CRITICAL THEORY- RELEVANCE IN

RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

Science- Systematic quest for knowledge

Philosophy of science- Conceptual roots providing framework for the

quest for knowledge

Philosophical
Anchors

rhetorical
ontology epistemology axiology methodology
structure
A paradigm can be defined as a “set of interrelated assumptions about the social
world which provides a philosophical and conceptual framework for the organized
study of that world” (Filstead, 1979).
The paradigm selected guides the researcher in philosophical assumptions about the
research and in the selection of tools, instruments, participants, and methods used in
the study (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000b).
Guba and Lincoln (Competing Paradigms In Qualitative Research, 1994)
• Positivism
• Post-positivism,
• Constructivism–Interpretivism, and
• Critical theory.
 Positivism Post-positivism Constructivism– Critical theory
Interpretivism
Ontology naı¨ve realism critical realism relativist position reality-power relations, socially
& historically constituted
Epistemology dualism and modified transactional and transactional and subjectivist;
objectivism dualism/objectivism subjectivist Dialectic; transformation,
empowerment & emancipation
Axiology emotionally detached emotionally detached Erlebnis- acknowledge, value biases expected to
investigative inquiry investigative inquiry cannot eliminate influence the research process
and outcome
Methodology true experiments and true experiments and naturalistic inquiry, naturalistic inquiry, qualitative
analog methods, quasi- analog methods, qualitative research research methods such as in-
experimental methods quasi-experimental methods such as in- depth interviewing, participant
methods depth interviewing, observation
participant observation
Rhetorical Structure rhetoric- Precise & rhetoric- Precise & rhetoric- 1st person & rhetoric- 1st person &
scientific, objective scientific, objective personalized, personalized,
researcher’s experience, researcher’s experience,
expectations, biases, & expectations, biases, & values
values
EMERGENCE OF CRITICAL THEORY
• Critical theory- theoretical tradition developed by the Frankfurt school, Institute of Social
Research, at the University of Frankfurt.
• Critical theories aim to critique, emancipate and thereby, transform society as a whole.
• It differs from traditional theory, which focuses only on understanding or explaining society.
• Critical theories aim to dig beneath the surface of social life and uncover the assumptions that
keep human beings from a full and true understanding of how the world works, eventually
enabling them to partake in a “true democracy.”
• Critical theorists claim that the social sciences must integrate philosophy into their methods to
make their findings practical to advance the moral cause of freeing humans from circumstances
such as domination and oppression (Horkheimer, 1993).
• Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse began with the German tradition of
philosophical and social thought, especially that of Marx, Kant, Hegel, and Weber.
• Background
Political sensibilities were influenced by the devastations of World War I, postwar
Germany with its economic depression marked by inflation and unemployment, and the
failed strikes and protests in Germany and Central Europe in this same period. The
world was in urgent need of reinterpretation. From this perspective, they defied Marxist
orthodoxy while deepening their belief that injustice and subjugation shape the lived
world. Focusing their attention on the changing nature of capitalism, the early critical
theorists analyzed the mutating forms of domination that accompanied this change.
The politically charged atmosphere of the 1960s caused frustration by forms of
domination emerging from a post-Enlightenment culture nurtured by capitalism.
Critical theory’s dialectical concern with the social construction of experience offered
new hope for emancipatory forms of social research.
We are defining a critical scholar/pedagogue/activist as a researcher, teacher, or theorist who attempts to
use her or his work as a form of social or cultural criticism and who accepts certain basic assumptions:
• All thought is fundamentally mediated by power relations that are social and historically constituted.
• Facts can never be isolated from the domain of values or removed from some form of ideological
inscription.
• The relationship between concept and object and between signifier and signified is never stable or
fixed and is often mediated by the social relations of capitalist production and consumption.
• Language is central to the formation of subjectivity (conscious and unconscious awareness).
• Certain groups in any society and particular societies are privileged over others and, although the
reasons for this privileging may vary widely, the oppression that characterizes contemporary societies is
most forcefully reproduced when subordinates accept their social status as natural, necessary, or
inevitable.
• Oppression has many faces, and focusing on only one at the expense of others (e.g., class oppression
vs. racism) often elides the interconnections among them.
• Mainstream research practices are generally, although most often unwittingly, implicated in the
maintenance of capitalist production and in the reproduction of systems of oppression, including
poverty, racism, sexism, heteronormativity, religious oppression, abilism, and others (De Lissovoy &
McLaren, 2003; Gresson, 2006; Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1997; Monzó, 2015a; Rodriguez & Villaverde,
2000; Steinberg, 2009, 2015b; Villaverde, 2007).
Critical theory should not be treated as a universal grammar of revolutionary thought. There
are criticalist schools in many fields which inform critical theories-

• Social theorists such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieau, Michel

Foucault, Simone de Beauvior, Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, Raymond Williams, and
Stuart Hall;

• Critical race theorists, such as Franz Fanon and Ralph Ellison

• Feminists such as Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Gloria
Anzaldúa, Patricia Hill Collins, and Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak

• Queer theorists like Michael Foucault, Gayle Rubin, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Judith
Butler
• Social theorist such as Foucault highlight the relationship between
power and knowledge. Power allows for the dictation of what
knowledge is produced and disseminated throughout society. In short,
power decides what is knowable and by whom. Therefore, those
who produce knowledge have this accepted as truth because of the
other forms of power they possess such as political, academic or
economic power. Foucault emphasises, however, that most knowledge
is not hierarchical and exists at the level of everyday social
interactions.
• Critical race theory (1980s) is an intellectual movement and a
framework of legal analysis according to which race is a culturally
invented category used to oppress people of colour. Critical race
theorists argue that laws that explicitly impose a neutral standard with
respect to race are capable of addressing only the most shocking forms
of race-based oppression and often have only limited (though still
valuable) practical benefits for disadvantaged minority groups, affording
them equality of treatment or opportunity but not equality of results.
Feminist theory (1970-80s) has always been about viewing the social world in a
way that illuminates the forces that create and support inequality, oppression, and
injustice, and in doing so, promotes the pursuit of equality and justice. Since the
experiences and perspectives of women and girls were historically excluded for
years from social theory and social science, much feminist theory has focused on
their interactions and experiences within society to ensure that half the world's
population is not left out of how we see and understand social forces, relations, and
problems.
• Queer Theory (1990s) critically examines the way power works to
institutionalize and legitimate certain forms and expressions of sexuality
and gender while stigmatizing others. Queer theory follows and expands
upon feminist theory by refusing the belief that sexuality and gender
identity are essentialist categories determined by biology that can thus
be empirically judged by fixed standards of morality and “truth.”
Essentially four different “emergent” schools of social inquiry in
criticalist traditions :
• the neo-Marxist tradition of critical theory associated with the work
of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse;
• the genealogical writings of Michel Foucault;
• the practices of poststructuralist deconstruction associated with
Derrida; and
• postmodernist currents associated with Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard,
Ebert, and others