Papers by Howard Richards
Mind, Culture, and Activity, Nov 28, 2017
ABSTRACT Organisation Workshop stands for a body of practice derived from the pioneering work tha... more ABSTRACT Organisation Workshop stands for a body of practice derived from the pioneering work that Clodomir de Morais did with the Brasilian Peasant Leagues starting in the early 1960s and shown to be relevant today in situations of high unemployment. Two essential ingredients are a large group and a common resource pool. The Organisation Workshop method is illuminated by Leontiev’s “objectivised activity” concept, as well as important insights from 3 generations of activity theory (CHAT). Moraisean thought and practice are shown to open up new avenues to community development and to break new ground in the social psychology of the large group.
In Praise of Functional Morals and Ethics, 2023
Building on the moral economy of Andrew Sayer and Dave Elder-Vass, this article advocates for a f... more Building on the moral economy of Andrew Sayer and Dave Elder-Vass, this article advocates for a functional (not functionalist) approach to morals and ethics, and consequently to economics. By choosing words responsibly it aims to be an example of the conscientious attitude it advocates. In the first section, I find that Andrew Sayer's approach dovetails with Pierre Macherey´snotably due to Sayer´s linking of the biological dependency and vulnerability of humans to realist ethics, via the key word needs. Ditto for Dave Elder-Vass and Macherey for similar reasons. Simplifying, the second section examines the contrary of biological models of norms: juridical models of norms, especially Kant´s jurisprudence and Leon Walras´s pure economics. The third section, Les valeurs de la vie, showcases Elder-Vass on how to build a functional economy. Then it further supports Macherey's proposals drawing on two of his main sources, Michel Foucault and Georges Canguilhem.
Public Policies; Vol 5 No 2 (2012): Public Policy Review, Apr 15, 2019
El autor propone pensar la educacion destacando como meta la integracion social y su mejoramiento... more El autor propone pensar la educacion destacando como meta la integracion social y su mejoramiento como un proceso de cambio cultural. Ello supone dejar de concebir la cultura como un sector de la vida subordinada a la economia y reanudar las discusiones en torno al concepto de cultura como totalidad compleja que incluye conocimiento, creencia, arte, moral, derecho, costumbre y otras capacidades y habitos adquiridos por los seres humanos en tanto miembros de sociedades. Asi se abre paso a reconstruir la economia, pensar en otros marcos normativos, otras relaciones sociales, otras modalidades de produccion, otras practicas de obligaciones reciprocas y de intercambio de bienes y servicios y, en fin, otras pautas culturales. Desde esta optica culturalista, no solamente los problemas economicos sino todos los problemas humanos son problemas de educacion. La educacion suele definirse como la transmision de la cultura. Transmitir la cultura es siempre recrearla. En el mejor de los casos es criticarla y mejorarla. Puesto que la cultura interviene en la busqueda de soluciones a todos los problemas, las ciencias de la educacion son fundamentales para la busqueda de soluciones a todos los problemas.
Journal of Critical Realism, 2019
This article advocates a naturalist and realist ethics of solidarity. Specifically, it argues tha... more This article advocates a naturalist and realist ethics of solidarity. Specifically, it argues that human needs should be met; and that they should be met in harmony with the environment. Realism should include respect for existing cultures and the morals presently being practicedwith reasonable exceptions. Dignity must come in a form understood and appreciated by the person whose dignity is being respected. It is also argued that naturalist ethics are needed to combat liberal ethics, not least because the latter supports today's inflexible and dysfunctional institutions. In arguing for these positions, reference is made to the naturalist realist ethics of Georges Canguilhem, C.H. Waddington, John Dewey and David Sloan Wilson, all of whom embed the social order in the natural order.
