Authenticity as Wellbeing in Critical Political Science

New Birmingham Review: Dissertation Special Edition 2015

Authenticity as Wellbeing in Critical Political

Science

How discourses of normative masculinity are challenged and (re)produced through food consumption

Alexander Miller Tate

A dissertation Summited to the Department of Political Science and International studies (POLSIS)

at the University of Birmingham, in partial fulfilment of a Degree in BA Political Science and

Philosophy.

Supervised by: Dr Stephen Bates Word count: 13,998

The New Birmingham Review, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2015, pp. 100-136

Page 101 of 326 Word Count: 13,998

Acknowledgements

In producing this revised version of my undergraduate dissertation, my thanks go to:

Stephen Bates, for immeasurably useful constructive criticism on several early drafts and for holding his nerve (nose?) when faced with existentialist philosophy. His faith meant more than he knows.

Alexander Blanchard, for invaluable feedback and for keeping me (mostly) sane.

Rory Scott, for the last four years.

Mae Rohani, for her inspirational and critical kindness.

Becki Luscombe, for giving me a truly personal politics, as well as her irreplaceable friendship.

Bryn Gough, for always reminding me that ‘academia without conviction is lamentable’.

James Bowker and Tom Russell, for making me think about the important things.

David Irvine and Sarah Dovey, for the company during long, exhausting library sessions.

Peter Kerr, for assuring me that there is nothing wrong with being a geek.

My family, for instilling in me a lifelong love of learning and always supporting me.

Andrea Valentino, for the inspiring political discussions.

Laura Jenkins, for her kind words, support and interest.

Amy Rimell, for giving me the confidence to finish when I stumbled at the last hurdle.

Mike Fitzgerald, Robin Nayman, Melvin Tiley, Philip Ellwood, Andrew Watters and Shelagh Frawley, for getting me to Birmingham.

Two anonymous reviewers from the NBR, for their helpful comments and corrections.

And all those who inspired me during my time at Birmingham, for being too many to name and ensuring this city will always be my home. I dedicate this to all of you. A few of you may even agree with it. “Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me

and be my friend.”

Albert Camus



Table of Contents

Normativity and the Retreat of Critique .................................................................................... 105

Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 105

‘Strong’ Critique and Political Science ............................................................................................... 105

Postmodernism and Suspicion of Metanarratives ............................................................................. 107

Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................ 111

Political Critique and the Capability Approach ........................................................................... 113

Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 113

Capabilities and Functionings ............................................................................................................ 113

Capability Approaches to critique ..................................................................................................... 114

Criticisms of Anderson, Hayward and Olson ..................................................................................... 116

Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................ 118

Existentialism and ‘Good Lives’. ................................................................................................ 120

Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 120

Human Wellbeing and the Affirmation of Life .................................................................................. 121

Bad Faith............................................................................................................................................ 123

Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................ 125

Authenticity as Social Critique .................................................................................................. 126

Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 126

Women and the Labour Market ........................................................................................................ 126

Eating Disorders and Political Justice ................................................................................................ 128

Concluding Remarks .......................................................................................................................... 130

References ............................................................................................................................... 133



Introduction

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to

change it.

Karl Marx

Across social science, far more academics adhere to the above aphorism than would be

willing to admit it. Even the most adamant positivists reveal, if in nothing else then their

choice of research topic, their desire to have an impact on policy and, by extension, the social

order it creates. Social knowledge is rarely pursued for its own sake, however much we may

protest to the contrary.

Yet, in the history of social enquiry, some have pursued this aim more explicitly and

progressively than others. The desire to understand the social world, what is right and wrong

about its organisation, and ultimately effect change for the better, is best embodied by the

branch of social science known as ‘critical theory’ (Bohman, 2013; Horkheimer, 1982). In this

wide sense, a critical theory can be defined as a research programme that ‘…has an

emancipatory interest in human autonomy’ (Blaikie, 2007: 140). Necessarily, such theories

require empirical, normative (roughly, ethical) and practical (in terms of how to change the

social world for the better) dimensions (Bohman, 2013).

This broad school of thought needs to be demarcated from the narrower school of

‘Critical Theory’, which can be identified with the work of such thinkers as Horkheimer,

Adorno and others (Bohman, 2013). Although these scholars’ work both began and is

consonant with the broader aims of critique, theirs was a narrow project. They were

interested in developing nearly exclusively revisionist Marxist theories of society, aesthetics,

and culture, amongst other areas (Horkheimer, 1982; Bohman, 2013). The critical theories

spoken of below however, have a broader focus. Schools of thought in this tradition include

many branches of feminist thought, queer theory, and postcolonial analysis.

To narrow this diverse collection down, for the purposes of this dissertation we may

specify those branches of critical theory which deal with distinctly political matters. Colin Hay

points out that critical theorists rarely, if ever, consider the political to be merely that which

goes on in government circles (2002: 67). Feminist theories in particular have generally been

keen to incorporate the private arena into Political Analysis, as it is the site of much of the

injustice, subordination and domination that women face (Bryson, 2003:165; Hay, 2002: 73).

Defining Politics as an arena would be to define many of these concerns out of the discipline.

Ergo, we are pushed towards thinking of critical political science as aiming at critique of

normatively undesirable elements of society underpinned by “…the distribution, exercise and

consequences of power” (Hay, 2002: 73).

The normative aspect of such a research programme must provide the means of

evaluating institutions and power structures. Yet Sayer has pointed out that an orientation

towards only liberty, or even the more refined notion of freedom from unwanted

determination (Bhaskar, 1998), fails “…to grasp the nettle of the need for a conception of



thehuman good” (Sayer, 2009: 775). That is, we are left wanting an account of what a good

rather than simply unbounded human life might be.

Yet attempts to construct and utilise such accounts in recent decades have come

under attack for supposedly overstepping the boundaries of the academy (Foucault, 1997)

and, worse, actively partaking in oppressive practices in virtue of their overtly prescriptive

character (Khader, 2013). This criticism stems largely from postmodern understandings of

‘metanarratives’ (Lyotard, 1979) or socially imposed limits on thought. A corollary of this is

the increasing popularity of weaker forms of critique, which seek simply to unsettle and

challenge conventional social wisdom, while refraining from its evaluation.

The main point of this dissertation is to attempt to carve out a middle ground

between these two positions and demonstrate how at least their primary concerns are not

truly incommensurable and can be accommodated together. In short, I aim to produce a

normative theory that is capable of grounding critique in a strong notion of the human good,

while avoiding, as far as possible, the pitfalls associated with other such positions.

I begin by reviewing the literature on critique in social science, with a particular focus

on the challenges raised by postmodernist thinkers such as Lyotard and Foucault. This first

chapter also introduces Sayer’s preferred normative theory, the Capability Approach, as well

as key philosophical requirements that a normative theory trying to respond to

postmodernist concerns must satisfy. Chapter two contends that, despite its popularity and

utility in the area of policy evaluation, the Capability Approach, even in its most relevant

form, does not reach the standards required of a normative theory for strong political

critique. Succinctly, it cannot avoid the worst effects of normative prescription. The analysis

of the problems faced by such an account of wellbeing is used to inform the construction of

alternative in the next chapter. Chapter three introduces a different basis for such a theory. It

contends that existentialist philosophy, particularly the work of Nietzsche and Sartre, can

provide a way of accommodating the preferred concerns of the postmodernists, while

offering a clear account of human wellbeing alongside it. If this is successful, then it shows

both that the key values of postmodernist critique (predominantly genealogical) can be

maintained while engaging in strong (in a sense at least close to Sayer’s own) critique, and

that the postmodernist, on some level at least, need not accept any normative confusion to

keep open the possibility of resistance to socially imposed limits to thought, or ‘aspectival

captivity’ (Jenkins, 2011: 170-171). Contra Owen (2002: 225), there is significant promise in

the idea of genealogy generating normative criteria, beyond simple commitment to

autonomy, in an appropriate way.

Chapter 4 puts forward these two key insights, while also demonstrating the utility of

the approach in general, by applying it to two studies aiming at the critique of unjust social

norms previously undertaken by capability theorists.



Normativity and the Retreat of Critique

Introduction Critical theories’ explicit desire to improve people’s lives raises unique theoretical challenges.

Key amongst these is the need to integrate their empirical, normative and practical work into

a coherent whole. Two key desiderata that follow from this broad requirement are:

1) The normative aspect of a critical theorist’s work ought not to undermine the

empirical pillar - that is, our normative considerations ought not to produce false

understandings of the world.

2) The normative direction of a critical theory ought not to prescribe actions that will

ultimately worsen the position of those it sets out to help.

Fundamentally, it is from the position of these requirements that postmodernist attacks on

critical theories gain much of their traction. Foucault and other postmodernists who make use

of genealogical methods of critique shy away from normative criteria because any such

imposition would seemingly be in tension with their avowed aim of releasing people from

socially imposed limits of thought (henceforth ‘aspectival captivity) (Jenkins, 2011; Owen,

2002). Yet even if a critical theorist can reject this account of critique on independent grounds

(and it is not clear that they can or should), worries about prescription do not stop there. It is

clear that the normative criteria endorsed by the theorist should not violate either of the

above requirements. If the critical theorist is incapable of at least mitigating such risks when

providing strong normative theories, then their project is not just self-defeating but also at

risk of becoming morally bankrupt.

In this chapter I hope to argue, in line with Sayer, that a strong conception of the

human good is not only a desirable but, indeed, necessary feature of any critical theory

worthy of the name. Any theory that attempts to do without a fleshed out notion of human

flourishing (and by extension human suffering) will fail to problematise aspects of the social

world it would intuitively wish to critique. Yet I also posit, contra Sayer, that even if suspicions

of normativity are ‘…as much a symptom of the problem, as a cause…’ (2009: 768), the issues

raised both implicitly and explicitly by the postmodernists are ones that need to be dealt with

by any normative theory. This chapter establishes a basic philosophical requirement on such a

theory: to avoid overly universalistic and non-subjective prescription.

‘Strong’ Critique and Political Science Sayer (2009) argues that much of what is now labelled as critical social research has a very

weak stance on what makes it ‘critical’. They are, according to him, forms of critique which

tend to avoid making explicit normative evaluations regarding social practices and prefer to

simply reveal ‘…hidden presuppositions…’ (Sayer, 2009: 778). Yet, he suggests, despite the



theorist’s best attempts not to pronounce on such matters, insofar as the research typically

focuses on hidden presuppositions that affect the lives of marginalized groups1 it is.

