Rethinking Social Criticism: Rules, Logic and Internal Critique

Abstract

The 'cultural turn' in social thought, and the rise of interpretive modes of social analysis, have raised the issue of how social criticism can legitimately be undertaken given the central role of actors' understandings in constituting social reality. In this article I examine this issue by exploring debates around Winch's interpretive approach. I suggest that Winch's arguments usefully identify problems with external criticism, that is, criticism that attempts to contrast actors' beliefs with the social world as it really is. However, I also argue that Winch's Wittgensteinian account of rule-following, on a plausible interpretation, places excessively strong restrictions on the possibility of internal criticism. In order to show the problems with such restrictions, I critically appraise two accounts of social criticism that are compatible with Winch's arguments, those of Pleasants and Giddens, arguing that neither offers a satisfactory analysis. I then argue that if a viable notion of internal criticism is to be established Winch's account of rulefollowing needs to be rejected. Having briefly offered an alternative, I suggest that it allows a more convincing conception of internal criticism, in which the understandings of actors can be criticized on the basis of their internal contradictions. The article then attempts to meet a possible objection to this position: that the logical judgements of contradiction and coherence required for immanent critique are not cross-culturally valid. I claim that such judgements are generally valid, and develop an argument for this position based on a critique of Lukes's arguments.

Residuality and Inconsistency in the Interpretation of Socio-Theoretical Systems

“…Our approach highlights this dual role of metatheory by offering an internalist metatheory of core and peripheral theoretical elements, an analysis that can help theorists in the evaluation of a theory in its own terms. We are not offering arguments against external modes of critique (though see Savage, 1981;Kemp, 2003 for some thoughts), so much as arguing for the value of an internalist approach which focuses on the coherence of the theoretical elements avowed by an author. In order to do so we will be drawing on the work of Talcott Parsons.…”

Institutions and Social Structures1

“…On this understanding, however, rules are little more than intersubjectively held meanings about appropriate ways of behaving: they do not exist as phenomena external to the agent. By contrast, the conception of rules I operate with is a more realist version, wherein rules “have determinate content of their own, outside of the agreement of actors” (Kemp 2003: 63). Rules, just like social structures and institutions, are irreducible to the meanings or actions of agents; indeed, rules satisfy points (a) to (i) mentioned above.…”

Evaluating Interests in Social Science: Beyond Objectivist Evaluation and the Non-judgemental Stance

“…This is based on the claim, supported by interpretive arguments, that actors make decisions and take actions based on their understandings of the world (see for example Winch, 1958). But it goes further than interpretive arguments by contending that if actors draw on problematic understandings in their decisions about what to do, there will be problematic consequences for them (Holmwood, 1996;Kemp, 2003). …”