Human Emancipation Research Articles

Educação popular como resistência e emancipação humana

<title>RESUMO:</title><p>O artigo visa a contribuir com o debate hoje instaurado sobre a concepção de Educação Popular na América Latina. A matriz teórica e analítica é o Materialismo Histórico Dialético e a pesquisa é de cunho bibliográfico e qualitativo. Parte-se da constatação de que essa concepção educativa está em processo de refundamentação. Nessa reflexão, busca-se resgatar suas origens e acumulados; bem como entender a sua atualidade. Conclui-se destacando aspectos teóricos a serem enfrentados e aprofundados e delineando alguns desafios colocados ao campo que a assume, para que possa continuar contribuindo nos processos de resistência visando à emancipação humana.</p>

From Factory Floor to Killing Floor: Marx, Critical Theory and the Status of the Animal

Considerations of the status of animals in contemporary society should start from the recognition that the most thorough domestication undertaken by man has been that of the human species itself. Man has been progressively alienated, indeed, through the human conquest of nature, including that of non-human animals. Human domination of nature is the product of the sweat and blood of both the oppressed classes of histoiy and the labor of countless non-human animals. Contemporary utilization of nature continues through the subjection of the marginalized, human and non-human alike. The works of numerous Marxian scholars make this pattern of class struggle in history terribly clear. Although, indeed, the exploitative utilization of non-human animals is often overlooked, it is intertwined with the oppression of human beings in dialectically significant ways. This relationship opens critical insights and emancipatory possibilities in the present.In this paper, I use the works of Marx, Engels and the Frankfurt School to make a twofold argument. Firstly, I assert that the non-human animal is the nodal point in advanced capitalism where the elsewhereobscured oppressive nature of the whole can still be observed and contested. In the use, abuse and consumption of non-human animals in the advanced industrial system, and in the culture that reflects this mode of production, the impact of capital upon the living being in its integrity, health, rights, freedom, and worth are nakedly observable. Although, admittedly, the situation of non-human animals cannot be flatly equated to that of humans, the similar and linked positions of the two in a system that voraciously consumes the life force of all living beings justifies a critical comparison. The suffering non-human animal ensnared in advanced industrial capitalism is thus an essential mirror that must be held up, however uncomfortably, before the reified modem subject. Secondly, I contest that to break the cycle of alienation and oppression in which the subject is enmeshed, the transformation of the subject's intemality is necessary. In other words, one contests capital and builds subjectivity effectively only through actively living disruptively. The treatment of non-human animals, in short, must be considered a part of the web of domination, and rejected as firmly as other, more immediate forms of injustice. The refusal to use non-human animals as a means to the ends of capital is thus an important aspect of praxis and should be linked to the refusal to consume the labor of exploited human workers.MARXIAN THEORY, ALIENATION AND THE ANIMALAlienation, once viewed as a driver of class-consciousness, is now a problem well recognized by Marxian scholars. In this section, I will argue that although alienation, due in large part to the rise in standards of living and the development of socializing agents like advertising, now promotes blindness to structural injustice. The status of the non-human animal, however, still reflects the true relationship between capital and the living beings that serve as its raw material back to the critical observer.Marx and Engels framed alienation as a potent tool in the mobilization of proletarians. In a sense, indeed, classical Marxism turns on the capacity of the working class to become a revolutionary agent through the perfection of its alienation. Marx argued that the worker's existence is reduced to the same conditions as any other commodity under capital (Marx 1988). The individual's lived experience thus stands in palpable dialectical tension with the possibility of human emancipation in modernity. Because, in other words, bourgeois society is, too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them, capitalism can only create misery out of conditions ripe for the liberation of all from necessity (Marx and Engels 1988, 216). Rendered completely alien to himself in conditions that in every way counter his genuine interests, the subject recognizes that his plight stems from capitalism. …

Making institutional accounting research critical: dead end or new beginning?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review extant accounting research combining institutional and critical theories to examine whether the paradigmatic tensions associated with such research can be alleviated whilst engendering politically engaged scholarship aimed at facilitating processes of emancipation in organisational fields. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a review of relevant accounting research and offers recommendations for how to combine institutional and critical research approaches in a paradigmatically consistent way. Findings – Extant accounting research combining institutional and critical theories has not dealt effectively with the partly inter-related problems of ontological drift (i.e. misalignment of ontological assumptions and epistemological commitments) and the conflation of notions of agency and structure. If such problems remain unaddressed institutional research aimed at generating politically engaged scholarship and human emancipation is unlikely to progre...

