Myspace.com:

History, Theory & Method: Critical Theory vs. Problem-Solving Theory
With specific reference to: Anthropogenic Climatic Forcing (problematising climate change knowledge)

Ruth Thomas-Pellicer
Centre for Environmental Strategy
Jointly with the Department of Sociology
University of Surrey

Place, Date, Time – 19th October, University of Sussex, Falmer House 228, 4.30pm

Objective – The session will explore the methodological implications of a piece of research critical in method, as opposed to one aimed at problem-solving. Note that any ‘research method’, whether of qualitative or quantitative nature, is compatible with either critical or problem-solving theory. To put it in a metaphor, theory fashions the spirit of the piece of academic work, whilst the ‘research method’ dictates its letter. Relevance – The session should be interesting in its own right. It may however appear particularly illuminative to those researchers at the stage when their methodologies are being defined.

Readings

[i.] FOUCAULT, Michel (1996) ‘What is Critique?’ James Schmidt, (1996) (ed.), What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press; pp. 382-395. Lecture given at the Sorbonne on 27 May 1978; arguably, one of the finest essays of the French thinker.
[ii.] COX, Robert W. (1981), ‘Social forces, states, and world orders: beyond international relations theory’, in Robert W. Cox with Timothy J. Sinclair, (1996 [1999]) Approaches to World Order, Cambridge, New York & Melbourne: Cambridge University Press; pp. 85-123. First published in the journal Millennium, and subsequently copiously reproduced. It marked a turning point in international relations theory. For the avid reader, the article is photocopied in full, yet for the purposes of our session, the focus will fall exclusively upon the passages under the heading ‘On perspective and purposes’ pp. 87-91.