Critical Theory Perspective Research Articles

Meaningful change or ‘more of the same’: the voluntary recruitment code in men’s professional football coaching in England

ABSTRACT This article offers an original empirical and theoretically grounded examination of the English Football League’s (EFL) Voluntary Recruitment Code (VRC): a positive action intervention designed to establish inclusive practices of coach recruitment and increase the representation of minoritised coaches in first team coaching operations at men’s professional football clubs in England. In doing so, it draws on semi-structured interviews with Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) at clubs (n = 5), football stakeholder representatives (n = 14) and minoritised coaches (n = 26) to ascertain their perceptions, experiences, and reflections in relation to three inter-connected areas of focus. Firstly, the operational and attitudinal implementation of the VRC at clubs. Secondly, the effectiveness of the VRC in engendering its intended operational and representational impacts at clubs. Thirdly, critical reflections as to the ways in which the VRC might be reformulated and reimplemented to stimulate the conditions through which equality of opportunities, experiences, and outcomes for minoritised coaches might be realised. Finally, the article will conclude from a Critical Race Theory (CRT) perspective that racial equality measures of this kind should be strongly interventionist and transformational in their policy intentions and ideological scope, and seek to challenge and disrupt dominant liberal discourses of meritocracy, race-neutrality, colour-blindness, and the normativity of Whiteness in professional football coaching contexts. In doing so, the article calls on the EFL to work consultatively with member clubs, football stakeholders, and minoritised coaches to develop a holistic legislative and pedagogical approach to tackling racialised inequities in football coaching, which incorporate strongly regulated and reformatory positive actions.

Disenchanting Trust: Instrumental Reason, Algorithmic Governance, and China’s Emerging Social Credit System

Digital technologies have provided governments across the world with new tools of political and social control. The development of algorithmic governance in China is particularly alarming, where plans have been released to develop a digital Social Credit System (SCS). Still in an exploratory stage, the SCS, as a collection of national and local pilots, is framed officially as an all-encompassing project aimed at building trust in society through the regulation of both economic and social behaviors. Grounded in the case of China’s SCS, this article interrogates the application of algorithmic rating to expanding areas of everyday life through the lens of the Frankfurt School’s critique of instrumental reason. It explores how the SCS reduces the moral and relational dimension of trust in social interactions, and how algorithmic technologies, thriving on a moral economy characterized by impersonality, impede the formation of trust and trustworthiness as moral virtues. The algorithmic rationality underlying the SCS undermines the ontology of relational trust, forecloses its transformative power, and disrupts social and civic interactions that are non-instrumental in nature. Re-reading and extending the Frankfurt School’s theorization on reason and the technological society, especially the works of Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Habermas, this article reflects on the limitations of algorithmic technologies in social governance. A Critical Theory perspective awakens us to the importance of human reflexivity on the use and circumscription of algorithmic rating systems.

Belonging to Quebec and English Canada as Muslims: The Perspectives of the Highly Educated Uyghur Immigrants

Following the rise of Islamophobia, Muslims in the West have been experiencing increasingly challenging identity dilemmas. Canada is not an exception. This article, at the intersection of Critical Race Theory and post-colonial perspectives, analyzes the narratives of 13 highly educated Uyghur Muslim immigrants living in Quebec and some English provinces of Canada. Their stories show that many of them have become subject to multiple identity dilemmas common to other Muslim diaspora groups, while also facing some challenges unique to their own background. This article further highlights the Uyghur’s experiences through a new angle: they all appear to have developed an us/Muslim immigrant vs. them/white Canadians’ dichotomy. In the province of Quebec, their narratives reveal “oppositional consciousness” against the dominant white Quebecers, which is quite political, while in English provinces they may see their Muslim identity more as “oppositional culture” against the white English Canadians, which is much less political.