…clearly…normative and political; it is a protest against marginalization, the

violence that isolates and silences a plurality of voices…inverting the dominant

and valorizing the suppressed. (Best &Kellner, 2002)

Going further, Sayer shows that numerous normative concepts (not simply liberty or

domination) are implicitly deployed in service of these sorts of project. The commonality

between them is in their status as ‘thick ethical judgements’, taken to include such concepts

common in the literature as racism, sexism, neurotypicality, heteronormativity, etc (2009:

777, 782). What these concepts are taken to have in common is that their descriptive content

is inextricable from their normative content. When we say a practice is racist, we do not first

see some value-free ‘racism’ and subsequently decide to condemn it, nor do we in some

sense condemn the act in the abstract and then observe its factual component. The fact-value

dichotomy breaks down in the realm of such concepts; our acceptance of them as a

description of an act or situation immediately implies an ethical evaluation (2009: 777).

Salient aspects and corollaries of Sayer’s worry now become clear. Since research is

simultaneously attempting to destabilise assumptions that are complicit in the maintenance

of systems evaluated by application of ‘thick ethical judgements’, while refusing to make

value-judgements about those assumptions, beyond revealing their contingency, then at least

three issues arise.

Firstly, there has been an implicit value-judgement made about the phenomenon that

is being studied without any explicit investigation, or even declaration, of any normative

principle that would justify it. As Sayer points out, one of the largest problems that critical

social science drew criticism for in its early days was a dogma about the values it was

espousing (2009: 771, 778). In suppressing these values by making them visible only in the

choice of research project, these judgements are even less open to such critical discussion

and as such the risk of dogmatism is increased (2009: 779). Moreover,if postmodern

critiqueaims at releasing people from aspectival captivity thensuppressed normative

commitment, as advocated by Owen when he suggests that genealogy is and ought to be

motivated by autonomy without actually articulating normative criteria per se (2002: 225),

risks undermining the project, as that content may itself become an unnoticed presumption

of thought.

Secondly, there appears to have been no (at least ostensible) recognition of what

would seem to be the ultimate motivation of most of these researchers. Choice of research

projects strongly suggests suppressed concern about human suffering and derivatively, a

reliance on a suppressed notion of human wellbeing (Sayer, 2009: 782). What is worrying

1 Note for example the focus on those sexed as women and who do not conform to gender stereotypes in Butler

(1990), or those deemed ‘insane’ in Foucault (2006)



here is that there may be genuinely problematic elements to such a conception of human

wellbeing that turn out to undermine the theory (as Sayer concedes was the case in earlier

critical theory (2009: 767-768)). I would add that there could be aspects of a well developed

theory of wellbeing that allow us to identify new and important dimensions of avoidable

human suffering, or at least new perspectives on previously adopted dimensions. Minimally,

reliance on an underdeveloped theory of wellbeing is potentially obscuring important

dimensions of human suffering.

Thirdly, to the extent that thick ethical concepts have inextricably descriptive and

normative elements, any lack of clarity in the concept itself implies potential descriptive as

well as normative confusion (Sayer, 2009: 774, 777). Simply, a confused thick ethical

evaluation necessarily implies an at least partially confused factual understanding of the

phenomenon in question, as is made clear by the breakdown of the fact-value dichotomy in

the application of such concepts. If the basis of applying these judgements to phenomena is

not rendered explicit, then any potential confusion remains suppressed and any descriptive

inaccuracies regarding the phenomenon are less likely to be spotted.

As Sayer points out, however, a withering barrage of attacks has been thrown at

researchers who attempt to wear their normative viewpoints on their sleeve. He concedes

that such criticisms, for example accusations directed at western feminists of portraying all

women in developing countries as ‘…unthinking victims of patriarchal cultures.’ (Khader,

2013: 312), have historically often been justifiable, as the normative standpoints in question

were clearly underdeveloped, but feels that such perspectives can be made receptive to such

criticisms. Aside from a vague indication that a re-engagement with moral and political

philosophy would reduce the risk involved in making such judgements (Sayer, 2009: 781)

however, he gives little idea of how this might actually be done in practice. If this is not

rendered explicit, then the types of ‘strong’ theory Sayer prefers cannot be reliably claimed to

be in any better shape than the theories he criticises. I next examine how an investigation of

the postmodernist concerns, which motivate criticism of ‘strong’ normative theories, can help

to reveal precisely what kind of burdens must be borne by such theories.

Postmodernism and Suspicion of Metanarratives While admitting it to be a rather simplistic characterisation,Lyotard defines postmodernism as

that branch of thought which views so-called metanarratives with suspicion (1984: xxiv). It is

possibly thanks to this definition that Foucault, despite rejecting the postmodern label, has so

often had it attributed to him. Metanarratives are thought of as overarching systems of

thought and reasoning that purport to simply explain, but in fact legitimate by portraying as

necessary, social practices (Lyotard, 1984: xxiii-xxiv). On this understanding, Foucault’ s work

on prisons (1977), madness (2006) and sexuality (1978), to name but a few, can be seen as

aiming at the deconstruction of such metanarratives. As Owen explains, Foucault is involved

in a project of promoting agents’ capacity for self-government by revealing that people are



‘captivated’ by a particular metanarrative that makes them blind to ‘…forms of

domination…that are not disclosed by this picture’ (2002: 223). The general target of the

genealogical method employed by Foucault and others is not quite false beliefs about what is

good or true per se but non-physical restrictions on what we are able to conceive as being

possibly good or true, or aspectival captivity (Jenkins, 2011: 170; Owen, 2002: 216-219).

By the above understanding of a metanarrative, it seems clear that any

comprehensive account of what it is for human beings to have wellbeing falls into this

category. Ergo, the normative perspective of any critical theory developed along Sayer’s lines

will constitute some kind of metanarrative.

This is not entirely true. It would appear possible to relativise an account of wellbeing

to such an extent that no metanarrative really emerges from it. Put simply, why should one

not simply take human wellbeing to be constituted by the subjective experience of the

particular human in question? In simple terms, if someone believes they have a good life,

then they in fact do. This would, at least to some degree, preclude categorisation as a

metanarrative. No prescriptive account of the good life is given beyond what individuals

themselves already decide it to be. Such a possibility, though ultimately untenable for the

critical theorist as we shall see below, highlights an important kernel of truth about theories

of wellbeing. An important element of a person’s being said to have a good life clearly must

be this subjective feeling of wellbeing. In its absence it would, minimally, be crass to suggest

that the person, unbeknownst to them, has a very high level of wellbeing. Insofar as the root

of this suffering is premised upon power relations, the critical political scientist ought to be

interested in it. This vital element of subjectivity will be refined and developed in the

following chapters.

The reason why a thoroughly subjective account of wellbeing is not suitable for critical

theory, and hence why a critical theorist must face the postmodernist critique head on, is that

a theorist adopting such a position must fail to problematise elements of political society that

are, intuitively, relevant to human wellbeing and suffering. Which elements are these? One

way to think about it is with reference to analyses of power where the shaping of agents’

preferences is of primary concern, which explains how agents may unwittingly have their

preferences and beliefs about the realm of social possibility shaped and constructed both by

powerful social structures and other agents’ manipulation of those structures (Lukes, 1974;

Hay, 1997; Hayward, 2000). If we now suppose that a person’s subjective feeling of wellbeing

and satisfaction is the only important normative metric, and this subjective feeling is at least

partially to do with preference and desire satisfaction, the conclusion reached by such a

theory must be that a shaping of someone’s preferences is not only acceptable, but is indeed

laudable, to precisely the extent that an individual finds those desires satisfied.

Most critical theories would find this result unacceptable. That the basis and quality of

someone’s preferences is unimportant as long as those preferences are perceived to be

satisfied (or at least satiable) is counterintuitive to say the least. There appear to be clear

cases where we are suspicious of people’s preferences when it comes to normative



evaluation. The most important variety involves a person perpetuating their own overall

suffering by having what is known as an ‘adaptive preference’. To take an extreme example,

we could cogently imagine that many of those living in the Democratic People’s Republic of

Korea (DPRK) have a preference for the continuation of the rule of the Kim dynasty. Any such

preference, however, if it exists, is ‘adaptive’, in the sense that it is in response to years of

indoctrination to value such rule, despite its clear negative impact on a person’s wellbeing.

The huge levels of famine2, political repression3 and corruption4 that the ‘great leaders’ have

brought to the majority of the nation are indicative of such detrimental effects.

It is due to a desire to avoid these undesirable restrictions on critique that people like

Sayer (and myself) wish to adopt a ‘strong’ normative position that gives a detailed exposition

of human suffering at least somewhat independent of the subjective experience of

individuals. Unfortunately, postmodernist criticism of metanarratives is compelling. In its

simplest form, it suggests that it is arrogant to presume such universal knowledge of the

social world; in this case what is good for people. Foucault and others like him refuse to make

these kinds of normative pronouncements precisely because it seems as if ‘…there is no

universal standpoint from which to speak’ (Best &Kellner, 2002).

Why is this a problem for Foucault? The issue lies in the idea of the academic (or

indeed any individual) as ‘legislator’. From the perspective of the genealogist, this is

something to avoid because it threatens to render their form of critique self-defeating. If my

goal is to reveal contingency where limits on agents’ consciousnesses have them believe

there is necessity, then articulating a restrictive normative perspective, insofar as we believe

that the perspective could be transformed into a ‘legitimised’ form of power, risks swapping

‘…one form of domination with another’ (Jenkins, 2011: 170). This warning becomes doubly

severe for critical theorists who are explicitly concerned with people’s wellbeing. If Foucault is

right, the critical theorist constantly runs the risk of reinforcing undesirable social hierarchies

and privileges for certain communities at the expense of others, all while engaged in an

‘emancipatory’ project. In short, these projects may be normatively self-defeating.

