•  4
    Adorno and Castoriadis emphasize the significance of identity thinking to the social-historical constellation of capitalism. Adorno contends that the principle of identity constitutes the nucleus of the capitalist imaginary, because it underpins commodity exchange and the formal rationality of bureaucratic administration. Castoriadis associates the logic of identity with the same tendencies; but he accentuates the horizon of meaning that animates the deployment of this logic. Adorno and Castoria…Read more
  •  2
    Comparative moral economies of crisis
    with Benjamin Manning
    Thesis Eleven 170 (1): 78-98. 2022.
    At times of crisis, existing institutional arrangements of societies are thrown into question. Crises that occur in multiple societies simultaneously present rare opportunities for comparative empirical analysis. Social theory can reveal the framing conditions of the responses to crises and the sources of variations between them. This paper compares the immediate responses of the Australian, UK and US governments to the global COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with regard to financing lockdowns, a…Read more
  •  1
    Taylor and Politics: A Critical Introduction
    with Andrew Lynch
    Edinburgh University Press. 2018.
    "Charles Taylor is one of the most influential contemporary philosophers, arguably the most important living political philosopher writing in English. Taylor and Politics assesses Taylor's thought and its relevance to contemporary political challenges, especially religion and secularity, multicultural diversity, political alienation and demands for greater democracy. Craig Browne and Andrew Lynch outline Taylor's key concepts and highlight the substantive applications of his ideas. They explain …Read more
  •  5
    Cornelius Castoriadis made a significant and distinctive contribution to the development of the notion of the dialectic of control. In the first instance, Castoriadis formulated an important reconceptualization and restatement of the Marxist conception of the central contradiction of capitalism. He argued that capitalism depended on the creativity of workers while excluding them from effective control. Similarly, Castoriadis sought to extend the Marxist analysis of those tendencies present withi…Read more
  •  9
    The End of Immanent Critique?
    European Journal of Social Theory 11 (1): 5-24. 2008.
    Immanent critique has been a defining feature of the programme of critical social theory. It is a methodology that underpins theoretical diagnoses of contemporary society, based on its linking normative and empirical modes of analysis. Immanent critique distinctively seeks to discern emancipatory or democratizing tendencies. However, the viability of immanent critique is currently in question. Habermas argued that it was necessary to revise the normative foundations of critical social theory, la…Read more
  •  9
    Conceptualising the Political Imaginary: An Introduction to the Special Issue
    with Paula Diehl
    Social Epistemology 33 (5): 393-397. 2019.
    ABSTRACTThe political is changing its shape. Ideologies are no longer stable, but instead build hybrid combinations. Populism is getting popular. In addition, there are new forms of political exper...
  •  20
    The Modern Political Imaginary and the Problem of Hierarchy
    Social Epistemology 33 (5): 398-409. 2019.
    Hierarchy has been a central concern of work on the modern political imaginary. The need to elucidate hierarchy’s deeper sources and its legitimations were some of the motivations behind Cornelius Castoriadis’ development of the notion of the imaginary. The work of Claude Lefort on the political imaginary similarly commences from a critical analysis of the hierarchical form of bureaucracy and its place in the constitution of totalitarian political regimes. In a different vein, Charles Taylor’s c…Read more
  •  34
    In this discussion with Craig Browne, Luc Boltanski comments on how his recent work reconsiders the questions of agency and the nature of social explanation. Boltanski reflects on the connections between his investigations of grammars of justifications and his later work with Eve Chiapello on the historical transition to a new spirit of capitalism. The significance of politics, conflict and critique to Boltanski’s sociology are highlighted. Bolanski explains why he regards May 1968 as a major di…Read more
  •  13
    Introduction to Special Issue on the work of Luc Boltanski
    Thesis Eleven 124 (1): 3-6. 2014.
    This introduction to a special issue of Thesis Eleven devoted to the work of Luc Boltanski overviews the various contributions to the issue, including the interview it contains with Luc Boltanski that was conducted by Craig Browne. Boltanski is described as challenging formulaic approaches in sociology and as developing instead novel theoretical insights and an innovative pragmatist methodology. It is suggested that these innovations are complemented by Boltanski’s substantial investigations int…Read more
  •  28
    The institution of critique and the critique of institutions
    Thesis Eleven 124 (1): 20-52. 2014.