COMUM E DIREITOS HUMANOS

O presente artigo aborda o comum e os Direitos Humanos. O objetivo é, especialmente diante da análise da experiência da Rede de Horteiros de Medellín, verificar se o comum e suas práticas podem servir de mecanismo de realização de Direitos Humanos, de modo a evidenciar a interação entre os conceitos e novas possibilidades. O texto divide-se em três partes: uma primeira, que contempla o comum e descreve a experiência da Rede de Horteiros de Medellín; uma segunda, que apresenta os Direitos Humanos a partir de uma visão da Teoria Crítica; e, uma terceira, que, buscando explorar a interação entre os conceitos e identificar novas possibilidades, trata do comum como instrumento de realização de Direitos Humanos. Utilizou-se da metodologia indutiva e da pesquisa bibliográfica. Os resultados indicam que o comum pode ser concebido como integrador dos Direitos Humanos e, também, funcionar como instrumento para materializar esses mesmos direitos, ampliadamente considerados.

Chilean Teacher Educators’ Conceptions on the Absence of Women and Their History in Teacher Training Programmes. A Collective Case Study

Schools must assume a clear position that considers gender perspectives and studies in their programmes’ construction as well as in discourses and practices produced and reproduced in the school context. Social sciences education is a key area that enables the creation of tools to reflect and foster social justice practices in face of violence against women. In this article, we focus on some reflections of social sciences education professors in Chile. Specifically, we discuss the limitations they face to include women and women issues in their classes. The methodology utilised is Collective Case Studies. The methodology used has a socio-constructivist approach and critical theory perspective, seeking to understand the structures of meaning around the invisibility of women and their history. Among the results, the willingness of professors to include and transform their practices towards perspectives that promote inclusion and social justice stands out. However, they have different limitations, such as excessive workload, the tradition already present in teacher education programmes, and the rigidity of the hegemonic and patriarchal structures.

Critical Management Studies: Introducing A New Perspective

The Critical Management Studies, as an emerging perspective and research topic in management, has helped scholars to investigate management topics and issues with the perspective of Critical Theory of Frankfurt School. The Critical Theory itself is a synthesis of philosophy and social science which pioneered by several german philosophers in the beginning of 20th century. Although this perspective regained its relevancy and popularity recently, in Indonesia, the Critical Management Studies is quite alien and rarely be employed as a discussion topic or a research perspective. Therefore, in this study we want to offer Critical Management Studies to be an important alternative and it will be very relevant to the development of management theory and research in Indonesia. We conduct a literature-based research and our results are appeared in four themes: (1) The explanation about the birth and the thought of Frankfurt School thinkers, (2) The description about the development of Critical Management Studies, (3) The critiques against Critical Management Studies from the mainstream management thought, (4) The evaluatiion of the concept of Critical Management Studies from the researchers own perspective. We advise several potentialities and prospect for implementation of Critical Management Studies in the context of management theory development and research practice in Indonesia. However, as a conceptual study further effort still needed to apply this perspective.

Agency in Circular City Ecosystems—A Rationalities Perspective

The concept of agency is increasingly used in the literature on sustainability transitions. In this paper, we add to that discussion by arguing that the concept of rationality opens new avenues to theorizing relational agency in transitions toward a circular economy. To this end, we compare rationality conceptions from management (e.g., collaboration and competition) with critical theory perspectives on rationality (e.g., instrumental and communicative rationality). This leads us to develop a typology matrix for describing plural rationalities underpinning relational agency. We illustrate this typology using excerpts from an in-depth case study of an ongoing city-coordinated ecosystem that develops a smart technology-enabled urban area based on the principles of circularity. The first contribution of this interdisciplinary paper is to offer a rational perspective on theorizing the antecedents of relational agency in circular economy transitions, where communicatively rational action enables agency and change. Secondly, our paper contributes to the literature on circular cities through conceptualizing circular transition as simultaneous collaboration and competition. Thirdly, our paper introduces a dyadic perspective on rationality to the literature on coopetition and provides an operating space from which professionals can navigate, depending on the type of coopetitive situation.

