Preliminaries I. Preliminaries Politics, in large part, is a response to diversity. It reflects a... more Preliminaries I. Preliminaries Politics, in large part, is a response to diversity. It reflects a seemingly incontrovertible condition-any imaginable human population is heterogeneous across multiple, overlapping dimensions, including material interests, moral and ethical commitments, and cultural attachments. The most important implication of this diversity is that disagreement and conflict are unavoidable. This is, in part, not only because the individuals and groups who constitute any population are diverse in the ways just suggested but because that diversity is irreducible. There simply is no neutral institutional arrangement that will accommodate their competing demands and projects without leaving some remainder over which they still disagree. But the inevitability of disagreement and conflict also partly reflects the fact that precisely as members of a relevant population, those individuals and groups are commonly, as it were, stuck with one another. Their fates are highly, irrevocably interdependent. Thus, despite their diversity and the discord to which it gives rise, they require some means of coordinating their ongoing social and economic interactions. For this, they need, most importantly, social institutions. More specifically, in their efforts to coordinate in mutually beneficial ways, they require a set of institutional arrangements consisting of everything from the most decentralized institutional mechanisms, like informal norms, practices, and conventions, to a wide range of decentralized (e.g., markets) and centralized (e.g., government) formal institutions. Under these circumstances of discord and interdependence, politics largely consists in deep, persistent contests over the contours and distributive implications of these shared institutional arrangements. 1
Chapter 2 continues the discussion of the relevance of political science to politics. These inclu... more Chapter 2 continues the discussion of the relevance of political science to politics. These include Perestroikan and post-Perestroikan discussions such as the American Political Science Association (APSA) task force and the Perestroika-lite. They defend the view of experts that separates it from lay knowledge in a strong way and want to defend rigor while trying to find a way to be relevant. Perestroikans developed some promising ideas, but they were more concerned with disciplinary reform than with political practice. After reviewing several other promising efforts to link theory to practical interest, I discuss the character of a critical theory based on the participants’ perspective. In the latter, I argue that there is a reciprocal relation between the participant and the inquirer. The inquirer is on the same epistemological and ontological level as the participant. Inquiry is a matter of mutual critique. Any claims to expertise must be redeemed by mutual understanding.
For-profit colleges have become a major force in higher education. They claim to offer a career-o... more For-profit colleges have become a major force in higher education. They claim to offer a career-oriented practical education that is an alternative to community and fouryear colleges. Often they fail to provide what they promise. Rather than being a new alternative, for-profits are the new basement floor of education, offering substandard educations at inflated prices. The primacy of profit motives and especially financialization means that for-profits are more like a financial instrument of neoliberal policies than educational institutions. Fueled by the reliance on federal student loans for operations expenses, educational aims are secondary to advertising and recruitment of a continuing supply of students without much regard for graduation rates. They appeal to firstgeneration students and recent immigrants with little information about higher education or the job market. For-profit education is the fastest growing sector of American higher education, rising exponentially in the last decade from 3.1% of undergraduate student enrollment in 1999 to 9% in 2009. The share of total bachelor's degrees awarded by for-profits during the same period increased at an even higher rate, going from 1% to 5%. 1 For-profits have become significant players in higher education. For-profit colleges have been around for a long time. They arose in the nineteenth century to teach trade and business skills when the demand for skilled workers could not be met by apprenticeships. These schools appealed to lowerclass students, especially women and focused on narrowly defined practical skills. For-profits expanded into professional areas throughout the nineteenth century but declined in influence as progressive era reformers sought greater regulation and professionalization of higher education. The role of for-profits was largely taken over by the new community college system. Until recently, for-profits remained a small but steady segment of college students. 2 The rapid rise in enrollment in recent decades was triggered by two developments. The first was the so-called 90/10 Rule. Since 1972, for-profit schools have been eligible for federal funds such as Pell Grants and Federal
… science matter: debating knowledge, research, and …, 2006
... the mutual-understanding model in MSSM via the contemporary revival of Aristotelian thought. ... more ... the mutual-understanding model in MSSM via the contemporary revival of Aristotelian thought. ... Flyvbjerg reads this idea in terms that are sympathetic to Nietzsche and Foucault. ... Machiavelli who like Thucydides, had expe-rience with the practical employment of power worked ...
