Category: Logics of Critical Explanation

practices, regimes, and logics

Structure of Chapter 4 Ontology

  1. Social and Political practices, Regime
  2. Ontical/Ontological distinction
  3. Radical contingency opposed to empirical contingency
  4. 4 dimensions of socio-political reality
  5. Dislocation: ideological-ethical axis
  6. Public contestation: political-social axis
  7. Political and Social
  8. Radical political demand, Hegemonic political demand
  9. Reactivation
  10. Ideology and ethics
  11. Practices and regimes revisited
  12. Subjectivity

Three-fold typology of logics
Social, Political, Fantasmatic logics which when articulated together constitute the basic explanatory schema of our poststructuralist approach to critical explanation.  This complex of logics provides us with the theoretical resources to characterize practices and regimes, to account for their dialectical relationship, and to explan how and why they change or resist change. 106

Social logics comprise the substantive grammar or rules of a practice or regime, which enable us to distil their purpose, form and content.  Moreover in characterizing a regime, we also describe the context of the practices under study, since a regime is always a regime of practices 106

A regime is just another term denoting the particular context of a practice or set of practices. It denotes the broader context that structures social practices, as well as the new social structure that emerges out of hegemonic political practices.  However, the term regime has for us the advantage of denoting something that is more individual than context, and this is because it already flags the fact that some work has already taken place in characterizing that context in a particular way.  In other words, this characterization process implies that the analyst adopts an active role in constructing the context as a particular regime. (125-6)

In short, the regime/practice complex is primarily a heuristic device that enables us to conduct concrete analysis (126).

Post-positivism

For GH the context of discovery and context of justification is blurred

GH focus on the centrality of self-interpretations in the social world, context, and the relevance of the ontological presuppostions that are brought to bear when the self-interpretations of the actors and the data itself needs to be interpreted.

Of course, how far we go in deferring to the self-interpretations of the actors in generating or accepting a proto-explanation will be a function of the specific ontology (e.g. hermeneutical, critical realist, poststructuralist) underpinning one’s approach. What is essential here is that the minimal hermeneutical insight be taken seriously, in the sense that our explanations ought to be properly contextualized in relation to the self-interpretations of the subjects themselves. (37).

Critical Realists

The critical realist intervention is helpful because it goes some way towards suggesting why retroductive reasoning is central to how we should think about social science explanation. Nevertheless, there are two qualifications we need to make. First … the critical realist position … restricts the scope of contingency to the multiple interactive possibilities among the plurality of generative mechanisms, which in turn points to a residual positivism. In our account, however, contingency ‘goes all the way down‘ so to speak. It is not just the complexity of the interactions between various mechanisms that concerns us, but the intrinsic contingency of the mechanistic structures themselves. Second … (Bhaskar’s argument moving from positivism to post-positivism is basically confused) 33.

Bhaskar

Bhaskar’s ontology GH argue focuses on the kinds of things in the world, the ‘furniture’ if you will, which means Bhaskar focuses on the “contingent interaction of fully constituted causal mechanisms” whereas GH emphasize, after Heidegger, the being of these beings

In Bhaskar’s account of structure and agency, he clearly privileges the role of structures as a set of constraints on human action, which define for them the potential range of outcomes and strategies. But there is a danger of paying short shrift to the necessary and complex connection between the empirical and ontological levels of analysis, that is, the realm of lived experience and action, on the one hand, and the underlying structures and modes of being, on the other hand, that make the former possible (30).

The point of the book

… the whole point of the book is to develop an ontological stance and a grammar of concepts, together with a particular research ethos, which makes it possible to construct and furnish answers to empirical problems that can withstand charges of methodological arbitrariness, historical particularism, and idealism (7).

Working within the field of postructuralism, our central aim in this regard is to construct an explanatory logic, together with the grammar of concepts and assumptions that serve as its conditions of possibility, and to articulate a typology of basic logics – social, political and fantasmatic – which can serve to characterize, explain and criticize social phenomena (8).

Method of critical logics

Several consequences follow from our account of logics:

1) Methodologically we argue that the development of an explanation must start with intentions and self-interpretations.  It is absolutely crucial to pass through subjects’ self-interpretations, not only as part of the process of problematizaton, but also to arrive at an understanding of the character of social  logics, as well as political and fantasmatic logics. In conceptual terms, logics are aligned with self-interpretations against causal mechanisms, because it is through self-interpretations and thick descriptions that the ontic is connected to the ontological, and social logics connected with the political and fantasmatic logics … Contextualized self-interpretations are necessary but not sufficient components of a social science explanation.  Showing why and how this is possible allows us to carve out a space beyond the domains of causal laws and mechanisms on the one hand, and self-interpretations and thick descriptions on the other. (161)

… [T]he process of social science explanation ought to be understood in terms of articulation rather than subsumption. It is evident from our account that any fully-fledged explanans contains a plurality of different kinds of logics and concepts, which have to be linked together to critically explain.  This raises a question about the conditions under which it is possible to bring together these heterogeneous elements into an explanation without subsuming them under higher-order laws or abstractions and without falling into a pure descriptivism … [W]e should understand critical explanation as part of an articulatory practice, by which we mean ‘any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice’ (cited in LM 1985: 105) (162).