Teacher perspectives on the presence of police officers in English secondary schools: A Critical Race Theory analysis

ABSTRACT In the context of a racialized moral panic around serious youth violence, we have seen a resurgence of calls to increase the presence of police in English schools in recent years. As well as a lack of popular and political opposition, there is a dearth of critical academic consideration of the placement of police in schools, and even less from a Critical Race Theory perspective. Given that teachers’ perspectives are relatively absent from academic and popular debates, this paper draws upon data from semi-structured interviews with 24 secondary school teachers. In doing so, the paper argues that an increased police presence in school will impact negatively upon learning environments, create a culture of low expectations, criminalize young people, and feed a school-to-prison pipeline. Noting that racially minoritized students will be affected most harshly, the article provides empirical evidence to warn against the presence of police in schools.

Procedural Theory of the Subject of Law and Non-human Animals: criteria for recognition of legal subjectivity from the perspective of critical theory

This article has the following research problem: what is it like to be a subject of law? As a general objective, it aims to understand how the subject of law is formed. As a specific objective, it intends to answer the following question: are non-human animals subject of law? It is based on the assumption of a critical and analytical theory of law. By this, we mean that we will focus on the relationship between the individual and the norm. As a result, we obtain three processes for the formation of the subject of law. The emancipatory process is responsible for the struggle to form and transform the individual into a subject. The recognition process presupposes that there is in interspecies relations a connection between the subjects of law already consolidated and those who have just entered the legal norm. The subjectification process and personification process refers to the legal system's granting of personality in the face of the claimant subject's demands. Thus, we can conclude that non-human animals are not considered subjects of law because they do not dominate the language and cannot fight against legal domination and exercise by themselves their rights and duties, an elementary and indispensable condition for the configuration of this legal category. Thus, one contributes to the thesis of the procedural theory of the subject of law to the extent that one can reduce contingencies and social complexity, being them directly proportional. This does not mean that animals cannot be protected. The environmental protection established in the Federal Constitution is apt and efficient for such exercise since these non-human animals will be considered centers of legal imputation and deserving of security based on environmental law, and not in their condition as subjects of law. The methodology used to develop this reasoning is the integrated revision and bibliographical research

Investigating Young Children’s Conceptualizations of Disability and Race: An Intersectional, Multiplane Critique

Education researchers have extensively documented young children’s capacity to exhibit “bias” in relation to disability or race. By and large, data generation has focused on children’s awareness and attitudes about disability or race, rather than how interactions and structures construct and reinforce them. Bridging disability critical race theory (DisCrit) and sociocultural perspectives, this essay proposes the need for intersectional, multiplane qualitative data generation in studying young children’s disability and race conceptualizations to account for the ways intersecting, oppressive ideologies are perpetuated in young children’s worlds. In this essay, I briefly describe and critique extant data generation practices, concluding with possibilities for future investigations.

Being and becoming African as a permanent work in progress: inspiration from Chinua Achebe’s proverbs

Acta Academica is an accredited, open access South African journal dedicated to scholarship in the humanities. The journal publishes independently refereed research articles in the humanities. It promotes the perspectives of critical social theory and engagements with postcolonial and post-developmental debates with special references to (Southern) Africa. The journal is thereby in support of scholarly work that examines how the humanities in the twenty-first century respond to the double imperative of theorising the world and changing it. The journal appears twice a year and is published in English. Acta Academica charges no submission and article processing fees.

Author interview and book review: Bert Olivier’s Why nothing seems to matter any more

Acta Academica is an accredited, open access South African journal dedicated to scholarship in the humanities. The journal publishes independently refereed research articles in the humanities. It promotes the perspectives of critical social theory and engagements with postcolonial and post-developmental debates with special references to (Southern) Africa. The journal is thereby in support of scholarly work that examines how the humanities in the twenty-first century respond to the double imperative of theorising the world and changing it. The journal appears twice a year and is published in English. Acta Academica charges no submission and article processing fees.

Restorative practices and their potential to foster resilient masculinities from patriarchal culture: a scoping review

This paper explores how strength-based approaches and restorative practices can foster resilience from patriarchal masculinities in Latin American adolescent boys. Gender violence from the perspective of critical theory will be described. The need for community engagement and critical pedagogy approaches are explored in the context of Latin America. A case study will be developed and analyzed about a specific experience with an allboys Costa Rican high school where efforts for a restorative initiative were unsuccessful. Implications for practitioners are developed through the description of intervention models from both resilience focused approaches and restorative practices.