Adaptive preferences in particular have often been used as blunt analytical

instruments. Postcolonial feminists specifically have attacked western theorists for utilising

the notion wherever the desires of non-western women clash with western understandings

of wellbeing5. One salient example of such a dynamic is the activist group Femen, who tend to

portray any and all tendency on the part of Muslim women not to consider nudity liberating

as indicative of their internalisation of the ‘intrinsically patriarchal’ norms of Islamic society

2According to the Global Hunger Index (IFPRI, 2013), 32% of the country’s population is undernourished

3 According to Amnesty International (2013), DPRK continues to be a site of huge numbers of executions,

enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and restrictions on Freedom of Speech and Movement. 4 According to Transparency International (Rogers & Provost, 2011), North Korea is the most corrupt country on

Earth. 5 See for example, Khader (2013), Mendoza (2002), Parpart (1993).



(Nagarajan, 2013; Adewunmi, 2013). To my mind, this is problematic for at least three

reasons.

Firstly, it leaves no room for the possibility that Muslim women may be genuinely

exercising their own agency in choosing to dress in a way they would deem modest. In so

doing, Femen portrays Muslim women as nothing but victims, and clears space for the

vindication of a violent ‘liberation’ of these women from the outside. This implied lack of

capacity is not only patronising in and of itself, but is also damaging in the sense that it

perpetuates stereotypes that see symbols of Islam, when linked to a woman, as indicating a

certain level of weakness, regardless of the context in which it is viewed.

Secondly, the view portrays Islam as intrinsically and irredeemably patriarchal. This

ties into the view above, as it implies that any Muslim woman who expresses or defends her

faith in public is either deluded or a servant of other women’s oppression. Moreover, it ties

into racist narratives that increases the stigma faced by Muslim men, who, already linked

intrinsically to the exercise of political and religious violence (Sides & Gross, 2013), are also

then viewed as oppressing women, regardless of their personal views on women’s liberation.

That Femen’s ideas result in them reproducing and supporting this narrative can be seen

clearly by the fact that many members have taken to adding racist portrayals of Muslim men

to their protests, donning turbans and fake beards (Stoeffel, 2013).

Finally, the directly normative problems above notwithstanding, a suitable critical

theory also aims at a reasonably accurate portrayal of the social world as it is. The thick

ethical concept of sexism, here tied to the notion of modesty, is likely being at least partly

descriptively misapplied above. The toxicity of taking the normative standard as absolute

becomes clear. Not even the substantial evidence that many Muslim women, especially those

very much aware of the discrimination they actually do face, are making a personal choice to

wear various kinds of religious dress (see for example Elahi-Siddiqui (2013)), can give pause to

those who believe that notions of modesty are irredeemably sexist. Here we see particularly

starkly the difficulties latent in thick ethical concepts. The belief that notions of modesty are

intrinsically sexist and a requirement of all Islamic culture reinforces not only normative

dogmas about the value of the culture but also descriptive dogmas about how it functions,

which leads to greater ignorance across the board.

More generally, Benton points out that if we are to utilise the notion of people’s

‘interests’ in a successful emancipatory project, then these interests must be relatable to

aspects of those people’s life experiences, or risk being irrelevant ‘…to their target actors’

(1981: 182). This may well indicate the source of much of the backlash against Femen-the

interest they are claiming their emancipatory target to have is not only irrelevant to them,

undermines their agency and value. What this and the discussion above highlights is the need

to ground our account of people’s interests in the values they hold.

Sayer argues against the idea that potentially oppressive prescription is an intrinsic

risk in strong conceptions of wellbeing by suggesting firstly that evaluation can avoid



prescription and secondly that openness to critiqueofthe normative standpoint being

adopted is sufficient to obviate the risks above (2009: 779, 781). Crucially, however, such a

response ignores the position of authority a social researcher may occupy within their

discipline and outside of its bounds. Within, the dominant voices still tend to be western and

male6 and so academic consensus can easily be shaped by these biases as much as in any

other domain. Worse, in cases where there is cultural bias in evaluation of situations, this

creates an atmosphere where minority voices giving the opposite opinion are even more

likely to be rejected. I therefore rejectSayer’s characterisation of critical social science as ‘…an

ongoing debate that anyone can join’ (2009: 779) and argue that openness regarding

normative perspective is not enough when there is likely to be artificial restrictions placed on

precisely those voices most likely to be effected by a mischaracterisation.

Outside of disciplinary boundaries, not only is this risk possibly even greater, but the

researcher occupies a position of epistemic authority. They may have the ability to impact

policy makers, students, etc. As a result, perspectives within a discipline tend to tessellate out

into wider society and hence Sayer cannot hide behind the suggestion that evaluation does

not entail prescription. All of this suggests that resilience to the potential damaging effects

outlined above must be built into the structure of a theory. The important question then is

this: what kind of properties must a normative theory have to be suitable for strong critique

and also to be able to avoid the universal prescription that can lead to reproduction of

precisely the sort of social hierarchies critical theorists wish to dispense with?

Conclusions The discussions above leave us with much to ponder. On the one hand, it would appear that

there are good reasons to wish to adopt a strong normative account of the type Sayer

advocates which takes a firm stance on what constitutes human wellbeing. Attempting to

dodge this through a ‘retreat’ of critique leads to increased normative and descriptive

dogmatism, the risk of missing analytic dimensions of wellbeing and the inability to criticise

constructed preferences in the case they are satisfied. Conversely however, the adoption of

absolute values runs the risk of damaging those people the theorist hopes to help

emancipate, as well as create further descriptive confusion. Since a critical theorist cannot

abandon the commitment to normativity in Political Science without abandoning their

position wholesale, there is only one possibleway to respond. This is to develop normative

theories that have a resistance to these sorts of problems. What would be required by such a

theory, implicit in the discussion above, can now be rendered explicit:

A) A normative theory sufficient for critique must provide a strong stance on

human wellbeing and allow us to evaluate the effects of power structures on this idealised

standard.

6 See for example Bates, Jenkins &Pflaeger (2012), APSA (2004), Turner, Myers & Creswell (1999).



B) The theory must avoid universalising this account of wellbeing insofar as is

possible. It will recognise that the value of social practices for an agent is in part

determined by social situations and individual subjectivity, rather than being universally

constant.

Henceforth, I refer to A as the ‘strength’ requirement and to B as the ‘non-

universalism’ requirement. These two conditions together constitute a minimal standard for

an acceptable critical approach to wellbeing. Other desirable features will arise from the

considerations in the following chapter.

Here I assess the possibility that Sayer’s suggestion for a normative theory, the

Capability Approach, will be able to reinvigorate critical theories in the way he hopes. I find

the Capability Approach, while not immediately unsuited to the role and providing many

useful concepts that vindicate a reengagement with substantive moral philosophy, ultimately

wanting in several key regards. This motivates the subsequent attempt in Chapter 3 to sketch

a theory that is capable of taking on the necessary burdens.



Political Critique and the Capability Approach

Introduction The Capability Approach, pioneered by Amartya Sen (1980), is a widely applied theoretical

perspective on normativity and human wellbeing in the Social Sciences7. Given this and its

status as a method of understanding and evaluating individual wellbeing, it seems, at least

prima facie, like the kind of strong normative basis Sayer (2009) wants for Critical Social

Science. By extension, Critical Political Scientists ought to be interested in its capacity to

evaluate injustices and suffering resulting from networks of power relations.

This chapter will begin by outlining the main facets of the Capability Approach in

terms of its two key concepts:capabilitiesand functionings. It will then elaborate on how this

conception of human wellbeing can and has been used to critique social relations, norms and

practices. This generally takes three forms. Firstly, it can be used to investigate how particular

social practices restrict and privilege the capability sets of some social groups over those of

others (Robeyns, 2006: 369; LaVaque-Manty, 2001). Secondly, theorists can try and give an

account of precisely the Capabilities necessary to resist domination in all its forms (Anderson,

1999). Anderson posits that political theorists should concern themselves with the

Capabilities that enable people to avoid oppressive social relationships and function as equal

citizens in a democratic state (1999: 316). Thirdly, some theorists suggest that, minimally,

people need the capability to engage in the deliberative construction of norms and practices

that affect them (Olson, 2002; Hayward, 2000).

I shall provide reason to believe that only the second and third conceptions are prima

facie plausible candidates for the task at hand. Subsequently, I shall criticise these positions.

Firstly, Anderson’s approach cannot ultimately avoid the universalism criticised in the

previous section and is therefore unsuitable for the kind of critique desired. Secondly, it is

also unable to account for situations where civil society is implicated in political injustice.

Thirdly, I suggest that neither Olson nor Hayward can ensure progressive projects, as a

person’s deliberative involvement in the creation of norms that affect them is insufficient to

mitigate harm that could be done to them as a result of their adoption. I thus conclude that

the forms of the Capability Approach most promising for use in a project of Critical Political

Science ultimately fail to meet the necessary requirements.

Capabilities and Functionings The two concepts that the Capability Approach focuses on when evaluating wellbeing are

capabilities and functionings. The first is defined in terms of the second.A functioning can be

thought of as either a state of being or an activity that an individual is participating in.

7 Applications include, but are not limited to, measurement of a nation’s human development (Fukuda-Parr,

2003), assessment of development projects (Alkire, 2002), analysing the deprivation of the disabled (Kuklys, 2005) and policy assessment (Lewis & Giullari, 2005).



Examples of the first type would be ‘being educated’ or ‘being depressed’. Examples of the

second sort include ‘travelling’, ‘voting’ and ‘taking drugs’. The demarcation here is clearly not

always strict – it seems for example that ‘being housed’ and ‘living in a house’ are almost

exactly the same functioning (Robeyns, 2011). It is, however, relatively unimportant how

capability theorists identify a functioning as long as it is identifiable.Importantly, some

functionings seem to be conducive to wellbeing and others appear to be inimical to it, for

example ‘being housed’ and ‘being homeless’.

The notion of capability is derivative of the above. For a given functioning, the

corresponding capability is the actual freedom to achieve the functioning. While ‘voting’ is a

functioning, the actual opportunity to vote is the corresponding capability. A person’s

situation can then at least partially be described by giving their ‘Capability Set’ (Robeyns,

2011).

One benefit of using capabilities as a metric for critique is the provision ofa middle

ground between a critique based solely on the notion of liberty and one that simply imposes

certain ‘good’ states of being upon people. What is aimed at instead is a situation where

people are able to achieve certain ‘valuable functionings’ should they so desire.

Capability Approaches to critique If critique must orient itself at human wellbeing, then it seems as if there are several ways the

Capability Approach may be able to help with this project. First of all, one could suggest that

we evaluate a particular social practice under investigation with respect to the effect it has on

restricting people’s Capability Sets or prioritising the Capabilities of certain groups at the

expense of others (Robeyns, 2006: 369; LaVaque-Manty, 2001).