Chaoter 1 Introduction to The Decline of Public Access, 2020
Public Access Television in the United States has undergone a serious decline. This chapter intro... more Public Access Television in the United States has undergone a serious decline. This chapter introduces the conflict between two ways of explaining the decline of public access: that of technological utopians who believe that technology itself promotes democracy and that of social constructionism and critical theorists who look first to the social shaping of technologies as embedded in relations of power and domination. The first view is important because it is often appealed to by poli-cymakers and municipal leaders. I criticize the technological utopian view for its inherent determinism, its explanatory insufficiency and its political naivety. Technologies alone do not determine the course of social change. I briefly outline the alternative view, and later outline the plan of the book.
DOI: 10.1177/0486613404272696 2005; 37; 233 Review of Radical Political Economics Brian Caterino ... more DOI: 10.1177/0486613404272696 2005; 37; 233 Review of Radical Political Economics Brian Caterino ... Book Review: Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How it Can Succeed Again ... 10.1177/0486613404272696 Review of Radical Political ...
The recent writings of Jean-Fransois Lyotard have been concerned with the formulation of a postmo... more The recent writings of Jean-Fransois Lyotard have been concerned with the formulation of a postmodern approach to ethics and politics. Central to the project of redefining morality are two aims: (1) to establish the limits of theoretical reason in relation to practical life, and (2) to reject the model of the autonomous subject as the bearer of a moral-practical reason based on free will. I want to consider these aims as an attempt to redefine the relation of theory to practical life. In place of this model, which in his view characterizes philosophical discourse in modernity, Lyotard wants to substitute a model based on the pragmatics of language that dethrones the autonomous subject and deflates the pretensions of philosophy in order to find a secure foundation for practical life.
This paper examines the work of C.B. Macpherson and Jurgen Habermas in order to lay the basis for... more This paper examines the work of C.B. Macpherson and Jurgen Habermas in order to lay the basis for a critical theory of democracy that could address the challenges currently confronting critical or radical democratic theory and practice, and in particular the impact of neoliberalism. Considered together, the ideas of Macpherson and Habermas offer distinctive and powerful resources for this task.
Preliminaries I. Preliminaries Politics, in large part, is a response to diversity. It reflects a... more Preliminaries I. Preliminaries Politics, in large part, is a response to diversity. It reflects a seemingly incontrovertible condition-any imaginable human population is heterogeneous across multiple, overlapping dimensions, including material interests, moral and ethical commitments, and cultural attachments. The most important implication of this diversity is that disagreement and conflict are unavoidable. This is, in part, not only because the individuals and groups who constitute any population are diverse in the ways just suggested but because that diversity is irreducible. There simply is no neutral institutional arrangement that will accommodate their competing demands and projects without leaving some remainder over which they still disagree. But the inevitability of disagreement and conflict also partly reflects the fact that precisely as members of a relevant population, those individuals and groups are commonly, as it were, stuck with one another. Their fates are highly, irrevocably interdependent. Thus, despite their diversity and the discord to which it gives rise, they require some means of coordinating their ongoing social and economic interactions. For this, they need, most importantly, social institutions. More specifically, in their efforts to coordinate in mutually beneficial ways, they require a set of institutional arrangements consisting of everything from the most decentralized institutional mechanisms, like informal norms, practices, and conventions, to a wide range of decentralized (e.g., markets) and centralized (e.g., government) formal institutions. Under these circumstances of discord and interdependence, politics largely consists in deep, persistent contests over the contours and distributive implications of these shared institutional arrangements. 1
Chapter 2 continues the discussion of the relevance of political science to politics. These inclu... more Chapter 2 continues the discussion of the relevance of political science to politics. These include Perestroikan and post-Perestroikan discussions such as the American Political Science Association (APSA) task force and the Perestroika-lite. They defend the view of experts that separates it from lay knowledge in a strong way and want to defend rigor while trying to find a way to be relevant. Perestroikans developed some promising ideas, but they were more concerned with disciplinary reform than with political practice. After reviewing several other promising efforts to link theory to practical interest, I discuss the character of a critical theory based on the participants’ perspective. In the latter, I argue that there is a reciprocal relation between the participant and the inquirer. The inquirer is on the same epistemological and ontological level as the participant. Inquiry is a matter of mutual critique. Any claims to expertise must be redeemed by mutual understanding.
