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Symposium on Reorienting
Economics
Andrew
Sayer
(Lancaster
University, UK) © Copyright 2004 Andrew Sayer As someone who has benefited
from reading both Irene van Staveren’s and Tony
Lawson’s work I would like to respond to just two of the issues raised in van
Staveren’s critique of Lawson in PAER, no. 28, for at various points it reproduces
some common misunderstandings of realism (van Staveren,
1999; 2004; Lawson, 1997, 2003). These two issues are, first, the relations
between essentialism, universalism and determinism, and, second, the nature
of emotions. I believe that Lawson’s work already contains answers to van Staveren’s critique; in this response I basically wish to
provide additional sources of support for Lawson’s position regarding these
two sets of issues.
Essences,
universalism and determinism
The term ‘essentialism’ has been used in
many different ways, often involving slides between logically-independent
meanings of the term, so that ‘anti-essentialism’ has a number of different
targets (Sayer, 2000). However, I suggest that
behind the debates on essentialism there are two primary fears: firstly a
fear of epistemological dogmatism, involving claims to absolute truth or
privileged access to the world; and secondly, a fear of an ontological
assumption of determinism, according to which, what objects, including
people, actually do, is completely determined by their nature. Both fears are
justifiable, but the doctrines they concern are entailed neither by realism
nor essentialism. Regarding the first fear:
claims about the world are, as Lawson insists, fallible. Questioning the
authority of scientists implies – rightly – that they are fallible. But it is
vital to appreciate what that presupposes – namely that there must be
something existing independently of the claims about which they can be
mistaken. Thus fallibilism presupposes at least a
minimal realism – that the world is not simply a product of wishful thinking.
If the world were merely whatever we socially constructed/construed it as,
then that socially-constructed knowledge would be infallible. If knowledge
were merely relative to points of view, then there would be no grounds for
claiming that it can be mistaken. If we refuse ontology (and not merely keep
it hidden for strategic, political reasons) then the fallibility of knowledge
is unintelligible. The second fear, of
determinism, is based on the idea that attributing essences to things or
talking of human nature will lead to a radical underestimation of
contingency, novelty, variety and indeed the scope for social and political
change, hence leading to a kind of knowledge that affirms the status quo
rather than being emancipatory. Here it is
important not to confuse essentialism with determinism, and given her
advocacy of an Aristotelian perspective, it is puzzling that van Staveren should appear to do so. As John O’Neill has
argued, from an Aristotelian position, when we denote something as having an
essence, we distinguish between its essential properties – the ones that make
it that kind of object rather than another, and its accidental properties –
which it may or may not have, and which don’t make it a different kind of
object (O’Neill, 1994; see also C. Lawson, 1999). The essence of water can be
defined as H20;
whether it is in the form of rain or a river is a matter of accident rather
than essence. Water has certain causal powers, for example the ability to
turn into steam at a certain temperature and pressure, but whether these are
ever activated depends on contingently related conditions. A particular body
of water may exist forever without turning into steam. Its essence therefore
does not determine but merely constrains and enables what happens to it.
Similarly, possession of a womb may enable conception but does not determine
that its possessor ever conceives. Thus, as Lawson argues via a critical
realist route (Lawson, 2003, p. 239), talk of human nature need not imply
determinism. Nor
need it imply exact uniformity. Nature is not uniform but differentiated, and
often in complex ways that elude simple descriptions and dichotomies; for
example, human biological sex is not simply dimorphic. (Most empirical
regularities are only approximate. This is in keeping with the critical
realist argument, developed at length by Lawson, that the vast majority of
systems are open and hence unlikely to produce exact and enduring
regularities.) Deterministic and narrow conceptions of human nature which
exclude or pathologise particular groups should
obviously be thrown out – but they should be replaced by non-deterministic
and inclusive conceptions which are sensitive to physical variety, the deeply
social nature of human being and the capacity for cultural variety (Dupré, 2002). Anti-essentialism has been
dominant in feminism, and not surprisingly, for gender surely has no essence.
Gender does not have a stable, uniform fixed set of characteristics; rather
the term refers to common bundles of associations and contrasts and axes of
domination that are contestable and shift continually across space and time.