Secondly, a theorist could be more prescriptive and make certain concrete claims

about what they take valuable functionings to be, either absolutely (like Martha Nussbaum

(2000)) or limit the account to those valuable in virtue of informing critique of power

structures (as in the case of Elizabeth Anderson (1999), Olson (2002) or Hayward (2000)).

Although the first way of utilising the Capability Approach has some merit, it fails to

achieve the standards of normativity we have set for our critical theory. If we concern

ourselves only with general restrictions on Capability Sets then we have not gone far enough.

We have not met Sayer’s challenge of providing an account of human wellbeing above and

beyond that of simple freedom to do and achieve things (2009: 773-774). And although

identifying inequalities in the Capability Sets of distinct social groups would certainly provide

interesting grounds on which to critique practices that brought such disparity about, it falls

into a similar trap in that its positive account of wellbeing can be nothing more than the

negation of the inequality8. That is, if disparity in Capabilities is all we care about, then at best

8 This problem befalls LaVaque-Manty (2001), whose analysis of eating disorders as a matter of political justice I

build upon in Chapter 4.



one has an account of wellbeing that posits that everyone must have access to the same

Functionings. There is no indication of what those ought to be. LaVaque-Manty makes it clear

that he takes this position when he states that ‘…what needs to be shown is that insofar as

there are norms about masculine beauty…they are not equivalent to the norms about

women’s beauty’ (2001, p.161, emphasis in original).

Perhaps then the more prescriptive approaches offered by theorists like Anderson,

Olson and Hayward9 will grant us some purchase. Anderson’s position is given as an account

of what egalitarian state apparatus must provide citizens, but concerns itself with public and

private domination to such an extent that it can equally well be seen as a way of approaching

critique of institutions that produce avoidable suffering.

The main point she wishes to make is that there are limits to desirable Capabilities and

certainly limits to those that societies can be critiqued for failing to provide (if those

Capabilities correlate with valuable Functionings). For example, we may think that the

Capability to eat chocolate in moderation is valuable to most people, but do not think that

pointing out a lack of this would constitute an indictment of the power structure in question.

The question Anderson (1999: 316) actually wishes to answer is this: what are the Capabilities

required to be more-or-less free from the negative effects of power structures and, even

more importantly, to flourish within civil society? She answers as follows:

Negatively people are entitled to whatever capabilities are necessary to enable

them to avoid…oppressive social relationships. Positively, they are entitled to the

capabilities necessary for functioning as an equal citizen in a democratic state.

(1999: 316).

Although there is overlap between these requirements, the difference is mostly to be found

in the refusal to privilege private aspects of domination over public aspects. Simply having the

capability to function as an equal democratic citizen, for example being able to vote, protest

and not being excluded from the institutions of civil society (1999: 317) does not mean that

your wellbeing is secured in general. Anderson uses the example of enforced clitoridectomy

as an example of a distinctly private form of domination against women that does not

necessarily restrict participation in civil society (1999: 316), but further examples abound. For

instance, rejection of LGBTQ persons by family members is presumably inimical to their

wellbeing, but might have little to no effect on their ability to function as a democratic citizen.

Next, Anderson elaborates on precisely which capabilities may be considered relevant

to a theory that adopts her account. Equal citizenship to Anderson involves a lot more than

basic political rights granted to democratic citizens (enfranchisement, petitioning state

institutions, etc). The most important of these extended capabilities are the pre-conditions

for human autonomy (knowledge of one’s circumstance, self-confidence, ability to discern

9 Nussbaum’s account (a list of basic goods) although potentially useful in other applications, is clearly too

universalistic to be worth pursuing here. For criticism along this line, see Stewart (2001).



means and ends and engage in comparative analysis, etc), as well as the ability to participate

in civil society distinct from state apparatus-particularly the economy (1999: 317-318).

The upshot of all this is that Anderson’s capability account locates many valuable

capabilities within the remit of Critical Political Science, for example “…not being ascribed

outcast status” (1999: 318), as it is inimical to a person’s freedom of movement amongst

other fundamental capabilities or “…effective access to the means of production” (1999: 318),

as it ensures the Capability of participating as an equal in the economic dimensions of civil

society. Certainly then, we have succeeded in giving a strong positive account of wellbeing of

the sort Sayer desires, which is also relevant to Political Science in particular.

Olson (2002), on the other hand, focuses on one capability only. Although his account

specifically argues that women ought to have this capability in the context of the labour

market, there seems to be no good reason why, philosophically, it should not be a lens

through which to view any social norm or practice. What people ought to have are

…the critical, cognitive, and discursive abilities to act as an agent in defining

the terms through which oneself and one’s society are understood

(Olson, 2002: 396).

What he envisages is a social order in which everybody has ‘…had an equal chance to

influence the formation of background norms and values…’ (2002: 398). Note here that

norms, insofar as they influence people’s behaviour in a variety of ways, constitute sources of

social power. The norms worthy of critique on Olson’s model are simply those that have been

constituted without this background discursive and deliberative equality. There is intuitive

value to this characterisation, insofar as we might cogently imagine that harmful norms would

not be adopted if those they affected had the ability to resist and renegotiate their terms.

Placing the emphasis slightly differently, though with similar criteria in mind, Hayward

highlights for critique those power relations that promote ‘…the avoidable exclusion of

participants in power relations from participation in norm-making…’ (2000: 176). This position

advocates a similar capability to Olson, though it is never framed as such. Moreover however,

she suggests that we should particularly promote deliberation and renegotiation ‘…of power

relations that naturalize or universalize key social limits…’ (2000: 174). What should be of

interest here is that such power relations are reminiscent of those found to be the targets of

genealogical critiques of aspectival captivity (Owen, 2002).

Criticisms of Anderson, Hayward and Olson The most obvious problem with Anderson’s account from the perspective of the normative

criteria outlined in Chapter 1 is that it is universally prescriptive. The level of detail it goes into

promotes a very specific version of a liberal grand narrative that, while promoting certain

ideas (such as the conditions of individual autonomy) that enable individuals to choose their

own conception of the good, also pushes particular ideals of democracy and liberalism among

other things. This means Anderson’s account risks failing the requirement of non-



universalism. Although her account steers clear of insisting people adopt states of being, they

are coerced into adopting those states of being that their society provides the capabilities to

achieve. Put another way – any type of ‘good life’ that falls outside Anderson’s liberal remit

cannot be provided for. Speaking of one single‘civil society’ also makes the theory blind to

(particularly radical) alternative ways of achieving the goods it is typically regarded as being

the sole provider of. It ignores for example the value of the ‘counterpublics’, set up in

opposition to the civil society of 19th Century America, which gave women and ethnic

minorities access to the political arena that was otherwise reachable only by participation in a

civil society that was distinctly bourgeois and masculinist (Fraser, 1990: 60-62).

Moreover, its focus on liberal democratic citizenship (in an admittedly egalitarian

form) somewhat restricts its critical potential when applied to such systems. In particular, it is

forced to analyse only private forms of domination within such social orders, which, though

crucially important, are only partially explanatory of a lack of individual wellbeing within

them.

In failing to problematise the public sphere, Anderson’s position buys into what

Patnaik describes as a right-wing view of civil society that sees it primarily as a site of

resistance against the tyranny of an over-large state (2012: 577). Anderson ensures that equal

participation in civil society is a key part of her account of the capabilities that a system of

social relations ought to produce in its citizens (1999: 317) and yet never considers that a civil

society may play a substantial role in maintaining coercive and repressive state power, for

example by legitimating and supporting a capitalist economic order that sustains it -

normalizing notions of economic inferiority as a moral failing located in the individual

(Patnaik, 2012: 579-580). Such an analysis could easily be given of the ‘scrounger’ rhetoric

pushed by the current UK coalition government and certain sections of the media (Sheldrick,

2013; Chapman, 2010), in which benefit dependency is constructed as an individual’s moral

failure and is used as support for the government’s attempts to shrink the welfare state

(Chakrabortty, 2012). Such rhetoric relies on civil society to ground and propagate itself. It is a

person’s perceived lack of contribution to the society they are a part of that fuels such beliefs,

and the notion of morality that legitimises them must first be normalised. This is in part

achieved via its propagation and reinforcement throughout civil institutions such as the

media. Regardless of its benefits therefore, civil society must also be seen as a site complicit

in reproducing ideas harmful to the wellbeing of society’s most vulnerable members.

Olson and Hayward face a somewhat different problem. By making the way in which

norms were conceived the key aspect of their acceptability (or not), their theories rob us of

the intuition that the harmful effects of social norms and power relations are to be found in

their specific qualities rather than their genesis. To sharpen this point, when Hayward

suggests that we ought to aim at ‘…an inclusive and expansive politics, where…people

collectively delimit social possibility’ (2000: 178) or Olson argues we need to make everybody

‘…equal participants in defining the dominant cultural images of [our] society’ (2002: 397),

they miss the point that collective deliberation regarding which norms to adopt in no way



ensures that these norms will be conducive to everyone’s wellbeing, no matter how inclusive

a process it is.

The fundamental problem is one common to all organisations that rely exclusively10 on

democratic deliberation to achieve valuable outcomes;how will one overcome what

Tocqueville called ‘democratic despotism’ (Welch, 2009: 366-367)? That is, even if all

members of society have equal access to the means by which norms may be renegotiated,

how do we prevent the majority deciding to adopt norms that will harm the minority? It is

little comfort to suggest that this minority will be able to continue resistance if they are

simply outnumbered. Short of requiring complete agreement (an unacceptably unrealistic

goal), the only way the deliberative theorist can avoid declaring such an outcome acceptable

is to place some restrictions on the kinds of norms and values that can be adopted by way of

such negotiation. But this would introduce new normative criteria into the theory, which

would require their own justification. At best, then, we see that the capability to renegotiate

the terms by which society is structured is not sufficient to ensure satisfaction of the strength

requirement.