Yaşamın Çevrimiçi Okulu: Alain de Botton'un ‘The School of Life’ Oluşumunun Strateji ve Taktik Olarak Analizi

Through a critical engagement with the literature on the conceptualizations of culture, this article focuses on the possibilities for empowerment and social agency that may be found in manifestations of everyday popular culture and the critiques of this approach that voice their oppressive nature. The article draws on Michel de Certeau’s distinction between strategies and tactics, as qualified by Michel Foucault’s use of the same conceptual pair, in order to develop a conceptual grid that emphasizes their imbrication or mutual conditioning. The key advantage offered by this grid is that it makes visible the inherently ambivalent nature of cultural products and the way in which constraining strategies and liberating tactical reversals are both made possible on the same shared site. It thus argues that popular cultural works may subvert the manipulative imperatives of the culture industry only from within a strategically structured social field. It thereby becomes possible to acknowledge the insights of the culture industry perspective of critical theory, while providing a more nuanced interpretation and evaluation of certain works of popular culture. The conceptual analysis is then applied to The School of Life (an online educational organization initiated by the popular author, philosopher, and entrepreneur Alain de Botton) both to offer an examination of this cultural artifact and to test the assumptions the theoretical framework developed.

PEMBENTUKAN NORMA AMBANG BATAS PARLEMEN DALAM PERSPEKTIF TEORI KRITIS JURGEN HABERMAS

This study tries to discuss the formation of parliamentary threshold norms in the perspective of Jurgen Habermas' critical theory. Through historical, conceptual and statutory approaches, this research attempts to examine prescriptively the dynamics of implementing parliamentary thresholds in legislative elections. This research makes the thinking of Jurgen Habermas and the thinkers around him as a benchmark and analysis. The results of this study indicate that the formation of norms and the application of parliamentary thresholds in elections based on the perspective of Jurgen Habermas's critical theory are appropriate because they do not only look at the legal aspect, but from the needs and interpretations based on other sciences. This research is expected to be able to help academics and legal practitioners, especially regarding electoral law, to be able to dig deeper into the perspective of law and its integration with other disciplines, not only from one or two experts, but from several other experts.

Serviço Social e a intervenção com famílias

O presente artigo tem por objetivo debater possíveis caminhos para uma intervenção com famílias para além das demandas institucionais sob à luz dos Fundamentos Histórico Teórico e Metodológicos do Serviço Social bem como do projeto ético-político da profissão. O estudo se propõe, no seu núcleo reflexivo, percorrer os caminhos teórico-metodológicos sobre a categoria família, apreendendo-a para além do senso comum e das reproduções de costumes e moralidades do cotidiano. Busca dar ênfase na reflexão sobre a construção sócio histórica dos direitos e da concepção normativa e teórica da família e a articulação destes processos com a construção da própria identidade profissional e de sua dimensão técnica-operativa. A partir de uma pesquisa bibliográfica e documental, o presente artigo direciona apontamentos para uma teoria crítica e interseccional de análise da categoria família enquanto forma-trabalho (JACQUES, 2017), buscando estabelecer para além da lógica do julgamento e do ajustamento, fruto dos resquícios do Serviço Social de Caso e do ecletismo na apropriação epistemológica em que o tema era tratado nas nossas intervenções.

Reframing Habermas’s colonization thesis: Neoliberalism as relinguistification

While the critique of neoliberalism, as the form of contemporary capitalism, has been advanced from Marxian and Foucauldian perspectives, it has had limited attention from the perspective of Critical Theory. Largely unrecognized is the suitability of the theory of reification for this critique, specifically, Habermas’s version. This article reconsiders Habermas’s colonization thesis as the basis for a critical theory of neoliberalism, refining its theoretical framework to deepen its critical diagnosis. Against the dismissal of the system–lifeworld concept, a novel critique is advanced to suggest its original elaboration fell confusedly between two versions of social systems theory. Drawing from late developments, the scheme is reinterpreted as distinguishing two forms of communication in capitalist society: delinguistified and linguistic. This opens the way to reframe and communicatively transform colonization as relinguistification; that is, the translation of monetary coding into ordinary language such that communicative action is distorted from within by reifying concepts.