    My paper argues that Luc Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology makes an important contribution to two central concerns of critical theory: the empirical analysis of the contradictions and conflicts of capitalist societies and the reflexive clarification of the epistemological and normative grounds of critique. I show how Boltanski’s assessment of the limitations of Bourdieu’s critical sociology significantly influenced his pragmatic sociology of critique and explication of the political philosophies p…Read more
  •  39
    The Collective Imagination explicates the media of social creativity and explains how the imagination has shaped historically significant social institutions. It focuses on the media of wit, paradox, and metaphor, and develops a distinctive and original interpretation of the imagination’s appositional quality. Murphy’s conception of the collective imagination is compared with that of Cornelius Castoriadis. The discussion suggests that Murphy’s claims are likely to be disputed, particularly becau…Read more
  •  16
    In their elucidations of the capitalist imaginary, Castoriadis and Adorno emphasize the significance of identity thinking to this social-historical constellation. Adorno contends that the principle of identity constitutes the nucleus of the capitalist imaginary, because it underpins commodity exchange and the formal rationality of bureaucratic administration. Castoriadis associates the logic of identity with the same tendencies, but accentuates the horizon of meaning that animates the deployment…Read more
  •  141
    Festschrift for Maria Markus
    with Jocelyn Pixley
    Thesis Eleven 101 (1): 3-5. 2010.
    How can a partial, revisable utopia of ‘decent society’ be used as a yardstick for assessing today’s impersonal forms of social integration? In economic life — this essay’s focus — Polanyi’s hopes that the ‘economic system’ might cease ‘to lay down the law to society’ is a start. Recently, financial firms sold commodified promises and obligations on the allure of democratizing credit and providing financial ‘choice’ to millions. Yet these ‘civilities’ exploited people’s hopes for a dignified lif…Read more
  •  64
    Hope, critique, and utopia
    Critical Horizons 6 (1): 63-86. 2005.
    This paper assesses the extent to which the category of hope assists in preserving and redefining the vestiges of utopian thought in critical social theory. Hope has never had a systematic position among the categories of critical social theory, although it has sometimes acquired considerable prominence. It will be argued that the current philosophical and everyday interest in social hope can be traced to the limited capacity of liberal conceptions of freedom to articulate a vision of social tra…Read more
  •  93
    A Moral Order of Mutual Benefit
    Thesis Eleven 86 (1): 114-125. 2006.
  • This dissertation offers a comparative analysis of the theories of Habermas and Giddens. It focuses on their reformulations of praxis philosophy's conception of the social and its cognates. It is argued that praxis philosophy distinctively considers the 'social' as constituted by the intersection between the subject and history and that the Marxian tradition of critical theory seeks to promote a realignment in this nexus. The relevance of the general orientation of praxis philosophy and it model…Read more
  •  45
    Democratic Justice as Intersubjective Freedoms
    Thesis Eleven 101 (1): 53-62. 2010.
    According to Maria Markus, the development of a particularly open and interested moral-psychological disposition towards the other is critical to the endeavour of subjects to realize the decent society. Drawing on the work of George Herbert Mead, it will be argued that such a sense of decency involves not just a normative commitment to reciprocity but a reflexive appreciation of the significance of the other to the formation of the self. Meads sketches of intersubjective freedoms are shown to pr…Read more
  •  36
    Pragmatism and Radical Democracy
    Critical Horizons 10 (1): 54-75. 2009.
    This paper suggests that pragmatism makes a distinctive contribution to the theory and practice of radical democracy. It investigates the relation ship between the renewal of interest in pragmatism and the recent attempts to develop radical democratic alternatives to political liberalism. With particular reference to the contemporary critical social theory of Habermas and Honneth, the paper outlines key dimensions of the civic republican, deliberative democratic and reflexive cooperative reconst…Read more
  •  37
    Democracy, Religion and Revolution
    Thesis Eleven 99 (1): 27-47. 2009.
    Charles Taylor’s conception of the relationship between democracy and social creativity developed through a critical synthesis of various traditions, including the Romantic Movement and liberal political philosophy. However, it is argued that Taylor’s understanding of the implications of religion and revolution significantly differentiates his standpoint from that of pragmatism and theories of democratic creativity. Taylor’s defence of religious transcendence is shown to give rise to tensions wi…Read more
  •  24
    Postmodernism, Ideology and Rationality
    Revue Internationale de Philosophie 251 (1): 79-99. 2010.