Conclusions I have argued that the most plausible candidates for a normative underpinning of Critical

Political Science grounded in the Capability Approach are unsuited to the task. While

Elizabeth Anderson’s approach does have the merits of assertively declaring its normative

content and striking a middle ground between outright enforcement of states of being and

pure freedom to act, it fails to fulfil the most important desiderata for a critical approach to

normativity outlined in Chapter 1: it cannot adopt a non-universalistic approach to

normativity. Delving into the content as opposed to the structure of the theory, we find it

wanting insofar as it uncritically values integration into civil society, failing to realise that the

constitutive institutions may be complicit in forms of state and non-state repression and

injustice. Olson and Hayward’s approaches ultimately fare little better, as their requirements

seem to significantly limit the scope of critique such that much human suffering cannot be

included in the analysis under their model. They both, however, point implicitly to the

importance of perceived social limits to the realisation of human wellbeing. This is an idea

that will be returned to in the following chapters.

I hope to rectify some of these issues by suggesting an alternative normative theory,

grounded in the thought of two Existentialist philosophers: Nietzsche and Sartre. I posit that

this will enable the construction of a normativity that is sufficiently non-universalistic while

still meeting the strength requirement. Two slightly modified ideas from these thinkers

(Affirmation and Bad Faith) will constitute a working analysis of one of the most fundamental

Existentialist notions: authenticity. I argue that a normative theory hoping to achieve the

10 Obviously, I do not doubt the value of open processes of truly democratic deliberation in achieving valuable

social outcomes. The problem is one of sufficiency; open deliberation will not ‘do’ on its own.



theoretical challenges laid before it in Chapter 1, as well as rectify the more practical

problems of civil society identified in this chapter, would do well to more-or-less equate its

account of wellbeing with this simple understanding of authenticity.



Existentialism and ‘Good Lives’.

Rebellion, in fact, will say…that revolution must try to act, not in order to come into existence at some future date, but in terms of the obscure existence which is already made manifest in the act of insurrection.

Albert Camus – The Rebel.

Introduction As we have seen, the most plausible candidates for a critical normative framework based in

the Capability Approach to wellbeing (Anderson, 1999; Olson, 2002; Hayward, 2000; LaVaque-

Manty, 2001) fail on several counts.

For Anderson, a key problem is universalism. That is, the way the theory is organised,

as a collection of explicit prescriptions for political wellbeing, guarantees an ossified

conception of ‘the good’; one that has the same goals regardless of the qualities of individual

social situations, epochs and arrangements. What is first required by a plausible replacement

then, is a shift away from concrete prescriptions and onto a way of thinking that can value a

range of different ‘functionings’ (to appropriate the capability theorists’ terminology)

depending upon individual value systems, without falling into the same traps as purely

deliberative theories (Olson, 2002; Hayward, 2000). In section 3.2, I outline how this can be

achieved by structuring an approach to normativity with reference to Nietzsche’s ideas about

the affirmation of life. I argue that taking wellbeing to be premised on an individual’s

subjective attitude towards their own life and history, as analysed by the doctrine of eternal

recurrence (Nietzsche, 2001: §285), allows it to be situated in a multitude of different systems

of social organisation, without making it entirely individually or culturally relative. In

agreement with Reginster, I further posit that a corollary of this structure is a privileging of

processes over end-states (2006: 224-225). That is, those things taken to be fundamentally

valuable to human wellbeing are those that enable and constitute change. In short, processes

of human development and ‘becoming’ are the main bearers of human authenticity. These

two consequences of adopting Nietzsche’s doctrine in structuring the theory together make

what is constitutive of wellbeing dependent on subjective perspective, while placing

restrictions on this perspective which imbue it with a strong normative content. This forms

the basis of how authenticity may be made into a normative perspective for the purposes of

political critique.

In section 3.3, I deploy another existentialist notion (Bad Faith), this time due to Sartre

(2003). Roughly, Bad Faith is a state of being where people self categorise, artificially limiting

the options they see as available to them. I argue that viewing an authentic life as one that is

as free as possible from Bad Faith is a natural corollary of the requirement of focussing on

processes rather than states of being mentioned above. Moreover, it is normatively useful

insofar as it grounds criticism of social institutions that promote essentialist understandings of

the self.



Human Wellbeing and the Affirmation of Life

The purpose of this section is first to give a case for accepting that human wellbeing is

intimately connected with the ability of an individual to affirm their life and, more

substantially, exactly what sort of conditions and ramifications such a theoretical account of

wellbeing produces for a normative theory that adopts it. What is meant by affirmation is

precisely what Nietzsche sets out to establish by use of a thought experiment, referred to as

the doctrine of eternal recurrence (Nietzsche, 2001: §341; 1997: §46). Until it is fully spelled

out, we may take it that total affirmation of one’s life is to find value in every aspect of it.

The connection between this and wellbeing appears substantial. If someone is capable

of affirming their entire life, then they must have a very high level of subjective wellbeing.

Notable here is that the notion of wellbeing is relativised to the individual. This means that an

individual’s own value system is what determines their wellbeing, and to the extent that this

differs from our own, they may appear, to us, to have a better or worse life than that which

they report or believe themselves. It follows that the basic structure used to determine

wellbeing now lacks a globally imposed value system, taking us one step closer to our goal of

a functional but non-universalistic normative theory. There is also a natural way on this

account of scaling wellbeing – a person is better off just in case they find value in more

aspects of their life.

The important question then is what precisely this affirmative attitude is. Nietzsche

gives his answer in the form of a thought experiment. Imagine you were informed one day

that the precise life that you are living now would recur eternally, meaning that you would

live the same life infinitely many times one after the other (Nietzsche, 2001: §285, §341;

Reginster, 2006: 202). If you embrace this thought and look forward to the notion of living

your life again and again without end to the cycle, then you can be said to truly be affirming

your life. But if, on the contrary, the thought fills you with the desire to ‘…throw yourself

down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus…’ (Nietzsche, 2001: §341),

then one is living as the worst kind of nihilist. If we adopt this as our criterion of wellbeing

then we can say that a person’s wellbeing is good just in case, on balance, they are in a

position to welcome the eternal recurrence of their life.

One obvious objection at this juncture is to draw attention to just how strict

Nietzsche’s criterion is. In Reginster’s words,

The injunction to live my life so as to…approve of every last aspect of it may

seem unreasonable, if many of these aspects are forced upon me by

circumstance

(Reginster, 2006: 214).

How can I be expected to affirm every aspect of my life when my values may be violated by

nothing more than luck? This would apparently leave me unable to affirm my whole life,



simply on the assumption that I occasionally experience something that I consider bad for me.

A good life then, is surely impossible to achieve.

In response to this sort of worry, Reginster offers an analysis of the structure of

individual value systems that he terms normative contextualism(2006: 214). This is the thesis

that the value we ascribe to events or episodes of our lives is not given on the basis of the

event as conceived of in a vacuum, but in relation to many (possibly all) other episodes of

one’s life. It is this relation that produces the value of each component, not some intrinsic

property of the aspects of our lives themselves (2006: 214). While the facts of your past are

set in stone, their significance is dependent on how they are viewed in relation to what is yet

to happen, leaving open the possibility of positively re-evaluating events previously conceived

of as negative in light of new experience, a process Nietzsche refers to as redemption

(Reginster: 214-215; Nietzsche, 1997: §42). For example, I may make a great mistake and be

unable to value it at the time due to my embarrassment, yet eventually come to affirm it in

relation to what it taught me. Thus another prerequisite of wellbeing in anything but the most

fortuitous lives is the possibility and activity of redemption, so as to affirm as much of one’s

life as possible.

A further consequence emerges from adopting affirmation as a basis for wellbeing.

Note that wishing the eternal recurrence of an aspect of one’s life cannot be the same as a

wish for its eternity. In the latter, there is an implicit regret of the moment’s impermanence.

As Reginster puts it

‘…the wish for the eternity of a moment is…already tinged with the

regretful anticipation of its end’

(2006: 225).

The important aspect of this is the implied value of permanence it engenders – we regret the

imminent cessation and so would value the situation more were it permanent (2006: 225).

The wish for eternal recurrence on the other hand, values the moment in a subtly

different way. A moment cannot, by definition recur if it is itself permanent or unending. The

acknowledgement in desiring a moment’s eternal recurrence is, therefore, ‘…that its

perfection is impermanent’ (2006: 225). This observation entails that the wish for eternal

recurrence can only be directed at those aspects of our lives whose values are unaltered by

their impermanence or, more saliently here, have their value depend on impermanence.

Processes seem to fall into this latter category, as though we ‘…cannot coherently

wish the permanence of what essentially involves change’ (2006: 226), we can wish their

eternal recurrence. In tying our notion of value to impermanence, we are pushed towards

valuing not states of being (which would have their value undermined by change), but

processes of becoming. The only way total affirmation is possible under this model is if we

value becoming, as valuing states of being ensures I desire something unobtainable (namely,

their permanence).



Thus we have three key results of adopting the affirmation of life as the foundation of

authenticity. Firstly, that the totally authentic life is one that is wished to eternally recur in its

entirety and (by extension), that lives are more authentic just in case more aspects of them

are so affirmed. Secondly, that a realistic requirement of achieving a reasonable level of

authenticity is that the possibility of redemption is always open. Finally, that the objects of

affirmation must minimally not have their value disrupted by change and impermanence and,

more strongly, they will ideally have impermanence be partially constitutive of their value.

Thus, though affirmation is at root a subjective matter dependent on the values of the agent,

which lends this theory a certain level of non-universality, it also places reasonably stringent

requirements upon the perspective to be adopted, in line with the requirement of strength.

One key question still to be answered, however, is how must the valuation of

impermanence relate to an agent’s sense of self? Here emerges a possible ground upon

which we may criticise institutions that promote artificial limits on how people might grow

and become. Insofar as they promote unchanging states of being, they are threatening an

agent’s ability to adopt the affirmative perspective laid out above. I attempt to operationalise

this thought in the following section.

Bad Faith

In a vital section of Being & Nothingness, Sartre invites us to imagine that we are seated in a

restaurant and being served by a waiter (1958: 82-83). We notice that his movements seem

just a little to clean, stilted and suited to the role in which he finds himself. Sartre’s analysis of

this situation is that the waiter is in a state of denial about the number of choices of

behaviour he has at that precise moment, and is instead ‘…playing at being a waiter in a café’

(1958: 82). That is, he has objectified his subjectivity – his continuing to serve customers

seems to him a necessary consequence of what he is, rather than a contingent matter of what

he chooses to do. He is, in Sartre’s terminology, in a state of Bad Faith.