However it simply does not follow that because gender has no essence, nothing
has any essence. It may be that the concept of essence is not much use in
social science because most social phenomena lack the fixity and uniformity
associated with the term, though most are not merely ephemeral either. Many
social phenomena, like gender and families, are only relatively enduring and
varied in form and continually mutating. With its concepts of structures,
causal powers and susceptibilities, and its focus on social relations as the
primary object of study, critical realism offers a more flexible way of
dealing with objects which are only relatively enduring and which at any time
exhibit considerable variation. The structures and powers can change, indeed
sometimes through autopoieisis, though at any
particular time, they cannot do just anything. While anti-essentialism
might appear to liberate those whose oppression has been legitimized by being
(mis)represented as naturally-grounded, if it also
denies that we have any particular properties as human beings, as organic
bodies, then it loses all critical purchase on any oppressive exercise of
power, particularly through torture, mutilation or abuse (Soper,
1995a, p.138). This is disastrous for emancipatory
movements. As Kate Soper argues, in "denying that there are any instincts,
needs, pleasures or sensations which are not simply the effects of culture
but impose their own conditions upon its 'constructions', then it is
difficult to see what sense we can make of the notion of feminist reclamations
of the body or selfhood from the distorting and repressive representations to
which they have been culturally subjugated." (Soper,
1995b, 23). As regards universalism and
appeals to human nature, there are dangers of identifying local and
historically-specific characteristics as universal, and of failing to take
seriously the remarkable variety of cultural forms, including gender orders,
which shape people deeply. In response to the treatment of local variants as
universal or as the norm, and the common tendency to naturalise contingent
historical forms of domination, it is tempting to reject any notion of human
nature. Human beings are indeed extraordinarily diverse, but we should ask
what is it about them which enables them to exhibit such variety? Humans can
be profoundly culturally shaped in a vast variety of ways, but not just
anything can be culturally shaped. A lump of rock cannot take different
cultural forms (it may be externally construed in different culturally
mediated ways, and used in various ways, but limestone doesn’t change its
nature when we think about it differently, any more than the earth changed
shape when we decided it was round rather than flat.) Certain other species
are capable of cultural variation too, but that just begs the same question:
what is it about them which enables this? For it to be possible for anything
to be shaped in a particular way (for example by culture) it must be the kind
of thing which is susceptible to such shaping, that is, it must have (or have
acquired) the affordances and resistances which allow such shaping. As Andrew
Collier points out, far from removing the question of human nature, the
phenomenon of cultural variety actually poses it. It presupposes a universal
human capacity for cultural variation. Thus, a certain kind of universalism –
though not uniformity, with which it is often confused – is presupposed by
cultural variety (Collier, 2003). In this way, using a structured ontology,
we can understand both sameness and difference: we can see that multiple
variants and outcomes can be generated on the basis of common structures (see
Lawson, 2003, p. 242). The abstract level does, contra van Staveren, “allow for relations and differences”, for
social structures are constituted by internal relations and the whole point
of abstraction is to tease out relations and differences that enable and
constrain the blizzard of empirical data, and to distinguish which things are
merely contingently associated and which necessarily or internally related (Sayer, 2000). Moreover, in line with Soper’s point, we need to identify the capacities of
humans – and indeed other species - for flourishing and suffering, and their
needs (Lawson, 2003), thus enabling critiques of not just economic theories
but economic practices in terms of their effect on people’s
well-being. This accords with the Aristotelian position of Martha Nussbaum,
who has made important contributions to feminist development theory
(Nussbaum, 2000). To be sure there are many different forms of flourishing
and different cultures provide different conceptions of what constitutes
flourishing, and Nussbaum attempts to accommodate this. But not just anything
can be passed off as flourishing. If we were to insist that it was purely
culturally relative then we would have no warrant for using terms like
‘oppression’. Again we encounter a relation between general human needs and
specific, contingent variants, such as the general psychological need for
recognition and the innumerable forms that recognition takes in different
cultures. This is why Nussbaum describes her conception of the good as a
‘thick vague’ one, for while it includes many conditions of flourishing, they
are expressed in terms vague enough to allow for cultural variation and hence
avoid ethnocentrism. This also seems compatible with van Staveren’s
largely favourable commentary on Aristotle’s and Adam Smith’s discussions of
virtues, which mostly abstract from cultural variations (van Staveren, 1999). We cannot avoid some kind of
universalism. Different cultures provide different norms but this presupposes
that one of the distinctive features of humans is that they can understand,
internalise or contest these, often through exploiting tensions and
contradictions within cultural discourses, as in the case of the tension
between ideals of equality and gender inequalities. The feminist literature,
including van Staveren’s own work on the ethic of
care presupposes that all humans are in need of care at various times in
