File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2000/bhaskar.0004, message 6


From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gis.net>
Subject: Re: BHA: What's the meaning of the insult?
Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2000 18:09:45 -0400


You know, I think it was a bit inappropriate of me to wonder aloud whether
the Justin Schwartz who wrote the comment was the one I distantly knew of.
As I indicated then, my knowledge is faint, it may not be the same person,
and even if it is I may have been misinformed by whatever it was I may have
once heard.  And most of all, whatever the case, it's not germane to the
issue.  Sorry, everyone.

Anyway, as Andrew Hagen suggests, while there is surely a lot of loyalty
shown RB on this list, I think it's earned, and I don't think that as a
whole we could reasonably be called cultists, or even uncritical.  Ruth, for
example, has raised a large number of very sharp and interesting questions;
I find his semiotics wanting and don't agree with various specifics of his
social ontology; others have also raised concerns -- and these discussions
are welcome.  Or so it's seemed to me.

Re Nick's question (which someone may have replied to already --
unfortunately I'm having trouble with my email), there definitely are
variant streams of critical realism.  Archer, for example, explicitly makes
room for God, and in many other ways does not seem particularly marxist.
This points to a difficulty in Hans's discussion: CR, in Bhaskar's terms, is
not *specifically* marxist, even if RB (obviously) drew much from marxism
and is committed to its goals and theories.  Nevertheless CR is an umbrella
for a number of possible social and economic theories, which is why Archer
can be a major contributor to it.  So I don't think it's entirely fair to
chide writers for claiming to be critical realists but not displaying
marxist colors.

(Incidentally, I don't quite buy Tim's assertion that publishing with Verso
puts a writer outside the pale.  *Imagined Communities* is surely very
widely known, and if I remember right, Mike Davis's *City of Glass*, now
distributed by a mainstream publisher, was originally issued by Verso.  The
main advantages to Routledge are its marketing muscle and fashionability.)

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-mail.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce




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