A critical realist (re-)envisaging of emancipatory research, science and practice

In September 2021, Rhodes University’s Environmental Learning Research Centre, together with WITS’s Centre for Researching Education and Labour (REAL), hosted The 24^th annual International Association of Critical Realism conference online. 110 researchers from 30 countries, representing 6 continents participated in the main conference and 57 researchers participated in the pre-conference workshop. Presentations showed the vast application of critical realism in fields such as development and tourism studies, environmental and sustainability sciences, economics, education, philosophy, psychology and sociology. They also showed how critical realism is being used in enriching research methodology as well as trans-disciplinary studies.

When introducing the main theme at the conference: (Re-)envisaging emancipatory research, science and practice, Heila Lotz-Sisitka from Rhodes University highlighted our hopes from this wide community for defensible explanations of society, ‘reconstructive social theory and regenerative cultures’, and conceptualization of ‘radical emancipatory praxis in non-anthropocentric ways while acknowledging the human-ness in our constellational relationality’. She highlighted the TINA compromises, contradictions and inequalities that are the sign of our times; and pointed out the role of critical realism in critiquing these, determining both necessary and possible transformative praxis, and in guiding reflexive engagement with our own humanity as ‘species’ being.

The papers presented in this edition of the journal, all emerging from this conference, do not disappoint in achieving the goals we had set for the week. In a review of more than 50 papers using critical realism to research African contexts, Lotz-Sisitka highlights the important role that critical realism has in offering generative research that moves beyond critique to ‘agentive, ethics-led, non-anthropocentric, and freedom-seeking’ insights into the geo-historical inequalities, exploitations and extractivisms of the African Anthropocene (2022, this issue). Most of the papers reviewed are applied papers that have used the complex philosophy of critical realism as a lens into fields such as health, education, management, sociology, environmental science, and information studies. The review highlights how different aspects of critical realism are being used in research in African contexts with a dominance of explanatory critique identifying mechanisms that feed persistent historical oppressions in Africa. These papers draw on Archer’s social realist morphogenetic framework and the insights this perspective offers for structure-agency relations; as well as Bhaskar’s stratified and laminated ontologies and attendant emphasis on emergence in open systems. Lotz-Sisitka further notes a growing number of research projects drawing on dialectical critical realism and the insights it offers for ‘change, emergence and transformation’, thus moving the project of critical realism from ‘agency possibilities’ to ‘agency formation’ (2022, this issue). She specifically notes research which pairs Bhaskar’s dialectic with Engeström’s expansive learning as a powerful duo in educational research; and research which illustrates how viewing indigenous knowledge in relation to western science offers ‘enriched and more robust transitive perspective on the intransitive’ (Lotz-Sisitka 2022, this issue). Thirdly, she discusses a small number of projects drawing on meta-Reality in a shift towards cognitive and hermeneutic justice through more emphasis, for example, on an ethics of care and revindication of ‘indigenous knowledges and spirituality as valid forms of knowing’ (Lotz-Sisitka 2022, this issue).

Lotz-Sisitka ends her paper by highlighting the conversations which have been held in research in African contexts between dialectical critical realist philosophy and Africana Critical Theory, noting how dialectics can help identify ‘pulses of freedom’ in contexts where exclusionary epistemologies constrain human well-being, human-relations and their relations with the planetary systems on which they depend.

Ismael Al-Amoudi (2022, this issue) and Sioux McKenna (2022, this issue) also use critical realism to critique modern-day oppressions and injustices. Their focus is on oppressions within neo-liberal society. McKenna describes how higher education in the grip of neo-liberalism emphasizes private over public good, knowledge as commodity over knowledge for common good, and value as monetarization and metrification versus value to people and planet. She provides an insightful analysis of how proctoring in university examination systems has turned universities into consumers of proctoring software, invites practices of maximum profit for minimum input, and creates a fallacy of fairness which invades privacy and excludes some sectors of society in a reproduction of the status quo.

McKenna employs a critical realist analysis of enabling and constraining factors, and an understanding that we have agency to counteract oppressive mechanisms and unshackle us from emancipatory powers and tendencies in society. Instead of suggesting a simple adaptation of the practice of proctoring she asks: ‘what characteristics might assessment have if the university was a place of collegiality, creativity, kindness and knowledge creation for the common good’ (McKenna 2022, this issue)? This question elegantly shows how easy it is to challenge TINA compromises such as the one that suggests that proctoring processes were (and seem to have remained) a ‘necessary evil’ brought on by a technical response to the challenges of formal summative assessment strategies during the COVID pandemic.

