----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Elder-Vass" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2008 10:56 AM
Subject: Critical realism conference, Kings College London, July 2008
> **apologies for cross-posting**
>
> International Association for Critical Realism
> Annual conference July 11-13 2008, Kings College, London
> Grounds for Critique: Realism in the Natural and Human Sciences
> Plus pre-conference workshop: July 9-10, 2008
> Organiser: Professor Alan Norrie, Law School, King's College London
> Web site: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/law/events/iacr/
> Contact for further questions: [log in to unmask]
> Call for papers
> The Conference calls for papers from all areas in the arts and humanities,
> the natural and social sciences. It invites participants from both within
> and outside critical realism who are interested to explore critical
> realist philosophy, method and practice, encouraging a broad focus on the
> nature and grounds of critique.We live in a world of deep conflict, rapid
> change and flux, in which the problems facing human being and the natural
> world have never been greater. Challenges posed by techno-scientific fixes
> to the problems of nature and human nature; by the re-emergence of
> imperialist conflicts in the name of neo-liberal economics and politics;
> and by the re-assertion of the division between the secular and the
> spiritual as the form of modernity and the basis for taking sides in
> conflict: all provide ample grounds for critique. They also raise the
> crucial question: what are the grounds of critique at a time when, it is
> said, critical thinking has lost its way.
>
> Questions of critique are central to critical realism. Whether it be
> immanent critique throughout its development, explanatory and emancipatory
> critique in its second phase, dialectical and meta-critique in its third,
> or the most recent assertion of the meta-real, critical realists have
> sought to be critical about critique. From these different standpoints,
> they have drawn on or built bridges to theorists as diverse as Plato and
> Aristotle, Hegel and Marx, Adorno, Habermas and Derrida. So broad a
> palette requires reflexivity: how do the different forms of critique
> relate to each other, what are their limits, how are they critically
> assessed? What is specific to critical realist critiques? How are
> critiques rooted in the western tradition assessed in the light of those
> from elsewhere in the world? How does critical realism deal with the 'end
> of critique'? How does it shed light on problems of interdisciplinarity?
> How does it make emancipation possible?
>
> Such questions lead us more concretely to ways of doing critique. What are
> our critical methods? How does critique inform normative theory and
> argument? How do we 'do critique' in relation to both the social and
> natural sciences and the world? How does it inform political activism and
> movements for emancipation, or policy formation and outcomes? How is
> critical realism 'applied', i.e., how does it engage with particular
> fields or objects, or establish research exemplars and examples? How does
> it approach, negotiate, challenge and overcome disciplinary boundaries?
> The deadline for receiving abstracts for papers is Friday 7 March 2008.
>
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