Reflections on German and Polish Historical Policies of Holocaust Memory

Abstract The aim of these reflections is to confront the German and Polish historical policies concerning the Holocaust. The author outlines their different historical backgrounds, and takes note of the most heated debate of recent times on this subject that revolved around the amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) from January 2018. He ends with a case study analysis of the ways in which historians behave in the public sphere: the case of the researchers belonging to the so-called New Polish School of the Holocaust. Historical or memory policy is understood as the image of a society or a country as a whole, a certain hypostasis created by public discourses of political actors, intellectuals, and media people. This image plays an important role in international relations. Taking the perspective of critical theory, in particular an analysis of the status of knowledge/truth and its political role the author also explores media releases made by professional historians as well as political statements and actions directly pertinent to historical policy.

MEMBEDAH TEORI KRITIS MAZHAB FRANKFURT : SEJARAH, ASUMSI, DAN KONTRIBUSINYA TERHADAP PERKEMBANGAN TEORI ILMU SOSIAL

This article aims to examine the critical theory of the Fraknfurt school, especially those related to its history, concepts, assumptions, and contributions. Historically-geneologically, critical theory was born from the womb of Marxist theory. Although born from the womb of Marxist theory, critical theory is not too satisfied with the analysis of the Marxians who are considered too mechanistic economic determinism in seeing the social reality of Western capitalist society. According to critical theory, the Marxian analysis in viewing and analyzing the inequality of the reality of capitalist society in Europe is too reductionist, that is, it is the economic factor (structure) that determines socio-economic inequality or class conflict in a capitalist society. The critical theory developed by the people who call themselves Neo-Maxians, exists to further develop the classical Marxian analysis, which rests not only on economic factors, but also on other socio-economic factors. The Frankfurt school of critical social theory thought services pioneered by Horkheimer, however, has provided a relatively new (though not very new) theoretical perspective in seeing, understanding and analyzing social reality. This critical social theory perspective has contributed significantly to the development of social theory. One of them is that critical theory has contributed to the development of critical and emancipatory awareness of human practice in seeing social realities that are full of inequality and injustice.Keyword : Critical Theory, Frankfurt School, History, Development of Social Theory

Versklavte Replikanten und die Konstruktion von »Whiteness« in Blade Runner und Blade Runner 2049

The release of the anticipated sequel to Blade Runner and the largely unaltered adoption of the spatial and discursive setting in Blade Runner 2049 gave newfound relevance to the topic of the Whiteness of the enslaved replicants. Because Blade Runner positions the enslaved replicants in a discursive framework that repeatedly references African American history and slave narratives, their hyperbolically white depiction has caused concern and criticism among Anglophone scholars. This essay examines the construction of Whiteness in Blade Runner and discursive differences in the sequel Blade Runner 2049 from the perspective of Critical Race Theory, based mainly on the theoretical groundwork of Richard Dyer and Daniel Bernardi. It will outline the construction of whiteness as a means to critically portray the oppressive discourse in both films, by discussing the detachment of the replicants »invisible privileges« of whiteness. In order to appropriately characterize the, on its face very questionable, positioning of enslaved white replicants within a framework of African American slavery, the analysis will establish how both films utilize whiteness to construct a critical depiction of the historically stereotypical connection between blackness and slavery. The epitome of this criticism is to be found in the hyperbolically white stylization of Roy Batty. The depiction of »White Flight« in Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 will be discussed against the backdrop of racial Othering. The implied migration of white humans to the superior »Off-World« establishes a fear of the Other and its assimilation in the white population. The exclusion of black characters in the original film, and their inclusion in the sequel, affect the way in which the movie portrays replicants within the framework of African American enslavement. Along with the distinct non-hyperbolic depiction of the white replicants in Blade Runner 2049, this necessitates an analysis of the perpetuation of the oppressive discourse. This essay aims to establish the analytical fertility of Critical Whiteness Studies within the Germanophone Blade Runner debate.