To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: cow-AT-aber.ac.uk (Colin Wight)
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Help, continued 
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 1997 09:32:58 +0100


Hi Ruth,

My thoughts exactly. But here in Britain we are under the cosh of what's quaintly called the "research assessment exercise". And when somebody writes such a bad piece on your subject it is simply foolish to miss up the chance of an easy publication. 

Anyway this is not the best gem from this postmodern writer. Consider the following:

Bhaskar apparently say on p. 45 of RTS, that , 'According to scientific realism, agents and structures are not two moments of the same process, but radically different types of things.' 

OK, maybe I am being churlish here but RB doesn't say this in RTS but in PON.

The writer also goes on, referring to structures in the social world, 'However, one can readily argue against Bhaskar that structures, and regimes, are conceptual creations not concrete entities.....This radically calls into question an understanding of structures as intransitive objects of inquiry existing independently of human activity.'

I think to myself, has this person read any Bhaskar? Does the concept and activity dependent nature of social structures not ring any bells here.

The writer goes on, and it gets really good from here (oh, BTW, RB is also claimed to have an essentialist view of structure - whatever that might mean)

'Scientific realists might object to this criticism and point out that they separate the ability to observe a phenomenon from the ability to explain its properties, and that therefore the inability to observe structures from an external Archimedian (another scare word, Colin's comment) point does not imply the inability to know and explain the properties of structures. This may be the case, but once the impossibility of observing structures from an Archimedian point is raised, wew can contemplate the possibility that perhaps there is no external objective structure to be known at all, i.e. that the very possibility of 'objective' structures is lodged within the self-presence of the subjects, who are themselves socially/discursively constructed. Any neat distinction between subjects and objects is thereby effaced.'

The writer also claims that RB's notion of structure is rules and norms. Where this came from I don't know.

A question also, what is the difference between a causal mechanism and a structure (in the natural or social world) as the writer (I hesitate to use the word scholar) also claims that RB claims that structures have mechanisms. 

Was it the Rabbit that said to Alice, 'When I use a word it means exactly what I want it to mean.'

Anyway, this is all very embarassing to me, This is supposed to be cutting edge stuff in my discipline.  

Thanks for the help.

P.S. I hope the list doesn't mind but I gave it a mention in the acknowledgements page of my thesis.


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Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Tel: (01970) 621769

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