Adorno’s ends of philosophy and the future of critical theory

Adorno's ends of philosophy and the future of critical theory Darrow Schecter Critical Theory in the Twenty-First Century, Bloomsbury: London, 2013; vii + 218 pp.: 9781441105462, 20[pounds sterling] (pbk) Andrew Bowie Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy, Cambridge: Polity, 2013; ix + 206 pp.: 9780745671598, 18 [pounds sterling] (pbk) Darrow Schecter and Andrew Bowie discuss a similar question: what is the future of critical theory and philosophy? The former takes a more sociological perspective, while the latter's perspective is more philosophical. Schecter begins by highlighting the move from a linguistic towards a literary turn in recent critical thinking, as found, for example, in Jameson's readings of Marx, Adorno and Derrida. Against Nancy Fraser's much debated ethics of distribution versus Hegel/Honneth's ethics of recognition (Fraser & Flonneth 2003), the book argues, 'human emancipation has broader connotations than simply redistributive justice' (p. 18). This also means that critical-intellectual exchange is ideally conducted in the Hegelian realm of freedom. Excluded from this are highly structured institutions such as, for example, workplace, scientific laboratory and other settings in which a competence-based hierarchy is used rather than an assembly of equals (Diefenbach 2013). These ethical demands--freedom, no hierarchies, and an assembly of equals--carry connotations to modern civil societies that have been a product of the modern world linked to what Hegel once called Sittlichkeit or ethical life. What Hegel meant by this has been explained in a not-yet translated but most insightful text on 'Hegels System der Sittlichkeit' (Schmidt 2007). On that reading, the individual and subjective dimension of a Hegelian dialectic has not only been somewhat understated by Adorno, but has also given rise to 'largely academic theories of recognition' (p. 44). Nonetheless, the 'Hegel-Marx-Adorno' dialogue on what might be termed 'recognition-vs.-distribution' remains of great interest to contemporary critical theory. As a consequence of a possible outcome of such a dialogue, it remains somewhat insufficient simply to realise that theorists must be reflexive. Critical theory must reach beyond that and be reflective in a dialectical-critical way that includes contemporary conceptions of critique (Klikauer 2014a). This can achieve things that traditional theory could not and can never achieve. It can combine dialectical materialism after Marx with other prominent approaches to social research. Perhaps critical realism might be one of the closest, with certain versions of system theory being other likely candidates. Since there has been a lifetime of Luhmann-Habermas exchanges, perhaps a highly pluralist version of system theory can be taken somewhat more seriously by critical theorists than had been the case in the past. Unlike many more traditional theories--including system theory--critical theory remains committed to immanent critique and non-dogmatic objectivity. It is for this reason that critical theory has never and can never abandon the Enlightenment ideal of a rational society free of prejudice, obscurantism and the arbitrary exercise of power. Aligned to that is the fact that critical theory analyses how reason, obscurantism and the arbitrary exercise of power actually function in liberal-democratic and post-liberal-democratic societies, examining the underlying structure, namely capitalism itself. Hence critical theory continues to investigate the capitalism-society dialectic and current forms of populism and hegemony designed to undermine democracy. One of the key ideologies that undermine democracy is what Adorno calls 'identity thinking', e.g. identifying as real in society only that which harmonises and fits with dominant concepts. Hence, non-identity thinking can begin by pointing out the anthropological assumptions underlying the contemporary liberal-democratic conceptions of a mass-mediated unity designed to eclipse the inherent contradictions and pathologies found in capitalism and contemporary society. …

Eroding Capitalism: A Comment on Stuart White's ‘Basic Capital in the Egalitarian Toolkit’

AbstractStuart White argues that egalitarians need a diverse toolkit of policy proposals in order to move closer to a just economic system. In particular he argues that a policy of Basic Capital grants should be included in this toolkit along with a variety of other more familiar instruments such as unconditional Basic Income, welfare state services and income supports, and support for worker cooperatives. The various policies in the egalitarian toolkit, however, have implications for issues other than contributing to a more just economic system. In particular, they have implications for the long term stability, transformation, or even transcendence, of capitalism as an economic system. In this article I will argue that unconditional Basic Income has a greater potential to erode capitalism than does Basic Capital. While both of these policies in the egalitarian toolkit may make the economic system statically more just, over time Basic Capital grants are likely to strengthen capitalism as the core structure of the economic system, whereas unconditional Basic Income has the potential to erode the dominance of capitalism. As part of a long‐term project of human emancipation, therefore, unconditional Basic Income should have priority over Basic Capital.