This leads us to two distinct types of being that Sartre identifies in the text: being-in-

itself and being-for-itself. The being-in-itself is passive,inert, non self-conscious and

essentially of a kind (Sartre, 1958: 21-22; Flynn, 2013: §2), while the for-itself is constituted by

consciousness, awareness and subjectivity (Flynn, 2013: §2). It is in the second form of being

that humans find the basis of our freedom to exercise our agency. Bearing all this in mind, we

can return to our analysis and suggest that a person is in a state of Bad Faith, just in case they

are denying their agency by taking themselves to be purely a being-in-itself, that is, an

essentialist category of object.

People experiencing Bad Faith see themselves as, and behave as if they can only be,

static, in the sense given in the preceding section. This is because the multitude of choices in

fact open to them at a particular moment is limited to those actions consistent with their

particular objectification (Sartre, 1958: 83). In other words the limits of their action are

defined by what they are. Value ascribed to what is seen as an essential part of being, cannot



be affirmed in the sense described above. This is because, as a supposedly essential part of

themselves, the impermanence of the characteristic cannot be consistently supposed – a

person truly in a state of Bad Faith does not envisage themselves as capable of changing in

the relevant way.

Thus we can see that Bad Faith is inimical to the account of human wellbeing

proposed above. But it would be fair to note that, at this juncture, Bad Faith is of little to no

political significance. It is, by Sartre’s understanding, an individual’s responsibility to avoid

Bad Faith, as for him even emotional states such as sadness are realised in little more than

the actions I take and limits I adopt (Sartre, 1958: 83-85). How then is this related to

oppressive power structures? Specifically, how might the presence of Bad Faith help the

critical political scientist?

The answer is that we needn’t agree with Sartre that individuals are radically free to

adopt different subject positions, as he supposes, in order to understand that they may end

up in states of Bad Faith. Insofar as institutional power structures present individuals as

beings-in-themselves, we can say that they pose a threat to individual wellbeing and are,

ergo, worthy of critique. Take the example of the previous chapter, the civil societal

institution of the media (especially particular subsections of it), which is often guilty of buying

into and reproducing negative government rhetoric surrounding benefits claimants. Insofar as

those who claim benefits are portrayed as being of a particular kind (for example, by having

the category of ‘Scrounger’ applied to them), we can see the media as an institution is

complicit in the coerced adoption of a form of ‘Bad Faith’, insofar as people may come to feel

as if they are indeed worthless, or in some sense lazy or immoral. Notably, this analysis

suggests that those media outlets that buy into such discourses may in fact be contributing to

the very problems they decry as an individual’s failing. To the extent that the category used to

label claimants paints them as dependent and to which the condition of Bad Faith promotes

behaviour consonant with the category adopted, we can see how actual dependency may

follow; not from any moral or psychological failing on the part of the individual, but an

institutional failing of civil society that is damaging to the wellbeing of a significant number of

people. Note that this analysis does not rob individuals subject to such coercion of their

agency. It merely suggests that their agency is at risk of being constrained by socially imposed

limits on how they think about themselves. We see that any powerful system of discourse

that essentialises people into particular social categories imbued with ideas about what sort

of behaviour members of those categories tend to exhibit, is likely to be an object of critique

for this theory. This is independent of any view we may hold about the desirability of such an

institution that does not essentialise in this manner. Ergo, we can plausibly treat civil society

as problematic in a way that Anderson could not.

Any lingering doubt that Bad Faith should occupy an important space in the normative

underpinnings of Critical Political Science may be due to how we have been speaking of the

affirmative stance thus far. To clarify, we ought not to imagine it as merely a passive state of

mind. After all “a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example” (Camus,



1942: 2). Nietzsche himself was contemptuous of passivity, seeing it as “a kind of nihilistic

resignation and exhaustion of the will.” (Stambaugh, 1994: 133). To affirm one’s life, we may

imagine, is at least in part to partake in precisely the kind of ‘verification through praxis’ that

Ranciereadvocates as the only way to assert that one’s “[e]quality is a presupposition, an

initial axiom – or it is nothing.” (2004: 223). It is, for Ranciere, through our practical

engagement with oppressive social institutions that we are able to properly assert and

embody this egalitarian principle. Echoing this sentiment, we may well think that it is only

through revolutionary engagement with all aspects of our lives – a refusal to have the values

and meanings that inform our lived experience dictated to us (and the reification of our

subjectivity, the Bad Faith, this would entail)– that we achieve a meaningful state of

wellbeing.

Conclusions

In this chapter, I have provided a two-part analysis of the existentialist notion of authenticity.

In adopting this analysis and identifying an authentic life with a ‘good’ one (i.e. accepting that

authenticity is equivalent to wellbeing), the critical theorist gains several advantages. Firstly,

the position is intrinsically subjective, with individuals’ values playing a large role in evaluating

their wellbeing and secondly, it is strong in the sense that it places reasoned restrictions on

the perspective a person must adopt towards the objects of their own values.

In the final chapter I will determine to what extent, if at all, this theory can avoid the

issues in practice. Key to its potential in such an enterprise will be its ability to highlight and

critique social arrangements that necessarily prevent groups of people properly affirming

their lives, either by restricting their capacity to re-evaluate and redeem aspects of their lives

effectively, or by enforcing essentialising states of being (Bad Faith) upon them.



Authenticity as Social Critique “So what do we now?

Well, I say we get drunk, because I’m all out of ideas”

Rufus and TheMetatron - Dogma

Introduction In the preceding three chapters, I have investigated the notion of critique, with the aim of

clarifying and establishing three basic theses. Firstly, that a critical theorist should desire a

strong normative theory oriented towards human wellbeing and avoidable suffering, but that

takes seriously worries surrounding the risks of over-prescription and reinforcing hierarchical

structures of domination. Secondly, that the most commonly applied normative standard in

social science, the Capability Approach, even the versions most suited to a critical political

science, is ultimately incapable of avoiding these worries. Finally, that an authenticity theory

is capable of fulfilling the criteria of chapter 1 and, prima facie, tackling the additional

problems raised from investigation of the Capability Approach in chapter 2.

Even given all of this, two obvious questions remain. Can a normative theory

grounded in existentialist philosophy be applied in practice to issues of interest for the critical

theorist and, if so, what sort of insights might it give us? Although a full answer to these

questions is well beyond the scope of this dissertation, this final chapter will attempt to

sketch some thoughts that will hopefully point in the direction of the sort of contributions this

approach to wellbeing may be able to make to the practice of critical political science. In

particular, I return to two of the studies deemed to have adopted inadequate normative

criteria in Chapter 2: LaVaque-Manty’s (2001) study of eating disorders as an issue of political

injustice, and Olson’s (2002) study of how to adapt feminist welfare theories to overcome

embedded gender norms in the labour market. The goals of this are,

1) To explain precisely in what ways elements of these issues may be considered inimical

to human wellbeing, according to the authenticity approach.

2) To explain any particular insights into the phenomenon or its potential resolution

authenticity offers.

3) In particular, to explain how my analysis agrees, disagrees or expands upon the results

of capability approach analyses.

After this, I shall give some concluding remarks about the overall project of finding a suitable

normative basis for critical political science, where the theory offered fits into this wider

project and prospects for future development and application.

Women and the Labour Market Olson (2002) argues that welfare systems set up with the express purpose of de-gendering

labour and encouraging men to adopt a larger share of ‘informal’ care-giving work (for



example raising children, especially in infancy) need to adopt measures targeted at increasing

what he terms women’s ‘cultural agency’. Cultural agency is the (relatively abstract) capability

(2002: 380 & 396) he highlighted as being of key importance, which I explained in section 2.3.

Intuitively, Olson is advocating that women should have the capability to renegotiate

the terms of their gendering, that is, what will be expected of them as women and their male

partner. Insofar as women ‘…have not been equal participants in defining the dominant

cultural images of [our] society’ (2002: 397), we can treat that observation as identifying a

lynchpin of women’s relative social disadvantage, assuming that they would have negotiated

these disadvantageous norms differently had they been able (2002: 397-398). Moreover, the

notion provides us with a route to criticising our society’s norms of gender more generally. As

the understandings of gender were constructed in a realm where women did not have an

equal ability to negotiate and challenge them, and consequently resulted in further

inequalities, we may criticise this state of affairs insofar as we believe that a culturally fair

society would be one in which everyone ‘…had an equal chance to influence the formation of

background norms and values…’ (2002: 398). Tackling these inequalities, for Olson, should be

a primary goal of any coordinated programme aimed at establishing gender equality across

the labour market (2002: 406-407). Understandings of gender that portray women as

caregivers and men as breadwinners are key in preventing male uptake of care-giving roles,

even when the welfare system removes certain embedded factors that make it economically

irrational to do so.

A key observation at this juncture is that a theorist utilising a background normative

theory premised on authenticity, need not, indeed probably ought not, fundamentally

disagree with Olson on many of these points. Rather, they would have the capacity to firstly,

more accurately specify the kinds of norms and values that are particularly worthy of critique

and, secondly, reinforce the normative import of such essentialist gender construction, by

pointing to the intrinsic harm such an enforced mode of being may have on the individual,

quite apart from its problematic consequences or its egalitarian roots. Authenticity gives us a

way of avoiding the democratic despotism an entirely deliberative theory seems to push us

towards (see section 2.4), by identifying certain norms that cannot be negotiated in such a

way that they are compatible with wellbeing, while still respecting the subjectivity implicit in

the deliberative approach.

On the first point, while Olson makes a general point about a just system requiring

everybody in a society to have an equal ability to influence the background norms and

assumptions by which they and others will be evaluated, he makes no specification of those

norms and values which are most important in this regard. That is, what sort of norms would

an ideal renegotiation consider? Clearly, his position takes those norms by which women are

constructed and evaluated as care-givers and, conversely, men are constructed as

breadwinners as being the aspects to reconsider. The analysis that can be provided by the

theorist privileging authenticity however, identifies what sort of norms and values require

such renegotiation in general. Precisely, they are the norms that enforce Bad Faith upon



certain groups of the population, that is, those norms that are essentialising. Insofar as a

norm enforces a certain restrictive mode of being upon people, we can regard it as a suitable

target for political critique. In the case of gendered labour division, we target precisely those

norms that essentialise women as caregivers and men as breadwinners. As a result, we

provide a more general framework for identifying problematic norms and values that is in

agreement with the specific case provided by Olson and feminist welfare theorists across the

board.