2) This is not voluntarism:

Siding with hermeneutics against naturalism we argue that contextuallized self-interpretations are an essential and ineluctable aspect of any critical explanation. But now siding with naturalism, we argue that critical explanations cannot be reduced to contextualized self-interpretations, because we bring to each particular object of study a set of concepts and logics that necessarily transcends the particularity of context.

[D]iscursive practices exhibit varying degrees of sedimentation, ranging from regimes and institutions to social habits.  While the social logics structuring them are literally buoyed up by subjects — they do not exist except through the activity of subjects — they are not necessarily cognitively accessible to subjects, at least not immediately and without some form of intervention.  This means that logics can have significant explanatory and critical leverage independently of the consciously held self-interpretations of agents … (162).

While in our view logics are subject-dependent, in the sense that our explanations require a passage through a subject’s contextualized self-interpretation (the hermeneutical constraint), they also require something that transcends them (15).

bhaskar’s ontology

For GH, Bhaskar’s ontology focuses on the stuff, the furniture of the world’ in a manner of speaking, which doesn’t adequately investigate the ‘being of beings’, or how this stuff emerges within a relational, contingent historical context.

We follow Heidegger here by focusing on the historicity and contingency of beings — and not just on the contingent interaction of fully constituted causal mechanisms … against Bhaskar we … cannot sever beings from the relational contexts in which they appear (160).

(I)n Bhaskar’s account there is a short-circuiting of the necessary and complex relationship between the ontical and ontological levels of analysis.  Social structures (or ‘society’) … are ultimately privileged … what Bhaskar calls ‘intransitive objects’: “things [that] exist independently of our descriptions’.  In his account of structure and agency, he thus privileges the role of structures … what this does not fully take on board, as Laclau has pointed out, is the transitive nature of the transitive-intransitive distinction (161).

Fantasmatic Logics

Consider first the relationship between fantasmatic logics and social practices.  Though social practices are punctuated by the mishaps, tragedies and contingencies of everyday life, social relations are expereinced and understood in this mode of activity as an accepted way of life.  The role of fantasy in this context is not to set up an illusion that provides a subject with a false picture of the world, but to ensure that the radical contingency of social reality — and the political dimension of a practice more specifically — remains in the background … (T)he role of fantasy is to actively contain or suppress the political dimension of a practice (145).

The operation of fantasmatic logics can thus reinforce the social dimension of practices by covering over the fundamental lack in reality and keeping at bay what we have labelled ‘the real’ (146).

In sum, whether in the context of social practices or political practices, fantasy operates so as to conceal or close off the radical contingency of social relations.  It does this through a fantasmatic narrative or logic that promises a fullness-to-come once a named or implied obstacle is overcome — the beatific dimension of fantasy – or which foretells disaster if the obstacle proves insurmountable, which might be termed the horrific dimension of fantasy (147).

Images of omnipotence or of total control –> beatific dimension of fantasy
Images of impotence or victimhood –> horrific dimension of fantasy

Logic of Equivalence, Logic of Difference

The logic of equivalence involves the simplification of signifying space, the logic of difference involves its expansion and complexification (citing LM 144).

The political logics of equivalence and difference (furnish) us with a conceptual grammar with which to account for the dynamicsof social change.  They help show how social practices and regimes are contested, transformed, and instituted, thereby extending our grammar beyond social logics (145).

Logic of Equivalence (LOE) and Logic of Difference (LOD)

–  LOE (associative), captures the substitutive aspect of the relation by making reference to an ‘us-them’ axis: two or more elements can be substituted for each other with reference to a common negation or threat.  They are equivalent not insofar as they share a positive property (though empirically they may share something in common), but, crucially, insofar as they have a common enemy … Entails the construction and privileging of antagonistic relations, which means that the dimension of difference on each side of the frontier is weakened, whether differences are understood as a function of demands or identities.  For instance, a national liberation struggle against an occupying colonial power will typically attempt to cancel out the particular differences of class, ethnicity, region, or religion in the name of a more universal nationalism that can serve as a common reference point for all the oppressed; indeed, its identity may be virtually exhausted in its opposition to the oppressive regime.  By contrast the LOD draws on other discourses in an attempt to break down these chains of equivalence.  The age-old practice of ‘divide-and-rule’, for instance in which an occupying power seeks to separate ethnic or national groups into particular communities or indirect systems of rule, is invariably designed to prevent the articulation of demands and identities into a generalized challenge to the dominant regime (145).