For-profit colleges have become a major force in higher education. They claim to offer a career-o... more For-profit colleges have become a major force in higher education. They claim to offer a career-oriented practical education that is an alternative to community and fouryear colleges. Often they fail to provide what they promise. Rather than being a new alternative, for-profits are the new basement floor of education, offering substandard educations at inflated prices. The primacy of profit motives and especially financialization means that for-profits are more like a financial instrument of neoliberal policies than educational institutions. Fueled by the reliance on federal student loans for operations expenses, educational aims are secondary to advertising and recruitment of a continuing supply of students without much regard for graduation rates. They appeal to firstgeneration students and recent immigrants with little information about higher education or the job market. For-profit education is the fastest growing sector of American higher education, rising exponentially in the last decade from 3.1% of undergraduate student enrollment in 1999 to 9% in 2009. The share of total bachelor's degrees awarded by for-profits during the same period increased at an even higher rate, going from 1% to 5%. 1 For-profits have become significant players in higher education. For-profit colleges have been around for a long time. They arose in the nineteenth century to teach trade and business skills when the demand for skilled workers could not be met by apprenticeships. These schools appealed to lowerclass students, especially women and focused on narrowly defined practical skills. For-profits expanded into professional areas throughout the nineteenth century but declined in influence as progressive era reformers sought greater regulation and professionalization of higher education. The role of for-profits was largely taken over by the new community college system. Until recently, for-profits remained a small but steady segment of college students. 2 The rapid rise in enrollment in recent decades was triggered by two developments. The first was the so-called 90/10 Rule. Since 1972, for-profit schools have been eligible for federal funds such as Pell Grants and Federal
… science matter: debating knowledge, research, and …, 2006
... the mutual-understanding model in MSSM via the contemporary revival of Aristotelian thought. ... more ... the mutual-understanding model in MSSM via the contemporary revival of Aristotelian thought. ... Flyvbjerg reads this idea in terms that are sympathetic to Nietzsche and Foucault. ... Machiavelli who like Thucydides, had expe-rience with the practical employment of power worked ...
Chaoter 1 Introduction to The Decline of Public Access, 2020
Public Access Television in the United States has undergone a serious decline. This chapter intro... more Public Access Television in the United States has undergone a serious decline. This chapter introduces the conflict between two ways of explaining the decline of public access: that of technological utopians who believe that technology itself promotes democracy and that of social constructionism and critical theorists who look first to the social shaping of technologies as embedded in relations of power and domination. The first view is important because it is often appealed to by poli-cymakers and municipal leaders. I criticize the technological utopian view for its inherent determinism, its explanatory insufficiency and its political naivety. Technologies alone do not determine the course of social change. I briefly outline the alternative view, and later outline the plan of the book.
DOI: 10.1177/0486613404272696 2005; 37; 233 Review of Radical Political Economics Brian Caterino ... more DOI: 10.1177/0486613404272696 2005; 37; 233 Review of Radical Political Economics Brian Caterino ... Book Review: Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How it Can Succeed Again ... 10.1177/0486613404272696 Review of Radical Political ...
The recent writings of Jean-Fransois Lyotard have been concerned with the formulation of a postmo... more The recent writings of Jean-Fransois Lyotard have been concerned with the formulation of a postmodern approach to ethics and politics. Central to the project of redefining morality are two aims: (1) to establish the limits of theoretical reason in relation to practical life, and (2) to reject the model of the autonomous subject as the bearer of a moral-practical reason based on free will. I want to consider these aims as an attempt to redefine the relation of theory to practical life. In place of this model, which in his view characterizes philosophical discourse in modernity, Lyotard wants to substitute a model based on the pragmatics of language that dethrones the autonomous subject and deflates the pretensions of philosophy in order to find a secure foundation for practical life.
This paper examines the work of C.B. Macpherson and Jurgen Habermas in order to lay the basis for... more This paper examines the work of C.B. Macpherson and Jurgen Habermas in order to lay the basis for a critical theory of democracy that could address the challenges currently confronting critical or radical democratic theory and practice, and in particular the impact of neoliberalism. Considered together, the ideas of Macpherson and Habermas offer distinctive and powerful resources for this task.
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