On the second point, and related to the first, we can provide additional analysis of the

sort of harm that is incurred when people internalise essentialising norms regarding their

gender. The harm incurred on Olson’s model is entirely extrinsic, in the sense that it is present

in the consequences of women and men being portrayed as playing fundamentally different

roles in the social division of labour. Thus his prescription targets those extrinsic harms. What

this results in is an implicit assumption that background norms and values, provided they are

negotiated and constructed in the context of a playing field that is reasonably egalitarian (in

the sense that everybody has an equal opportunity to engage with their construction and

development), are not of import to critical political science. What this view fails to engage

with is the intrinsic harm of essentialising norms and values, regardless of their genesis.

To put this point another way, Olson’s model doesn’t preclude norms that construct

people’s identities in an essentialist manner, provided the terms of their essentialist

construction were equitable. Yet the insight from a framework centred on authenticity is that

such conceptions of the self act against the welfare of individuals quite independently from

the extrinsic effects. On a basic level, internalised essentialist notions of the self limit the

range of actions a person sees as viable in a given situation, thus limiting their freedom in a

very artificial and unnecessary way. The real significance however is the fact that this limits

both the opportunities for redemption and re-evaluation of the agent’s history and leaving

them in a position where they must value aspects of themselves that are seen as unchanging,

thus effectively limiting the opportunities for the agent to affirm their life in the Nietzschean

sense. Hence, the authenticity approach subtly disagrees with Olson, in the sense that equal

participation in the construction of background social norms is a necessary, though by no

means sufficient, condition on those norms being acceptable. Indeed, any norm of the type

that Olson highlights as problematic will be a legitimate target for critique, regardless of its

extrinsic effects. Upon this understanding, no amount of egalitarian discussion can properly

obviate such harm. Ultimately though, the harm is identified with reference to the agent’s

subjective perspective on their life.

Eating Disorders and Political Justice LaVaque-Manty(2001) argues for an understanding of eating disorders that would,

conditionally, treat them as issues of social and political justice. His reasoning is as follows.

There is a substantial volume of evidence that eating disorders and disordered eating



behaviours often emerge as a result of social factors (at least in western, industrialized

societies), specifically women internalizing gendered norms regarding thinness and ideals of

beauty (LaVaque-Manty, 2001: 151-152; Klingenspor, 2002; Kim & Lennon, 2007). Although

physiological predisposition may explain why some women are affected more severely than

others, it is not unreasonable to take social factors as being of primary explanatory

significance (LaVaque-Manty, 2001: 161-162). Conditional on this actually being the case, we

can utilise the Capability Approach to suggest that this constitutes a social and, insofar as we

consider norm internalization a process based around ideological power and preference

shaping (Lukes, 2005), political injustice.

To the extent that socially enforced gender norms can induce behaviour restrictive of

a woman’s capability set we can use the Capability Approach to identify this harm and

effectively criticise it. On the first point, we observe that a certain proportion of the

population are not achieving a certain functioning (eating in a psychologically healthy way),

and that this section of the community shares a common feature that is an accident of birth

(i.e. that they are women). Further, we draw the link between a norm enforced on women

generally (the norm of thinness) and this lack of functioning (LaVaque-Manty, 2001: 160-161;

Wolf, 1991). As a result, we conclude that the norm is the reason disproportionate numbers

of women do not achieve the functioning.

On the second point, eating disorders are then seen as injustices because they are

unchosen social practices that limit an agent’s capabilities at two levels. First, at the level of

creating conditions analogous to starvation (which obviously impedes functioning in a very

simple way), but secondly, ‘…by tying the agent’s self-understanding to the maintenance of

the practice’ (LaVaque-Manty, 2001: 164). What he means to point out by this is that the

agent under the influence of an eating disorder attaches a meaning to eating, for example, a

KitKat, that may go as far as a personal moral failing (2001: 163). Thus the agent’s conception

of themselves as a valuable human being becomes tied to the maintenance of the behaviour

demanded by the eating disorder. Not only does this directly restrict their capabilities even

further, by demanding an obsessive focus on diet to the detriment of other valuable aspects

of their life, but it also maintains the direct harm of near starvation.

Once again, any theorist endorsing the authentic account of normativity need not

disagree substantially with LaVaque-Manty, but can provide additional perspectives on the

problems raised while accommodating the analysis largely as it stands. The key way it is able

to do this is by noting that the effect the eating disorder has on an agent of tying their sense

of self to one very restrictive element of their existence (food) is an essentialising one.

Everything they do and every evaluation they apply to themselves is centred on diet. This

means that the aspects of such a problem worthy of political critique does not end with the

extrinsic effects on a person (i.e. the fact that a person cannot achieve other functionings),

but also has a significant impact on the intrinsic welfare of that person, quite irrespective of

their desires that might otherwise be fulfilled. Moreover, agents will find themselves unable

to affirm an existence centred around disordered eating behaviour, as it prompts desires that



cannot be achieved simultaneously; any act of redemption must come at the expense of

another aspect of the situation. To explain further, since the behaviour someone with an

eating disorder such as anorexia nervosa exhibits tends to produce a state of near starvation,

they are going to have a general urge to eat, even if this is predominantly a physical need

rather than an actual desire in the normal sense. Yet any actual intake of food is tied to a

feeling of personal failure. Consequently, while someone is still under the full influence of an

eating disorder, there is no possible affirmative perspective they can take on their life, as

their experience is dominated by conflicting values. This point makes more of LaVaque-

Manty’s observation regarding the self-perpetuating nature of the extrinsic harms of an

eating disorder (2001: 164). It allows us an evaluation of the harms that goes beyond the

restrictions placed upon the person and towards an understanding of how eating disorders as

issues of political injustice may corrupt a person’s subjective wellbeing quite independently of

other desires that cannot be achieved as a consequence. What is also of vital importance is

that insofar as this perspective identifies intrinsic harms of internalization of feminine beauty

norms, it licences an analysis that is not reliant on a disparity between masculine and

feminine beauty ideals for its normative import, as LaVaque-Manty’s was originally (see

section 2.3). That is, the norm is damaging in itself insofar as it produces these inauthentic

states of being, which is quite separate from the issue of whether there is an equivalent harm

on the other side of the gender divide.

Concluding Remarks

Perhaps the best way of explaining what this dissertation offers is by understanding its

contribution through the lenses of the two perspectives that informed its genesis. That is,

what could ‘strong’ critical theorists and postmodernists respectively take from it?

Let me turn first to the perspective of the strong critical theorist. Taking Sayer as

paradigmatic, the authenticity framework does give him the account of a ‘good life’ or human

wellbeing that he wants. A good life is one that can be truly affirmed, with a corollary being

that it must be a life receptive to the full scope of opportunities afforded to the individual by

their agency. It also provides him with the resources to respond in a principled way to the

challenges of the postmodernists. While these responses may be more concessionary than he

would wish, there are several points to be made in their favour. Firstly, in chapter two, I

outlined and analysed the inadequacy of the Capability Approach that Sayer favours, as well

as stipulating what an adequate perspective would actually involve. Since Sayer advocates a

closer relationship with social philosophy as being the route to a suitable critical theory, he

cannot, without justification, complain when that closer engagement necessitates some

concession.

Secondly, in being somewhat concessionary, there is much less for the postmodernist

to object to in this model. Though it does not provide a normative theory entirely devoid of

metanarrative, this seems like an unfair burden to place upon it. What must be noted, is that



the worst features of metanarratives are avoided in this model. We take account of

subjectivity in a way that permits a strong perspective while not falling into the universality

implicit in other approaches. This means that a theorist utilising authenticity can have an

analysis sensitive to the normative import of individual value systems very different to the

researcher’s own, while still allowing critique under the right circumstances. Moreover, the

focus of the researcher on processes of becoming and essentialist conceptions of the self (as

an indicator of a low level of wellbeing) brings the critical theorist onto some common ground

with the postmodern genealogist, in the sense that they are both concerned with the removal

of limitations on thought as a goal of critique.

Adopting the alternative perspective, what might this mean for a postmodernist?

Initially, it is striking how similar the concerns of critical theorists of this stripe and

genealogists more generally are. Limitations on thought and construction of essentialist

categories are targets of both kinds of critique. The salient difference is that the critical

theorist who adopts authenticity as a normative approach imbues such critique with a

commitment to the view that such ‘aspectival captivity’ is inimical to people’s wellbeing, in a

way that is at best implicit for the genealogist. This means that the critical theorist gives a

greater moral urgency to their act of critique, and, in my view at least, a better justification

for engaging in it.

Reflecting on this, we might wonder how willing genealogists really are to accept the

conclusion, which their position entails as it stands, that adopting strong normative positions

is too risky. Some uncertainty and discomfort on this topic is, I think, apparent in the

following passage:

In my view, it is preferable to run the risk of appearing normatively

confused and/or disrupting something that should be valued, if this

opens up the space by which the grip of a perspective can be

loosened…

(Jenkins, 2011: 170-171).

The fact that Jenkins considers such confusion a ‘risk’ and that it is, for her, a matter of

balancing negative outcomes, suggests that this position is somewhat unsatisfactory for her.

Some postmodernists (for example, Owen) may be quite happy with the idea that responsible

critique can be performed without commitment to normative criteria and, while I provide

some reasons for being concerned about this enterprise in chapter 1, it is not the point of this

dissertation to decisively refute the viability of such a position. What I do contend however, is

that postmodernists like Jenkins who have a greater worry about normative confusion, need

not necessarily agree with Owen.

Chapter 3 connects wellbeing to taking non-essentialising perspectives on the self and

the utility of such an account in challenging norms of gender as they relate to the labour

market and eating has been demonstrated in sections 4.2 and 4.3. As a result, if the



genealogist is willing to limit their deconstruction of aspectival captivity to the ways in which

it applies to conceptions of the self, then they can say, without altering their practice, that

there is no normative confusion in their account. Their project of deconstruction is aiding the

development of authentic wellbeing. In this sense, these may be the kind of normative

criteria that genealogists could accept, and thus might constitute a way out for postmodern

thinkers who find the risk of normative confusion sufficiently troubling. Additionally, adopting

these criteria demonstrates that the kind of oppressive social structures that are typically the

target of strong critical theory (for example the underrepresentation of women in the labour

market as per section 4.2) are, at root, often premised on a form of aspectival captivity

rooted in the self, and thus may be best challenged by genealogical critique. In a phrase,

human wellbeing, on an existentialist conception, is intimately linked with the reification of

certain modes of self-understanding.