– LOD (syntagmatic), captures the combinatory or contiguous aspect of the relation, which accounts not simply for differences in identity among elements, but also for keeping elements distinct, separate, and autonomous.  Both dimensions are always present in the sense that each presupposes the other.

LOE and LOD thus emphasize the dynamic process by which political frontiers are constructed, stabilized, strengthened , or weakened.  They elucidate the way one or another dimension acquires greater or lesser significance, even while each presupposes the other. (citing Laclau 2005, 79) (144).

In sum, the political logics of equivalence and difference comprise a descriptive framing device which is derived from a particular understanding of discourse and the importance accorded to processes of signification.  They enhance our approach to social science explanation by furnishing us with a conceptual grammar with which to account for the dynamics of social change.  They help show how social practices and regimes are contested, transformed, and instituted, thereby extending our grammar beyond social logics (145).

Thatcher Regime

LOE was mobilized to shift terrain away from the post-war consensus

range of diverse demands were linked together into a project that publicly contested the failing Keynesian welfare state project.

linked together demands for

  • free economy
  • strong state
  • traditional morality

This involved a form of populist politics successfully dividing existing ‘one nation’ welfare state consensus into two camps, those in favour of the newly proposed project versus those associated with the Keynesian post-war consensus (173).

Following groups made equivalent and then targeted by this new project:

  • public sector workers, trade unions, teachers, doctors, lawyers, immigrants and gays

Installing the Audit Regime in UK universities

‘Modernizers’ have constructed a series of antagonistic equivalences in order to establish political frontiers that make possible the installation of the new practices.  Thus we have seen the ideological construction of ‘surplus’ versus ‘deficit’ departments, ‘research active’ versus ‘research inactive’ members of staff, ‘good recruiters’ versus ‘bad recruiters’ traditional’ versus ‘innovative’ modes of service provision, and so forth (176).

On the other hand, and at the same time, university managers and administrators have — by means of various logics of difference — sought to manage change by addressing demands and by changing the structures of governance, so as to prevent or displace public contestation.

Practices and Regimes

A very simple paradigm for our objects of investigation in general, namely, the transformation and/or stabilization of regimes and practices.

Conditions of possibility and impossibility of regimes and practices demands setting out 4 ontological dimensions of social reality:  SOCIAL, POLITICAL, IDEOLOGICAL and ETHICAL dimensions. 104

103 The simple paradigm: the transformation and/or stabilization of regimes and practices

A dislocatory experience, major economic depression, closing factories, spiralling inflation, rise in crime and social disorder etc. Social actors can interpret and respond in a variety of ways: passive resignation, despair and alienation, mounting anger leading to new grievances which can be articulated as claims and demands with latter may even lead to construction of new identities and subjectivities “Indeed there may emerge a radical political subjectivity and ideology that seeks to transform social relations along fundamentally different lines.  Equally, of course, these developments may provoke renewed efforts by power holders and political elites to meet or deflect claims and demands, thus channelling and reshaping the grievances into the existing institutions and structures of power” (104).

A dislocatory experience such as a an economic depression may thus reveal the contingency of taken-for-granted social practices, highlighting the fact that the existing system represents only one way of organizing social relations amongst others.

[T]he way the dislocation is constructed and enacted does not follow from the simple fact of dislocation. It may be gentrified (or absorbed) by an existing social practice or regime, or it may provoke a political practice (112).

[D]islocation can be understood as a moment when the subject’s mode of being is experienced as disrupted.  In this sense, then, we could say that dislocations are those occasions when a subject is called upon to confront the contingency of social relations more directly than at other times (110).

Social Practices:

ongoing, routinized forms of human and societal reproduction, repetitive activities that do not typically entail a strong notion of self-conscious reflexivity — what we might term a series of sedimented practices — which have been inscribed on our bodies and ingrained in our human dispositions – making breakfast, taking children to school, drving to work

Every social practice is also articulatory, that is all social practices comprise temporal and iterative activities, each iteration is slightly different each time requiring minor modifications and adjustments …

Dislocation can provoke political practices

Political Practices:

struggles that seek to challenge and transform the existing norms, institutions and practices — perhaps even the regime itself in the name of an ideal or principle.  Political practices bring about a transformative effect on existing social practices, or entire regime of practices, “resulting in the institution and sedimentation of a new regime and the social practices that comprise it” (105).