Live Encounters, 2022
My title is taken from the last speech of Martin Luther King Jr. It was given in Memphis, Tenness... more My title is taken from the last speech of Martin Luther King Jr. It was given in Memphis, Tennessee, less than 24 hours before his assassination. He was in Memphis to support a strike of the sanitation workers of Memphis, and to bring the strikers, and everyone else, back to the path of nonviolence. At that point in his career-he was only 39 years old-King was world-famous for nonviolent resistance to racism, but his thinking and his activism had moved on. Experience and logic had taught him that racism was not going to end while blacks and whites were competing for the same scarce good jobs. He was organizing nonviolent resistance by both poor whites and poor blacks against poverty. King was not the first to conclude that in a list of evils to combat, or in a list of worthy causes to support, there are good reasons for identifying poverty as a cause contributing to most of the other evils on the list, and for regarding ending it as a worthy cause that deserves priority because if that problem could be solved it would make it much easier to solve most, if not all, of the other problems. The death of the biosphere, or all out nuclear war, would, no doubt, be worse than a human population separated by wealth and income levels into haves and have-nots. But when you try to find ways to save the biosphere, or to end militarism and war, you realize, sooner or later, that the old devil money, the love of which is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10) stands in the way. Does anyone deny that the great majority of the world´s people needs to work for a living? Does anyone deny that among that great majority only a minority enjoys dignified work at decent pay, or, failing that, enjoys making a good living as a self-employed micro-entrepreneur? Anyone who is unaware of these basic facts, if there is such a person, should consult the statistics available on the website of the UN´s International Labour Organization.
introducción Comento el discurso pronunciado por Friedrich von Hayek al aceptar el Premio Nobel e... more introducción Comento el discurso pronunciado por Friedrich von Hayek al aceptar el Premio Nobel en Ciencias Económicas en Estocolmo, el 10 de diciembre de 1974 77. No pretendo hacer un análisis de su obra completa, sino la propuesta de una alternativa ética, pensando la ética tanto como criterio explicativo como criterio normativo, tomando como punto de partida una determinada intervención (Hinkelammert, 1984). En su discurso Nobel, Hayek se define como economista disidente. Hayek recibe el premio Nobel un poco más de un año después de la instauración en Chile de un régimen militar dedicado a poner en práctica su filosofía, junto con la filosofía afín de Milton Friedman y la Escuela de Chicago. Por muchos años él había luchado en las trincheras aca-démicas contra las doctrinas científicas más o menos keynesianas, entonces dominantes, que apoyaban la socialdemocracia y el capitalismo reformado. En 1974 ya se pudo ver su retroceso en Europa y en todo el mundo; Hayek pudo decir que lo ...
Journal of Critical Realism, 2018
ABSTRACT
This paper strengthens Bhaskar’s case for the possibility of
naturalism. Building on Bha... more ABSTRACT
This paper strengthens Bhaskar’s case for the possibility of
naturalism. Building on Bhaskar’s A Realist Theory of Science and
The Possibility of Naturalism, and on more recent contributions by
Douglas Porpora, it traces the evolution of Bhaskar’s concept of
’intransitive’ and follows his suggestion to treat social structure as
an intransitive generative mechanism analogous to the generative
mechanisms of the natural sciences. It is suggested, building on
Porpora, that the constitutive rules of the market are usefully
regarded as generating an intransitive ’basic social structure.’ That
this same intransitive object is reasonably regarded as continuing
to exist and act under different descriptions is illustrated by citing
how different scholars have approached it with different concepts
and vocabularies. It expands on Bhaskar’s first example of an
intransitive object of social science, the mass unemployment that
provided a ‘motor’ for Keynes, and on Porpora’s examples of the
causal powers of social structures.
Moral (and Ethical) Realism, 2019
This article advocates a naturalist and realist ethics of solidarity. Specifically, it argues tha... more This article advocates a naturalist and realist ethics of solidarity. Specifically, it argues that human needs should be met; and that they should be met in harmony with the environment. Realism should include respect for existing cultures and the morals presently being practicedwith reasonable exceptions. Dignity must come in a form understood and appreciated by the person whose dignity is being respected. It is also argued that naturalist ethics are needed to combat liberal ethics, not least because the latter supports today's inflexible and dysfunctional institutions. In arguing for these positions, reference is made to the naturalist realist ethics of Georges Canguilhem, C.H. Waddington, John Dewey and David Sloan Wilson, all of whom embed the social order in the natural order.