As a result, this dissertation can tentatively conclude that there could be substantial

common ground between the strongest critical theorist and the postmodernist. Theories that

answermany of the frustrations of both sides may well be possible, and the framework of

authenticity, as supported by the analyses of chapter four, seems to be a strong contender.



References Adewunmi, B. (2013), ‘The inconsistency of Femen’s imperialist “one size fits all” attitude’, in New

Statesman, available at http://www.newstatesman.com/bim-adewunmi/2013/04/inconsistency-femens-imperialist-one-size-fits-all-attitude.

Alkire, S. (2002), “Valuing Freedoms: Sens’s Capability Approach and poverty reduction”, New York: Oxford University Press.

American Political Science Association (2004), “Women’s advancement in Political Science: A report on the APSA workshop on the advancement of women in academic Political Science in the United States”, Washington: APSA.

Amnesty International (2013), “Annual report 2013: North Korea”, available at https://www.amnesty.org/en/region/north-korea/report-2013#section-14-8.

Anderson, E.S. (1999), “What is the point of equality?”, in Ethics 109 (2), pp.287-337.

Bates, S., Jenkins, L. &Pflaeger, Z. (2012), “Women in the profession: The composition of UK Political Science departments by sex”, in Politics32(3), pp.139-152.

Benton, T. (1981), “‘Objective’ interests and the Sociology of power”, in Sociology 15 (2), pp.161-184.

Best &Kellner (2002), “Nietzsche’s progeny and the Postmodern turn: From Heidegger through Derrida”, in The Postmodern turn in Philosophy: Theoretical provocations and normative deficits, available athttp://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/papers/postmodernturn.htm.

Bhaskar, R. (1998), “The possibility of Naturalism: A philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences”, Abingdon: Routledge.

Blaikie, N. (2007), “Approaches to Social Enquiry: Advancing Knowledge”, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bohman, J. (2013), “Critical Theory”, in Zalta, E.N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Spring 2013 Edition), available at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/critical-theory/.

Bryson, V. (2003), “Feminist political theory: An introduction”, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Butler, J. (1990), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity, London: Routledge.

Camus, A. (1953), “The Rebel”, London: Penguin.

- (1942), “The Myth of Sisyphus”, London: Penguin

Chapman, J. (2010), “Benefit scroungers on £95,000 a year”, in Daily Express, available at http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/197820/Benefit-scroungers-on-95-000-a-year.

Chakrabortty, A. (2012), “The graph that shows how far David Cameron wants to shrink the state”, in The Guardian, available at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/15/graph-cameron-wants-shrink-state.

Elahi-Siddiqui, A. (2013), “Why I, as a muslim woman, do not support FEMEN”, available at < http://www.policymic.com/articles/33203/why-i-as-a-muslim-woman-don-t-support-femen>.

http://www.newstatesman.com/bim-adewunmi/2013/04/inconsistency-femens-imperialist-one-size-fits-all-attitude

http://www.newstatesman.com/bim-adewunmi/2013/04/inconsistency-femens-imperialist-one-size-fits-all-attitude

https://www.amnesty.org/en/region/north-korea/report-2013#section-14-8

http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/papers/postmodernturn.htm

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/critical-theory/

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/critical-theory/

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/197820/Benefit-scroungers-on-95-000-a-year

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/15/graph-cameron-wants-shrink-state

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/15/graph-cameron-wants-shrink-state



Flynn, T. (2013), “Jean-Paul Sartre”, in Zalta, E.N. (ed) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), available at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/sartre/.

Foucault, M., (1977), “Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison”, London: Penguin Books.

-(1978), “The history of sexuality volume 1: An introduction”, New York: Random House.

- (1997) “Polemics, Politics and Problematization: An Interview”, inP. Rabinow (ed.) Essential Works of Foucault. New York: New Press.

- (2006), “History of madness”, London: Routledge.

Fraser, N. (1990), “Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy” 25/26, pp.56-80.

Fukuda-Parr, S. (2003), “The human development paradigm: Operationalising Sen’s ideas on capabilities”, in Feminist Economics, 9 (?), pp.301-317.

Hay, C (2002), “Political Analysis: A critical introduction”, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

- (1997), “Divided by a common language: Political Theory and the concept of power”, in Politics17(1), pp.45-52.

Hayward, CR. (2000), “De-Facing power”, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Horkheimer, M. (1982), “Critical Theory”, New York: Seabury Press.

International Food Policy Research Institute (2013), “Global Hunger Index Data”, available at < http://www.ifpri.org/book-8018/node/8058>.

Jenkins, L. (2011), “The difference genealogy makes: Strategies for politicisation or how to extend capacities for autonomy”, in Political Studies 59, pp.156-174.

Khader, S.J. (2013), “Identifying adaptive preferences in practice: lessons from postcolonial feminisms”, in Journal of Global Ethics 9 (3), pp.311-327.

Kim, J. & Lennon, S.J. (2007), “Mass media and self-esteem, body image, and eating disorder tendencies”, in Clothing & Textiles Research Journal 25 (1), pp.3-23.

Klingenspor, B. (2002), “Gender-related self discrepancies and Bulimic eating behaviour”, in Sex Roles47 (1/2), pp.51-64.

Kuklys, W. (2005), “Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach: Theoretical insights and empirical applications”, Berlin: Springer Verlag.

LaVaque-Manty, M. (2001), “Food, functioning and justice: From famines to eating disorders”, in Journal of Political Philosophy 9 (2), pp.150-167.

Lewis, J. &Giullari, S. (2005), “The adult worker model family, gender equality and care: the search for new policy principles and the possibilities and problems of a capabilities approach”, in Economics and Society, 34 (?), pp.76-104.

Lukes, S. (2005), “Power: A radical view” Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/sartre/



Lyotard, JF. (1984), “The Postmodern condition: A report on knowledge”, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Marx, K. (1888), “Theses on Feuerbach”, Moscow: Progress Publishers, available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm.

Mendoza, B. (2002), ‘Transnational feminisms in question’, in Feminist Theory 3(3), pp.313-332.

Nagarajan, C. (2013), “Femen’s obsession with nudity feeds a racist colonial feminism”, in The Guardian, available at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/11/femen-nudity-racist-colonial-feminism.

Nietzsche, F. (2001), “The Gay Science”, Williams, B. (ed), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

-(1997), “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, Ranson, E. (trans), Hertfordshire: Wordsworth.

Nussbaum, M. (2000), “Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach”, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Olson, K. (2002), “Recognizing gender, redistributing labour”, in Social Politics, pp.380-410.

Owen, D. (2002), “Criticism and captivity: On Genealogy and Critical Theory”, in European Journal of Philosophy 10 (2), pp.216-230.

Parpart, JL. (1993), “Who is the other? A Postmodern Feminist critique of women and development theory and practice”, in Development and Change 24, pp.439-464.

Patnaik, A. (2012), “Commentary: The contemporary significance of Gramsci’s critique of civil society”, in The Journal of Labour and Society15 (4), pp.577-588.

Rancière, J. (2004), “The Philosopher and his Poor”, Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Reginster, B. (2006), “The affirmation of life: Nietzsche on overcoming Nihilism”, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Robeyns, I. (2011), “The Capability Approach”, in Zalta, E.N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), available at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/capability-approach/.

-(2006), “The Capability Approach in practice”, in The Journal of Political Philosophy14 (3), pp.351-376.

Rogers, S. & Provost, C. (2011), “Corruption index 2011 from Transparency International: find out how countries compare”, in The Guardian, available at http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/dec/01/corruption-index-2011-transparency-international#data.

Sartre, J.P. (1958), “Being and Nothingness”, London: Routledge.

Sayer, A. (2009), “Who’s afraid of Critical Social Science?”, in Current Sociology57, pp.767-786.

Sen, A. (1980), “Equality of what?”, in McMurrin (ed.) Tanner Lectures on human values, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/11/femen-nudity-racist-colonial-feminism

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/11/femen-nudity-racist-colonial-feminism

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/capability-approach/

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/dec/01/corruption-index-2011-transparency-international#data

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/dec/01/corruption-index-2011-transparency-international#data



Sheldrick, G. (2013), “REVEALED: The jobless families who claimed over £26k in benefits”, in Daily Express, available at http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/447540/REVEALED-The-jobless-families-who-claimed-over-26k-in-benefits.

Sides, J. & Gross, K. (2013), “Stereotypes of Muslims and support for the War on Terror”, in The Journal of Politics 75 (3), pp.583-598.

Stambaugh, J. (1994), “The Other Nietzsche”, Albany: SUNY Press

Stewart, F. (2001), “Book Review: Women and human development: The Capabilities Approach, by Martha Nussbaum”, in Journal of International Development13 (8), pp.1191-1192.

Stoeffel, K. (2013), “Why is everyone so mad at pretty, topless Femen?”, in New York Magazine, available at http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/04/why-is-everyone-so-mad-at-pretty-topless-femen.html.

Turner, CSV., Myers, SL., Creswell, JW. (1999), “Exploring underrepresentation: The case of faculty of color in the Midwest”, in Journal of Higher Education 70(1), pp.27-59.

Welch, C. (2009), “Tocqueville”, in Boucher, D. & Kelly, P. (eds.) Political thinkers: From Socrates to the present, pp.362-380.

Wicks, R. (2013), “Friedrich Nietzsche”, in Zalta, E.N. (ed) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Phiosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), available at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/nietzsche/.

Wolf, N. (1991), “The Beauty Myth”, New York: Morrow.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/447540/REVEALED-The-jobless-families-who-claimed-over-26k-in-benefits

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/447540/REVEALED-The-jobless-families-who-claimed-over-26k-in-benefits

http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/04/why-is-everyone-so-mad-at-pretty-topless-femen.html

http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/04/why-is-everyone-so-mad-at-pretty-topless-femen.html

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/nietzsche/

Date post:	28-Feb-2023
Category:	Documents
Upload:	bham
View:	0 times
Download:	0 times

Authenticity as Wellbeing in Critical Political Science

Documents