Neil Lazarus The Postcolonial UnconsciousThe Postcolonial Unconscious. Neil Lazarus. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. vii+299.

<i>Neil Lazarus</i> The Postcolonial Unconscious<i>The Postcolonial Unconscious</i>. Neil Lazarus. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. vii+299.

The Composite Theory: An African Contribution to the Academic Freedom Discourse

This article expounds the Composite Theory to define the parameters for the exercise of academic freedom in Africa, informed by its political, historical and cultural circumstances and expressed in the Dar es Salaam Declaration on Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility of Academics and the Kampala Declaration on Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility. This approach follows in the line of the Special Theory and General Theory postulated to justify the exercise and application of academic freedom in Germany and the United States of America, respectively. The Composite Theory contends that academic freedom in the African context should not only be seen in the narrow prism of protecting the rights of academics on and off the university campus. It includes a commitment to recognise and contribute to promoting the rights of other key actors in the academic freedom equation, to wit, students and the society as a fulfillment of the academic’s social responsibility. This role can be fulfilled both within and outside the university campus. Internally, academics shall respect students’ right to academic freedom and immerse knowledge-sharing in a democratic ethos. This approach will likely instil in the students respect for democracy, human rights and the rule of law, which they will carry away with them from the university into life within the society. Extramurally, equipped with their knowledge, skills and experience, African academics should take advantage of their privileged positions in society to leave their ivory towers and, where necessary, solidarise with other civil society actors to promote social transformation and human emancipation. This is the guaranteed way to protect academic freedom on the campuses.

Challenges of Female Journalists in Bangladesh

Journalism is a challenging profession in Bangladesh where female were less encouraged to be a journalist. In recent time Bangladesh is encouraging her women to work outside of home. A significant number of women are involved in journalism. They are contributing to the society for economic prosperity and changing the attitude towards the development concept and process. A salient change has come into the social attitude which is symbolized by women’s advancement in journalism sector. These contributions also are paving the way for female and human emancipation. So it is important to find out what are the challenges that women journalist’s face in their professional environment. The study has taken a survey of 100 female journalists from television, newspaper and online media of Bangladesh. The study has taken 6 in-depth interviews from media critics. The female journalists recognized stereotyped attitudes, unreasonable treatment, harassment by male colleagues and job insecurity as the common reasons that make them to give up the profession.

Psychological Healing in Reconciliation

Human beings are fascinatingly gifted with freedom and will power. Responsible freedom is a fundamental faculty, necessary for the emancipation of humanity in its holistic character. Man is endowed with multidimensional personality, rationality and bundle of paradoxes. Down through the history, there has been a steady growth of freedom and responsibility and psychological enhancement. By and by, the abuse of freedom and mistaken-values has brought-in degradation in humanistic aspects and discord in interpersonal-relationships thereby psychological dissipation. In this perspective confronting the conflict through reconciliation is a dire need for psychological wellbeing. In the olden days the concept of “reconciliation” was primarily used in religious context, but in the present time it is extensively used also in psychological and sociological and political contexts as well. e.g., Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa 1994).

Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World par by Gary Wilder

Reviews 255 societal attitudes toward the various facets of men’s and women’s experience of the conflict. On these foundations, Simon-Carrère has written a book that is not only informative, but also very readable. While the content of the book is worth the attention of any scholar of French culture and society of the First World War, its stylistic readability makes the book accessible to a less specialized readership as well. Ohio University Christopher Coski Wilder, Gary. Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2015. ISBN 978-0-8223-5850-3. Pp. 384. $26.30. Wilder’s book is not only a must-read text for those who are interested in critical theory and intellectual history, but also an insightful inquiry with great scholarly depth.Among numerous critical approaches, Freedom Time can be read as a romantic vision of Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor’s aesthetics and politics. Wilder’s investigations aim at showing these thinkers’unapologetic desire to stay within and to defend a reformed French empire as an alternative to national independence. The book is a rereading of Césaire and Senghor’s literary writings that informs their political actions and ideologies during the postwar time and beyond. Wilder’s main thesis, as the title of the book seems to imply, refutes the old paradigms that equated “colonial emancipation to national liberation and self-determination to state sovereignty” (4). Wilder legitimately re-questions the concept of freedom which is at the center of this inquiry. Inspired by critical theorists like Theodor Adorno,W.E.B. Du Bois, Hannah Arendt, Frederic Cooper, Wilder seems to sympathize with Césaire and Senghor’s epistemological posture in that national liberation is not conducive to human emancipation, and self-determination does not necessarily require state sovereignty as antinomies of freedom. According to a certain federalist wave that has received Wilder’s support, nation-state appears to be an accidental occurrence in light of past millennia of kingship and imperial system. This historical perspective became the rationale for Freedom Time, and Wilder succeeds through a thorough study of Césaire and Senghor’s political actions and literary works. But their pragmatic utopian visions of self-determination with state sovereignty can only be grasped or understood in light of their distinctive orientation to anti-colonialism as Wilder convincingly argues (7). Despite Césaire and Senghor’s disillusionment with their quest for integration into and acceptance by France’s imperial nation,“working through empire and unthinking France had characterized their public lives by their systematic rejection of being others and their appropriation of Frenchness as they claimed to be the rightful insiders of “radical traditions of French politics and thought” (7). Wilder shows that Césaire and Senghor, in the tradition of Toussaint Louverture and Victor Schoelcher, redefined decolonization as a process of reconfiguring France’s imperial domination rather than ending it completely. By challenging so-called European universalism, Freedom Time reminds us that these Antillean and African thinkers’ scholarship is an invitation to deterritorialize social thought, to decolonize intellectual history and to approach modernity as a global process that belongs to humanity through“historical constellations” (13). In brief, what links all nine chapters of Freedom Time is the way Wilder masterfully applies the concept of “untimeliness”as a pedagogical tool to undo the concept of anachronism or to make it obsolete. Therefore, “the contemporaneity of the non-contemporaneous” event is always at work (40). Although Wilder fails to reassert the exceptional character of Haitian slaves’emancipation (or any other slaves’ revolts) as ontologically justified and their unfinished national independence inevitable, his book is a compelling epistemological intervention to rethink our relationship to the past and reevaluate all universal claims. South Plainfield High School (NJ) Claudy Delné Zielonka, Jan. Is the EU Doomed? Madden, MA: Polity, 2014. ISBN 978-0-745683973 . Pp. 128. $10. Topoi of apocalyptic doom have been with us since time immemorial. If anyone still thinks that their specter has deserted our times, all they have to do is read Zielonka’s book. For the author, the occasion for the resurgence of this particular topos lies in the...

A vingança social da técnica: hipótese de uma subversão pós-moderna dos ambientes técnicos populares

This article looks after the issue of the technique and its ambiguity in the western imaginary. If by the one hand the technique is the vector of the human emancipation and its supposed dominance upon the nature; by the other hand it motivates the idea of alienation of the subject before the machine. From this bias, the text exposes a critical view of this “machinic” model inserted in the modernity projects, considering the modernistic idea itself being this ambiguous relationship between subject and object.

Human rights and collective emancipation: The politics of food sovereignty

AbstractThis article develops contextually grounded accounts of emancipation in general and notions of collective rights based emancipation in particular by identifying a form of emancipatory politics in which collectives demand rights for themselves. The article develops the idea of collective, rights based emancipation by focusing on the practices of two related social movements, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and la Via Campesina. The MST and Via Campesina seek to replace existing rights to ‘food security’ with a human right to ‘food sovereignty’. While food security agendas emphasise the role of international governance agencies in providing food on behalf of others, food sovereignty is secured by peasant social movements themselves. Furthermore, practices of active citizenship and democratic organisational structures, built through the grassroots and transnational struggles through which peasants raise their demand for human rights, are vital in enacting rights to food sovereignty. In instances where victims are not entirely silenced and powerless, this combination of a demand for human rights and the development of practices of citizenship that enable people to demand and secure rights for themselves provides a contextually grounded emancipatory alternative to interventionist politics that, however well intentioned, risk reinforcing the dependence of purportedly powerless victims.

