Affinities between the project of dynamic theory and the tradition of critical theory: A sketch

Abstract

First, dynamic theorizing requires a degree of recognition, and a willingness to confront “reality” that it would not occur to most social scientists is either possible or necessary, for each of the social sciences to take steps toward actualizing the purposes that are posed by their subject matter, respectively. This problem is most evident in economics as a mainstream discipline. Its proponents are less concerned with doing justice to the nature of economic processes, and especially the gravity they exert in modern societies, on politics, culture, and society. Rather, mainstream economists are preoccupied with refining frameworks and tools that bear the stamp of legitimacy and respectability, within the confines of their discipline. The question of whether or not those frameworks and tools relate directly to processes in modern societies is not only part of their professional concerns. Instead, it is largely immaterial, since reaffirming the boundaries and analytical imperatives of economics as an established and increasingly powerful discipline is a precondition of membership in an exclusive club whose importance and legitimacy is widely recognized, and rarely closely examined. In this sense, economics is an example and illustration par excellence for the day-to-day operations and practices of science verging on ideology (in the sense of moral, intellectual, or political frameworks whose basic assumptions and relationship to legitimating claims must not be identified, and especially not questioned), and of always being in danger of turning into an ideology.

Citation

Dahms, H.F. (2010), "Affinities between the project of dynamic theory and the tradition of critical theory: A sketch", Dahms, H.F. and Hazelrigg, L. (Ed.) Theorizing the Dynamics of Social Processes (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Vol. 27), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 81-97. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0278-1204(2010)0000027006