The Evaluation of Cultural Action, 1985
I do not always understand everything. For example, I do not understand why the word ‘evaluation’... more I do not always understand everything. For example, I do not understand why the word ‘evaluation’ is so widely used and why it appears to be so widely understood. Nowadays everything is evaluated. Children are evaluated in school. Adults are evaluated at work. Obstetrical forceps, insecticides, textbooks, cathedral organs and nuclear missiles are evaluated. People who are mystified if you ask them what ‘good’ or ‘bad’ means, appear to know what ‘evaluation’ means, even though one would have thought that when one evaluates something one must give reasons for judging it to be good, or bad, or partly good and partly bad. People who modestly deny that they know how to think, nevertheless feel authorized to evaluate, even though one would have thought that in order to evaluate something it is necessary, at least, to think about it.
The Evaluation of Cultural Action, 1985
The previous chapter dealt with one aspect of understanding attitude change — obtaining and valid... more The previous chapter dealt with one aspect of understanding attitude change — obtaining and validating the peasants’ perceptions through the formulation and the first phase of the checking of the verbal image. This chapter deals with another aspect of studying attitude change — ascertaining what actions the peasants performed. It begins with an area in which it is extremely difficult to obtain reliable information, the reform of alcoholics.
Mind, Culture, and Activity, 2018
Organisation Workshop stands for a body of practice derived from the pioneering work that Clodomi... more Organisation Workshop stands for a body of practice derived from the pioneering work that Clodomir de Morais did with the Brasilian Peasant Leagues starting in the early 1960s and shown to be relevant today in situations of high unemployment. Two essential ingredients are a large group and a common resource pool. The Organisation Workshop method is illuminated by Leontiev’s “objectivised activity” concept, as well as important insights from 3 generations of activity theory (CHAT). Moraisean thought and practice are shown to open up new avenues to community development and to break new ground in the social psychology of the large group.
Gandhi´s Economics, 2019
Here the concept of basic cultural structure (BCS) is used to argue that Gandhi,
with deep roots ... more Here the concept of basic cultural structure (BCS) is used to argue that Gandhi,
with deep roots in a different basic cultural structure, is able to offer a deeper and
in the end more realistic critique of and alternative to neoliberalism than critiques
that remain within the basic cultural structure of modernity. It also sheds light on
troublesome questions that need to be addressed, such as ‘Why have moral
economies failed to materialize? Is it now too late to prevent inevitable irreparable
disastrous ecocide? Is it really true that by practicing the ideals of Gandhi and
other great moral exemplars we are contributing to building a peaceful, just and
sustainable world?’
can be found at:Journal of Developing SocietiesAdditional services and information for
Andrew Sayer and Dave Elder-Vass are both advocates of ‘moral economy’. To this end, Elder-Vass o... more Andrew Sayer and Dave Elder-Vass are both advocates of ‘moral economy’. To this end, Elder-Vass offers a theory of appropriative practices that enables us to evaluate the enormous variety of forms of provisioning – market and non-market – that are actually found in the world. Andrew Sayer, in the view of the present author, has devoted himself to correcting a great historical error. The error has been trying to do radical political economy without explicitly proposing normatively superior alternatives that are based on objective ethics committed to meeting needs and diminishing suffering. There follow five suggestions regarding how to integrate moral economy with the views on emancipation expressed in early Bhaskar. Perhaps the most important of these suggestions is that to achieve emancipation, rather than over-emphasising relations of production, we should instead identify – in order to, if necessary, transform – the deep moral and legal structures that frame markets.
I am going to advance three theses. Of course, the truth or falsity of the theses cannot be evalu... more I am going to advance three theses. Of course, the truth or falsity of the theses cannot be evaluated without knowing the meanings of the words that compose them. I am going to devote myself mainly to explaining what the theses mean, that is to say to explain the concepts that compose them.
Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation, 2019
The need to educate towards new forms of interaction among humans, the other living beings, and t... more The need to educate towards new forms of interaction among humans, the other living beings, and their natural environment started to be more strongly felt after the Second World War (1939–1945), when the dimension of the negative impact of human activity on the Earth system became evident. Scientist’s warnings, that the natural and energetic resources of the planet could not continue to be carelessly exploited as if they were unlimited, became more audible and globally disseminated. In the decade of the 1970s, a World Commission on Environment and Development was created by the United Nations (UN).
Journal of Critical Realism
ABSTRACT This article advocates a naturalist and realist ethics of solidarity. Specifically, it a... more ABSTRACT This article advocates a naturalist and realist ethics of solidarity. Specifically, it argues that human needs should be met; and that they should be met in harmony with the environment. Realism should include respect for existing cultures and the morals presently being practiced – with reasonable exceptions. Dignity must come in a form understood and appreciated by the person whose dignity is being respected. It is also argued that naturalist ethics are needed to combat liberal ethics, not least because the latter supports today’s inflexible and dysfunctional institutions. In arguing for these positions, reference is made to the naturalist realist ethics of Georges Canguilhem, C.H. Waddington, John Dewey and David Sloan Wilson, all of whom embed the social order in the natural order.
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Papers by Howard Richards
This paper strengthens Bhaskar’s case for the possibility of
naturalism. Building on Bhaskar’s A Realist Theory of Science and
The Possibility of Naturalism, and on more recent contributions by
Douglas Porpora, it traces the evolution of Bhaskar’s concept of
’intransitive’ and follows his suggestion to treat social structure as
an intransitive generative mechanism analogous to the generative
mechanisms of the natural sciences. It is suggested, building on
Porpora, that the constitutive rules of the market are usefully
regarded as generating an intransitive ’basic social structure.’ That
this same intransitive object is reasonably regarded as continuing
to exist and act under different descriptions is illustrated by citing
how different scholars have approached it with different concepts
and vocabularies. It expands on Bhaskar’s first example of an
intransitive object of social science, the mass unemployment that
provided a ‘motor’ for Keynes, and on Porpora’s examples of the
causal powers of social structures.
with deep roots in a different basic cultural structure, is able to offer a deeper and
in the end more realistic critique of and alternative to neoliberalism than critiques
that remain within the basic cultural structure of modernity. It also sheds light on
troublesome questions that need to be addressed, such as ‘Why have moral
economies failed to materialize? Is it now too late to prevent inevitable irreparable
disastrous ecocide? Is it really true that by practicing the ideals of Gandhi and
other great moral exemplars we are contributing to building a peaceful, just and
sustainable world?’
This paper strengthens Bhaskar’s case for the possibility of
naturalism. Building on Bhaskar’s A Realist Theory of Science and
The Possibility of Naturalism, and on more recent contributions by
Douglas Porpora, it traces the evolution of Bhaskar’s concept of
’intransitive’ and follows his suggestion to treat social structure as
an intransitive generative mechanism analogous to the generative
mechanisms of the natural sciences. It is suggested, building on
Porpora, that the constitutive rules of the market are usefully
regarded as generating an intransitive ’basic social structure.’ That
this same intransitive object is reasonably regarded as continuing
to exist and act under different descriptions is illustrated by citing
how different scholars have approached it with different concepts
and vocabularies. It expands on Bhaskar’s first example of an
intransitive object of social science, the mass unemployment that
provided a ‘motor’ for Keynes, and on Porpora’s examples of the
causal powers of social structures.
with deep roots in a different basic cultural structure, is able to offer a deeper and
in the end more realistic critique of and alternative to neoliberalism than critiques
that remain within the basic cultural structure of modernity. It also sheds light on
troublesome questions that need to be addressed, such as ‘Why have moral
economies failed to materialize? Is it now too late to prevent inevitable irreparable
disastrous ecocide? Is it really true that by practicing the ideals of Gandhi and
other great moral exemplars we are contributing to building a peaceful, just and
sustainable world?’