Trabalho, Educação e Emancipação Humana: A Afirmação da EJA como Direito

Este artigo aborda a Educação de Jovens e Adultos (EJA) no Brasil como direito e como campo, com práticas e reflexões de matrizes político-pedagógicas distintas ou mesmo antagônicas. Tais reflexões inserem-se no debate sobre os fundamentos e modalidades da relação entre educação, trabalho e emancipação humana. Uma ideia força do texto é a convicção de que pessoas jovens e adultas são sujeitos de direitos e que a plena realização de um deles – o acesso e permanência na escola – depende do (re)conhecimento, por todos aqueles que estão envolvidos no campo, da natureza e do potencial da relação desses sujeitos com os mundos do trabalho. Neste estudo de natureza qualitativa, as autoras realizaram análise documental e retomaram dados de duas pesquisas qualitativas em Educação, que coletaram dados por meio de entrevistas individuais semiestruturadas, observação participante e registro em diário de campo. Argumentou-se sobre a centralidade da experiência singular e coletiva do aluno-trabalhador para mediar relações entre trabalho e educação no currículo da EJA. As autoras enfatizam o trabalho como lugar de produção, mobilização e (re)interpretação permanente de saberes e valores pelos trabalhadores. Estes, ao ingressarem em cursos de EJA, colocam em circulação no contexto escolar estes saberes e valores produzidos no mundo do trabalho, gerando tensionamentos que impelem a reaproximação entre saberes escolares e experiência de trabalho. As autoras ressaltam a pertinência de novos estudos sobre o Currículo Integrado e outras práticas curriculares que valorizem o trabalho enquanto experiência humana.

In Defense of Norm Circles

According to Michael Welton, because of its capacity to support social learning, critical adult education has a pivotal role to play in human emancipation. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas's critical theory of communicative action, Welton argues that critical adult education's deepest contemporary purpose is to foster social learning that can enable people to resist the destructive colonization of lifeworld contexts. This paper argues that, while Habermas provides important insight into the normative foundations of critical adult education, his theory of communicative action does not possess an ontology that can sufficiently illuminate the ways human learning shapes and is shaped by lifeworld contexts. The emergent ontology of critical realism, the paper argues, especially as mobilized by sociologist, Dave Elder-Vass in his discussion of norm circles, provides an additional theoretical basis for enabling critical adult education to realize its fullest emancipatory potential.

TEMPO DE TRABALHO E OS LIMITES DA LUTA SINDICAL PELA REDUÇÃO DA JORNADA

This article aims to reflect and examine working time in marxist perspective and the fight for the reduction of the workday so critical, as well as the limits of Trade Union struggle, exposing some important theoretical and empirical dimensions that tend to be excluded from the public debate on the matter. We seek to reflect the absence of Trade Union agenda of issues that directly address the flexibility and intensity of work. Analyzing some features about the hiring of workers in the brazilian labor market, demonstrates that there is a great distance between the discourse, the academic reading on the topic and the reality. The reduction of the workday is a multifaceted issue, which features a complex and controversial debate, raising the interest of diverse social actors interested in this story, but which have different conceptions about the debate, due to the heterogeneity of values at stake. It is argued in this paper that the social implications of a policy measure to reduce workday does not guarantee the free time and human emancipation. However, it is understood that this reduction is a historical trend, linked to social and economic development. There are marked differences between the speech Association, the favor by policy measure, the theoretical statements and empirical evidence on the subject. We understand that the struggle of Unions and Federations for 40 hours per week is of great importance to workers, but it is necessary to include on the agenda the question of trade union work intensity. Finally, we focus on the ontological dimension of theory of value from the marxian conception.

Tempo de trabalho a luta pela redução da jornada e a centralidade da teoria do valor-trabalho

The article seeks to reflect the absence of Trade Union agenda that directly address issues of working time, flexibility and intensity of the work, as well as the centrality of work in our contemporaneity. Analyzing some features about the hiring of workers in the Brazilian labour market, demonstrates that there is a great distance between the discourse, academic reading on the topic and the reality. The reduction of the workday is a multifaceted issue, which features a complex and controversial debate, raising the interest of diverse social actors interested in this story, but which have different conceptions about the debate, due to the heterogeneity of values in play. It is argued in this paper that the social implications of a policy measure for the reduction of the workday does not guarantee the free time and human emancipation. However, it is understood that this reduction is a historical trend, linked to the socio-economic development. There are marked differences between the Trade Union discourse, political sympathy by the measure, theoretical statements and empirical evidence on the subject. We understand that the struggle of unions and Union stations for 40 hours per week is of great importance to workers, but it is necessary to include in the agenda the question of trade union work intensity. Finally, we focus on the ontological dimension of theory of value from the Marxian conception. Keywords: working time, work intensity value of journey, unionism.