Regimes: have a structuring function in the sense that they order a system of social practices, thus helping us to characterize the latter.  A regime is always a regime of practices. The Thatcher regime, for example, comprises a heterogeneous set of practices linked to welfare, business, the passage of legislation

Regime
(Order, system, discursive formation)

structuration   hegemony

Social practices  <—————————-> Political practices

Retroduction

Retroduction is:

– distinct form of reasoning pertaining to the context of discovery in the natural sciences

Given certain facts or anomalies (conclusions) retroductive reasoning describes the way plausible hypothesis are produced (our search for premises).

Why do G&H like this? IT DESIGNATES A BACKWARD-LOOKING MODAL FORM OF INFERENCE WITH WHICH MANY SOCIAL SCIENTISTS ARE FAMILIAR. For example, take the resounding hegemonic success of Thatcherism as the given anomaly, and then to proceed backwards to furnish an account of how and why this was so 24.

– opposed to predominance of induction and deduction

– posits hypotheses designed “to render recalcitrant phenomena more intelligible.”

– used by G&H can undermine postivism’s absolute separation between contexts of discovery and justification 12

– about studying facts and devising a theory to explain them 24

Social sciences are inherently open systems, one cannot do closed experimental set-ups as in natural sciences. This means that the socical sciences are not oriented towards explanations qualified by a battery of predictive tests successfully completed 29.

3 usages of the term retroduction, a positivist, post-positivist, and poststructuralist

positivist: keeps separate the contexts of discovery and justification, situating retroduction firmly within the former

post-positivist: regard the boundary between the contexts of discovery and justification as porous.  While a positivist understanding of retroduction is compatible with a deductive form of explanation which entails universal subsumption, a post-positivist understanding of retroduction is compatible with a range of explanatory modes (description, general subsumption, articulation) and contents (contextualized self-interpretations, causal mechanisms, and logics) 41.

… retroductive reasoning provides us with a general form or logic of explanation in the social sciences 19

G&H rework the distinction drawn in the positivist images of social science between context of discovery and context of justification.

the ontological shift from the natural to the social world results in our abandoning the positivist understanding of the distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification

context of discovery: original intuitions and practices that produce theories and laws, all those activities that result in the positing of a hypothesis H (either in the form of inductively inferred laws, or in the form of laws that have been derived from axioms), and which therefore contribute to the development of theoretical tools with thich to explan a phenomenon X.

context of justificiation: the demonstration and acceptance of those theories and laws, it draws a boundary around those activities that result in the acceptance of a hypothesis H: theorems, empirical predictions that are deductively inferred, tested and then used to explain X.

A positivist understanding of the context of justification includes a narrow conception of testing and explanation.  In this view, a posited hypothesis is deemed valid if and only if it enables one to deduce falsifiable predictions.  Moreover, a hypothesis is accepted as a valid explanation only if its predictions are confirmed, or at least not falsified.  Thus from the point of view of positivism, it makes sense to distinguish between a hypothesis on the one hand, and a valid explanation on the other hand. It adopts a hard conception of testing, whose aim is to demonstrate the validity of a hypothesis, thus relegating the process of hypothesis production to a secondary role 38.

From a positivist point of view, the relevant audience or tribunal is called upon to adjudicate on test findings, not to dispute historical, ontological, political, and ethical presuppositions that are linked to the formulation of the problem and hypothesis in the first place … positivist social scientists will disagree about whether findings verify or falsify predictions, thus restricting the scope of the retroductive circle to the self-contained context of discovery (and not that of the context of justification), 40.

[Positivists claim that how one comes about coming up with the hypothesis is not important, its the testing, the predictive capability or the justification is what matters most.  RT]

link between: explanation and prediction ??  Let’s be skeptical:

centrality of self-interpretations in the social world, the relevance of context in attributing sense and significance to data against which hypotheses are tested;

contestability of the ontological presuppositions necessarily brought to bear when self-interpretations and data are subjected to interpretation

hypotheses concerning the social world are ‘logically tied’ to the reasons and self-interpretations of agents (the hermeneutical insight).

And the reflexive nature of the objects that are studied in the social sciences implies that our interpretation of the contextual factors become constitutive of the posited hypothesis.

Our interpretations as analysts of the contextualized reasons and self-interpretations carry a large share of the explanatory burden, thereby diminishing the prospect and significance of the deductive form of testing and explanation 36.

Retroductive form of explanation: positing a proto-explanation which insofar as it renders a problematized phenomenon intelligible can be said to account for it. The bulk of our book explored three possible ways of fleshing out the content of a retroductive form of explanation: contextualized self-interpretations, causal mechanisms, and logics (211).