their lives, albeit in different ways. People are not just beings who have
preferences and make choices, but beings who are vulnerable, and dependent on
care. Thus all economies depend on, and distribute the provision and receipt
of care. One of the contributions of this literature is to improve our
economic theories by enriching our understanding of what it is to be human. Emotions
Van Staveren
endorses Julie Nelson’s claim that critical realism has a built-in bias
against emotion, counterposing this to science and
reason. This mistakes realism for positivism. Critical realists Margaret
Archer and Andrew Collier insistently reject the opposition of reason
and emotion, arguing that emotions have a cognitive element, providing an
embodied, usually unarticulated commentary on the world and our situation
within it, often providing highly perceptive discriminations among situations
(Archer, 2000, 2003; Collier, 2003). Hence both authors emphasize and value
the intelligence of emotions. As Martha Nussbaum puts it, emotions are
evaluative judgements regarding matters affecting or likely to affect
well-being (Nussbaum, 2001). There is no reason why critical realists should
not be comfortable with the idea of emotional reason. We are angry or happy about
things, proud or ashamed of actions. We are more emotionally affected
by the loss of a loved one than the loss of a pencil because the former is
more important for our well-being: the differences in emotional responses are
rational. Emotional reason involves a largely pre-discursive evaluation of
things such as the way others treat us and the effect that this is having or
is likely to have on us, for example whether they are respecting or
humiliating us, befriending or threatening us. Emotions also reflect our
deeply social nature (another universalist claim),
for as social beings we are psychologically dependent on others for their
recognition, love and approval. As a critical realist I
would recommend Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments as a
remarkable analysis of moral emotions in relation to concrete settings and
relationships (Smith, 1759). As Smith emphasizes, the evaluative judgements
involved in the various sentiments are fallible, such that, for example, the
observer of someone else’s misfortune cannot expect to know exactly what the
experience is like for that person. This again is wholly in line with a
realist position: for our judgements to be capable of being mistaken, there
must be things independent of them about which they can be mistaken. However,
although at times our emotional judgements may be ‘illusive’, as Smith put
it, for it to be possible for us to live as social actors, our judgements
must be fairly adequate for much of the time. Irene van Staveren’s
own excellent critique of ‘rational economic man’ is surely a critique of that
individual’s lack of a capacity for emotional reason and hence his inability
to function as a social actor (van Staveren, 1999).
Correcting this is central to a post-autistic economics. For example, as
Brennan and Pettit demonstrate, in order to understand the motivations and
efforts of workers, paid or unpaid, it is important to appreciate that this
is often profoundly affected by whether and how they are esteemed or
disesteemed (Brennan and Pettit, 2004). In addition to the invisible hand of
market incentives and the visible hand of rules and directives there can be
an intangible hand of regulation through esteem. Conclusion
Anti-realism may be dominant
in feminism, though often through a confusion between realism and positivism,
but as I have tried to show, feminists can be realists and realists can be
feminists, indeed without realism feminism is vulnerable to being dismissed
as a form of relativism. For further
arguments on the need of feminism to be realist, I refer readers to the work
of Kate Soper (1995a and b), Caroline New (1998,
2003, 2004); and Linda Martín Alcoff
(2005). References
Alcoff, L. Martín (2005) ‘The metaphysics of sex
and gender’, Radical Philosophy, forthcoming Brennan, G
and Pettit, P. (2004) The Economy of Esteem, Oxford: Oxford University
Press. Collier, A.
(2003) In Defence of Objectivity, London: Routledge. Dupré, J (2002) Human Nature and the Limits to Science, Oxford:
Oxford University Press Feminist Economics (2003) 9 (1) debate on
‘Is critical realism a useful ontology for feminist economics?’ pp. 93-170. Groff, R.
(2004) “Why Social Theorists Should Care About Metaphysics”, Paper presented
to Critical Realism and the Social Sciences conference, Queen’s University,
Kingston, Ontario, 24-5th September. Lawson, C.
(1999) ‘Realism, theory and individualism in the work of Carl Menger’, in S.Fleetwood (ed.) Critical Realism in Economics, London: Routledge, pp. 43-62. Lawson, T.
(1997) Economics and Reality, London: Routledge. Lawson, T.
(2003) Reorienting Economics, London: Routledge. New, C.
(1998) ‘Realism, Deconstruction and
the Feminist Standpoint’ in Journal for
the Theory of Social Behaviour,
28, 4,
349-372. New, C.
(2003) ‘Feminism, Deconstruction and Difference’. In J. Cruickshank (ed) Critical
Realism: The Difference it Makes. London: Routledge. New, C.
2004, ‘Sex and gender: a critical realist approach’, New Formations,
forthcoming. Nussbaum, M.C. 2000, Women and Human Development: The
Capabilities Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Neill, J.
(1994) ‘Essentialism and the market’ The Philosophical Forum, Vol.
XXVI (2), pp.87-100. Sayer, A. (2000) Realism and Social Science, London: Sage. Smith, A.
(1759) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Soper, K. (1995a) What is Nature?, Oxford: Blackwell. Soper, K. (1995b) ‘Forget Foucault?’ New Formations, 25,
pp.21-7. Staveren, I. van (1999) Caring for
Economics: An Aristotelian Perspective, Delft: Eburon. Staveren, I. van (2004) ‘Feminism and
realism: a contested relationship’ post-autistic economics review, no. 28, http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue28/VanStaveren29.htm. ___________________________ |