Race, Rights and Rebellion in the Custodial State: A Post-Los Angeles Marxian Reconstruction

America’s new race/class contradictions erupted in the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion, providing an impetus to think through the dialectic of political and human emancipation the young Marx articulated in Zur Judenfrage. For Stanford Lyman, the theoretical response to the assimilation of diasporic Jews into modernizing 19th-century Europe was appropriated by American sociologists responding to 20th-century America’s ‘ethnoracial mix’. At the text’s four discursive sites, history contextualizes theory and theory contextualizes history, beginning with a recollection of the authoritarian custodial state and Third World America that came screaming to life with the LA rebellion. At the second site, Black Studies, post-LA, found itself on the discursive frontline of this neoliberal turn. The third site is the intersection of religion, race and rights, where we reconstruct Marx’s theses on the Jewish Question, revealing the undisclosed biopolitics of a racial formation theory embedded in his writings of the 1850s and 1860s on the US Civil War and Capital. The fourth site of this post-LA reconstruction is a discussion of the state and the limits of black political empowerment.

What Can Activist Scholars Learn from Rumi?

The neoliberal restructuring of higher education everywhere is accompanied by a distinctive branch of knowledge known as activist scholarship. Drawing from a number of disciplines including education, sociology, social anthropology, social theory, law, and human rights, activist scholarship proclaims as its core mission Marx’s imperative that philosophy should transform the world. Activist scholars affirm human emancipation as the goal of scholarship and set themselves the task of building bridges between theory and practice. There is a spectrum of views on the theory-practice nexus. Regardless, they all share certain common grounds that affirm (1) a nexus between theory and practice; (2) a relationship between knowledge and action; (3) knowledge as a condition for emancipation and freedom; (4) the affirmation of love and solidarity for social change; (5) the importance of everyday life; and (6) the role of the activist scholar in social change. These themes form part of a long and entrenched tradition in dissident Eastern philosophies, in particular the poet-saint traditions. Here each of the themes in activist scholarship is interrogated using the works of Mawlana Jalal al Din Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet. What can activist scholars learn from Rumi?

Areas and Ideas

Bayat’s essay examines the divide between area studies and the social science disciplines. A truly productive engagement with and critical reflection on the social sciences, Bayat argues, is possible only by intimate area knowledge, wide perspectives, a comparative lens, and a search for meaningful knowledge directed at human emancipation.

Abordagem crítica nos estudos organizacionais: concepção de indivíduo sob a perspectiva emancipatória

O objetivo deste ensaio teórico é debater a necessidade de considerar racionalidades alternativas à instrumental nos Estudos Organizacionais, em favor do exercício da cidadania do indivíduo como ator social, com papel ativo e não sujeito da ciência e do mundo. São resgatados pressupostos teóricos dos Estudos Organizacionais críticos, no contexto paradigmático do humanismo radical, para responder porque fazer uma análise crítica. A justificativa é a de que a Ciência Social estabelecida tornou-se um meio legítimo de controle do mundo natural e a conduta humana. Apoiando-se em pressupostos teóricos ingênuos, na visão de Alberto Guerreiro Ramos, a Ciência da Administração se desenvolveu com base na racionalidade instrumental inerente à Ciência Social dominante no Ocidente, não sofrendo críticas até 1970 porque funcionou até ali. As críticas mais atuais não foram suficientes para romper a corrente principal, talvez porque a razão deslocada do psiquismo humano transformou-se em um atributo da sociedade. No entanto, há concepções epistemológicas alternativas ao funcionalismo e a abordagem crítica é caminho possível, podendo trazer avanços aos Estudos Organizacionais, constituindo um dos caminhos possíveis na busca da emancipação do homem em direção a uma sociedade melhor e mais justa.