Also addressing the challenges of neo-liberalism, Ismael Al-Amoudi explores dehumanization in post-human society focusing on three cases of human enhancements. In the first, he employs Bhaskar’s (1993) social cube to describe multiple alienations (alienation from nature, alienation from the embodied self and alienation from others and society) from the perspective of different mechanisms. One mechanism is where human flourishing is compromised in neo-liberal society by human enhancements directed at increasing individual productivity and systems integration to help individuals dominate in an increasingly competitive environment. That is, instead of enhancing human capacity for conviviality, compassion and moral courage. In a second case, Al-Amoudi discusses human enhancements from the perspective of ‘the risk of widening and entrenching relations of subalternity between more and less enhanced human beings’ (Al-Amoudi 2022, this issue). He describes how both intentions and reasons as well as social and organizational arrangements affect and can widen gaps between human beings but can also change for the better through fostering virtues of humility, just solidarity and misericordia. In a third case, illustrating the problem with deep machine learning, Al-Amoudi argues that algorithms problematically rely on ‘training practices that obfuscate normative choices, because they eliminate practical wisdom and because critique and discussion are not possible between humans and machines’ (Al-Amoudi 2022, this issue).

After presenting these three mechanisms Al-Amoudi reminds us of the complex interplay of different mechanisms as understood from a critical realist perspective and also highlights the importance of not downplaying human agents’ irreducibly personal powers. This paper suggests that in order to respond to the concerns raised in his analysis, we need revindication of relationships with embodied self, nature, others and society over individualistic and overly-competitive concerns; thoughts on why and how we can increase solidarity between variously enhanced beings; and revindication of our authority over algorithmic decisions.

At the conference, many of the presentations showed how critical realism engenders both questions of ‘what is true?’ as well as of ‘what to do?’. Presentations gave insight into how our practices are closely related to our relationships with every order of reality. Additionally, by avoiding both mindless metaphysics and emotionless practices, presentations highlighted opportunities for healing through reconstructive relationships within which loving relationships are a real part. The emancipatory project of critical realism is another one of the dominant themes emerging in the papers presented in this edition of the journal, with concrete utopias featuring strongly as a critical tool in moves towards transformative praxis.

Elder-Vass’s paper in this journal highlights the role of radical politics in steering a concrete utopian path between revolutionism on the one hand ‘with no thought for the potentially devastating consequences of purely negative critique and, on the other hand, marginalist reformism which doesn’t make much difference to the underlying causes of social problems’. He further argues that

Given that there is always a risk that what fills that vacuum could itself be harmful, and maybe even worse than what is being removed, any completed responsible critique must also move beyond the negative moment to the positive moment, which is provided by the examination and proposal of alternatives: concrete utopias. (Elder-Vass 2022, this issue)

His paper focuses on alternative economies in which state forms, co-operatives, the voluntary sector, provisioning within the family, and various gift forms have significant influence despite capitalism’s domination of markets and financial power. He draws on Bhaskar’s vision of concrete utopias - insisting on new ways of being which are realistic (within the domain of possibility) rather than those which are abstracted and nothing more than ‘wishful thinking’ or providing ‘wildly implausible alternatives’ (Elder-Vass 2022, this issue). In other words, concrete utopianism that is realizable and descriptive of actualizable possibilities - given particular constraints.

In three practical applications of the notion of concrete Utopias in gift economies, cooperative technologies and open-source software development, and cryptocurrencies; Elder-Vass explains how we can envisage alternative ways of being that

most help us to flourish (cooperatives and the gift sector, for example), shrink or abolish those that deliver the most significant harms, regulate those that aren’t ideal but still have something useful to contribute, and innovate new utopian forms to experiment with. (Elder-Vass 2022, this issue)

With critical reflection on how the Bitcoin vision has been achieved but has deviated from its original ideologies, Elder-Vass reminds us that responsible critique requires both causal explanation and ethical evaluation. He reminds us that utopian visions still need to be critically evaluated in both practical and ethical terms.

Elder-Vass also reminds us of the dynamic nature of concrete utopias which are an ongoing trialing of new ways of being – iterative steps in the ‘process of practical utopianism’. Thus ‘not utopian visions of whole alternative societies, but practical, workable partial proposals for developing human flourishing’ and processes that are ‘necessarily provisional, experimental, evolving, and uncertain’ (Elder-Vass 2022, this issue).

The paper by Ramsarup, Lotz-Sisitka, and McGrath (2022) in this journal provides a detailed account of vocational education and training (VET) - employing the concepts of emergence and relationalism and position-practice analysis in laminated systems to deepen understandings at meso levels of complex social systems. The paper reports on an extensive three-year research project investigating VET in Uganda and South Africa through four purposefully chosen case study sties in these two countries. The paper is founded on a critique of the limitations of VET practice grounded in labour needs, or human capital needs where assumptions are made about supply and demand in a ‘free market’. The research applied critical realist tools to a social ecosystems model for skills to develop an understanding of VET planning and practice beyond more traditional mechanisms. That is one that was able to include consideration of ecological degradation, gendered relations, persistent poverty, historical exclusion from quality education, and oppressive power relations in African contexts. Through this innovative research approach, the paper found that fragmentation between actors and position-practice systems negatively affected VET pathways in the cases. Further concerns included ‘inadequate policy and praxis to support alternative, more sustainable, responsive and inclusive VET pathways in Africa despite state rhetoric’ as well as the need to take into account the ecological crisis and the scope of informality in VET research in Africa (Ramsarup, Lotz-Sisitka, and McGrath 2022, this issue).

