical but informed by the quest for empirical relevance. Using critical hermeneutic methods, the thesis critically reconstructs Habermas’s theories of the public sphere and of communicative rationality, as these were developed and revised throughout his works, in order to lay the foundations for second- and third-order critique. The main critics considered in revisiting Habermas’s public sphere model are: Niklas Luhmann (functionalism and social systems), Michel Foucault (historical materialism, theory of power and rejection of universal norms), Nancy Fraser and Seyla Benhabib (critical feminism, identity politics), Thomas McCarthy (critique of rationalism and normativity), James Bohman (social complexity) and Colin Grant (post-systemic communication studies). Drawing on these, the thesis proposes a renewed public sphere model consisting of systems and emergent publics, while rethinking communicative reason and power in conditions of overcomplexity (Bohman). Lastly, it redefines normativity in an empirically plausible light, connected to emergent communication practices

THE ROLE OF JUDICIAL TRAINING AND PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL IN THE ORGANIZATIONAL REFORM OF JUDICIARIES: INSIGHTS FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF CHILE AND ENGLAND AND WALES

PhDThis thesis addresses the following question: What is the role of judicial training (JT) and performance appraisal (PA) in the organizational reform of judiciaries? The research studies the effects of various JT and PA mechanisms upon models of judicial organization. In light of the great diversity of judicial systems and variable configurations of JT and PA, the research strategy is twofold: First, the study focuses on the judiciaries of Chile and England and Wales being representatives of contrasting judicial organizational traditions. Second, I use typologies of judicial organization to focus on the main organizational aspects of judiciaries only, reducing the complexity of multidimensional analysis. After critically reviewing existing typologies of judicial organization, the thesis argues that these analytical constructs cannot fully explain contemporary changes in judiciaries, owing to their one-sided focus upon authority as a central organizational dimension. Rather, the thesis highlights the importance of the values and beliefs implicit in JT and PA arrangements in the normative evolution of the two judiciaries. The research employs a grounded theory methodology to uncover the organizational variables that underpin JT and PA arrangements in the two contexts, using them to develop a new typology, and to explain the role of these mechanisms in the organization of judiciaries. The empirical data shows that JT and PA bear normative content that can influence the reform of judiciaries. The functioning of these mechanisms also expresses different conceptions of authority, organizational cultures, and levels and types of formalization. The thesis proposes an organizational typology to analyse the role of JT and PA in changes to judicial organization. The results help to: 1) explain reforms in judicial organizational models; 2) understand how JT and PA contribute to such processes of change, and 3) highlight the relevance of the type of formalization for the normative analysis of the resulting organizational models

Governing citizens: The government of citizenship, crime and migration in the Netherlands

Governing Citizens is about the striking changes in the government of migration, crime and citizenship in the Netherlands over the past thirty years. The dissertation is based on a reconstruction of Foucault’s governmentality lectures. Citizenship is studied from a governmentality perspective as a technique that functions in relation to other techniques of sovereignty, discipline and government. Hence, it is related to mushrooming detention facilities, parenting courses, assimilation, selective incapacitation, responsibilization and other techniques invented to govern contemporary predicaments of control. The book presents new concepts to understand the present government of citizens such as neoliberal communitarianism, the migration control predicament, and the distinction between facilitative responsibilization and repressive responsibilization. It raises one question in the end: do we want to govern (non-)citizens the way we do