Recovering the critical potential of social pathology diagnosis

Abstract

While the framework of social pathology remains a crucial tool for critical social theorists, there is confusion and debate surrounding the precise nature of the heuristic. The core argument of this article is that while the diagnosis of social pathology harbours radical potential as a critical device, recent developments have led to the ascendancy of a restrictive, recognition-cognitive understanding. I argue that this has displaced alternate, more radical framings. To illustrate the changing face of the heuristic, this article opens by articulating the merits and demerits of five predominant conceptions of social pathology. The second section elucidates the turn to increasingly view social pathology in a manner compatible with just one of these five framings. By drawing on, and extending, the existing critical literature, I seek to demonstrate the relative limitations of such an understanding. Throughout this analysis, I argue for the continued relevance of social pathology diagnosis, the need for sustained critical scholarship, and the dangers of embracing too readily the turn to an exclusively recognition-cognitive understanding of social pathology.

Is populism a social pathology? The myth of immediacy and its effects

“…However, the notion is not uncontroversial. Some of its versions, particularly those drawing on Axel Honneths's theory of recognition, have been criticized both for their limitations in providing a radical critical analysis of society (Freyenhagen, 2015;Harris, 2019;Thompson, 2016). Indeed, there are alternative understandings of social pathology in the literature, which do not share many of Axel Honneth's recognition-theoretical premises, but which nonetheless draw on the Critical Theory tradition of the Frankfurt School (Harris, 2019;see Fromm, [1955see Fromm, [ ] 1963.…”

From sociology to social theory: Critical cosmopolitanism, modernity, and post-universalism

“…The critical charge lies in his normative interrogation of the socio-political contradictions emanating from the conflictual and integrative dynamics of late modernity. While this sits Beck’s work close to Frankfurt School pathology diagnosing social criticism (see Harris, 2020), he proceeds through a distinct, empirical-normative approach.…”

Reconstructing Erich Fromm’s ‘pathology of normalcy’: Transcending the recognition-cognitive paradigm in the diagnosis of social pathologies

“…The last few years have seen the ascent of a problematic 'recognition-cognitive' framing of social pathology (Harris, 2019). This has occurred despite the contemporaneous resurgence in interest in the notion of social pathology more broadly (see Smith;2017, inter alia).…”

“…Drawing on Freyenhagen (2015), I have argued elsewhere that such a framing is excessively cognitive: social pathologies do not merely exist 'in the head' (Freyenhagen, 2015: 136;Harris, 2019;see Laitinen, 2015;Smith, 2017: 103). In accord with Neuhouser (2012), and as the following engagement with Fromm underscores, there are numerous social maladies which exist independently of human cognition: they are rooted in the dynamics and modalities of social processes themselves.…”

“…Fromm thus offers an intuitive point of departure for attempts to overcome limitations in contemporary Critical Theory (Durkin, 2014), particularly where current limitations focus upon unduly cognitivist accounts of social pathologies. This article starts by rearticulating the limitations of the dominant 'recognition-cognitive' approach to social pathology scholarship (Harris, 2019). Such a framing is held to be philosophically found-wanting due to its neo-idealist foundations (Thompson, 2016).…”