Frédéric Vandenberghe’s paper in this edition describes critical realism as a ‘scientific, social and spiritual movement that wants to change not only our conception of sciences, but also the world, starting with ourselves’. Vandenberghe, like Lotz-Sisitka and Al-Amoudi (in this issue), sees the necessity of using compatible substantive theories to address ethical quandaries in society. For example, he describes a previous paper in which he and others drew on post-colonialism and feminist arguments in conjunction with the

conceptual apparatus of critical realism to theorize patriarchy and colonialism as structures of domination that affect science and knowledge from within. We have relied on critical realism to thematize the causal mechanisms that affect the workings of science and uncover the ideologies that

make them ‘misrepresent’ reality. (Vandenberghe 2022, this issue)

It makes sense that an underlabouring philosophy would be strengthened by partnering with substantive theories so as to guard against appropriation by oppressive arguments linked to colonialism, racism, sexism, patriarchy, heteronormativity and more. Similarly, as argued by Elder-Vass, critical realism highlights the need for coherence and change, but he argues further that even when utopian visions are practical ‘and even when they do make a positive contribution, they are always open to resistance and subversion from the economic power of large corporations’ (Elder-Vass 2022, this issue).

While the papers described above, are focused on critiquing and finding alternatives to particular problems in context, Vandenberghe brings us back to the roots of our common interests, the philosophical debates around critical realism and their application to sociological questions. Vandenberghe delves into questions around rationality highlighting the possibility of truth but reminding us of the shortcomings of an ego-centred instrumentalist rationality, and of the militance and dominance of scientific argument (at the expense, for example, of poetry and spirituality). He draws on both Habermas and Bhaskar to argue that ‘reason is not the instrument of domination, but the organon of emancipation’ (Vandenberghe 2022, this issue). He draws inspiration from the Anti-utilitarian Movement in France which, he explains, has similar sentiments in its critique of economistic thinking to the critiques of instrumental rationality, and which highlights the human being, not as a ‘calculator’ in the first place, but driven by moral sentiments in which sympathy, care, generosity and solidarity take precedence.

Vandenberghe’s paper suggests that the normative grounds of critical realism can be strengthened by paying more attention to the symbolic constitution of the social world, and argues for the importance of paying attention to communicative rationality (with roots in the Frankfurt school in Germany); that is a quest for truth that is ‘mediated by language and connects the subjects to subjects as partners of interlocution on the other hand’ (2022, this issue). He suggests that Bhaskar’s focus on the ‘agency- and concept-dependency of social structures is a thin version of hermeneutics’ and that we need to embrace hermeneutic understanding that ‘the symbolic constitution of the life-world is a collective anonymous act that precedes, structures and informs social practices from within’. He adds that we need to embrace hermeneutic commitments to explaining how ideological deformation can contribute to the reproduction of social structures (Vandenberghe 2022, this issue). Reciprocally, Vandenberghe highlights the role that critical realism plays in bringing hermeneutics ‘back into the world’ by giving it a referent (Vandenberghe 2022, this issue).

Another significant challenge to Bhaskar’s critical realism offered by Vandenberghe is in the relationship between the transitive and intransitive specifically in the social sciences. He argues that this relationship cannot be seen as the same as in the natural sciences because knowledge (in the transitive world) is constitutive of the practices that make social structures thus making it difficult to distinguish ‘between the knowledge of the object and the object of knowledge’ (Vandenberghe 2022, this issue). This poses challenges for intercivilisational dialogues that do not necessarily embrace western cosmologies and which subsequently operate in more fluid ontological spaces. Furthermore, he suggests that judgemental rationality (in Bhaskar’s ‘holy trinity) can be deepened through critical hermeneutics’ insistence on ‘levelling the field of interpretations’ ‘ and opening ‘space for other standpoints and other ways of worldmaking’ (Vandenberghe 2022, this issue).

Bhaskar’s purpose in his conception of critical naturalism both for the sciences and social sciences was ontological grounding in order to avoid the ontological excess or domination of scientific realism. His perspective does not exclude the subjective, or the world of symbols and thus it may be of interest for critical realist researchers to take up Vandenberghe’s challenge for attention to communicative rationality and the depth understandings that can be offered by critical hermeneutics. Such deepenings could be valuable, for example, when considering social interactions between people in Bhaskar’s model of four-planar social being (2016) or when working with the notion of ‘co-engaged depth enquiry’. Lotz-Sisitka’s paper draws attention to the latter in Bhaskar’s dialectical work and she argues that this notion is important in shifting the critical realist researcher ‘from proficient analyser to co-engaged participant in the transformation of the reality that is being co-analysed’ (2022, this issue).

Overall this edition of the journal presents a challenging collection of papers that demonstrate how critical realism brings stronger ontological, epistemological and ethical perspectives to tried and tested theoretical framings, particularly strengthening emancipatory intent in contexts of inequality, oppression and cognitive injustices. It also reminds us of the critical realist embrace, the potential for robust and critical debate amongst and between philosophers, sociologists, economists, and educators; and idenitifies many interesting gaps and unanswered question for further critical realist underlaboured research.