Programme full

Thursday 16 April 2015 15:30 - 17:00
PAPER SESSION 6 / PECHA KUCHA SESSIONS
Black Male Students’ Accounts of Their Management of Class(ism) and Race(ism) in Elite UK Universities
Dumangane, C.
(Cardiff University)
There is a plethora of research that examines British African Caribbean (BAC) men's experiences attending post-
1992 universities. It is argued that a lacuna of research exists that has explores BAC men's experiences on elite
university campuses. This presentation provides an overview of some of the findings from in-depth qualitative
interviews with sixteen students who attended ten Oxbridge and Russell Group universities concerning their
experiences with discrimination. Strategies such as meritocracy (Warikoo & Fuhr, 2013), moderating blackness
(Wilkins, 2012), dis-indentification (Skeggs, 1997) and silencing of racism (Harries, 2014) are explored in relation to
participants' accounts of their responses and management of discriminatory occurrences.
Theory
W323, HAMISH WOOD BUILDING
For and against Emergence: A Critique of Critical Realism
Bouzanis, C.
(University of Edinburgh)
In their effort to account for the commonly accepted tenet of social theory that society is something more than the sum
total of social monads, many theorists have invoked naturalist imageries which should be conceived as useful
assumptions in the explanation of natural phenomena. In this sense, emergence, as a heuristic theoretical tool of
natural sciences, designates the idea arguing, in general terms, that the properties of any physical entity cannot be
theoretically reduced to the properties and powers of the lower-level individual components of the entity in question;
and this frequently implies a stratified, multi-leveled image of the natural world.
Three 'paradigmatic' naturalist imageries have been adopted by sociologists who share a common belief that
naturalist nomologies and methodologies can also be useful in the explanation of social life: a) the molecule imagery,
b) the complex/chaotic system imagery and, c) the organism imagery. In this paper, I intend to argue that 1) critical
realists, who frequently assume these imageries in various modification and combinations, fail to avoid circular
causation which here takes the form of the deterministic idea of 'downward causation', 2) that this idea of 'downward
causation' is inconsistent with the idea that social structures are existentially dependent on agents' inter-action and
conceptualisations of them and, 3) that this idea of culture/concept/activity-dependence of social structures renders
the shared cultural background of beliefs the ultimate ontological concept of the constitution of societies: natural
necessity gives its place to intersubjectivity.
What’s Wrong with Critical Realism: Phenomenology, Deconstruction and Pragmatism
Randell, R.
(Webster University)
In the critical realism literature the claim is frequently made that critics of realism have confused positivist realism and
critical realism. Acknowledging the validity of the critique of positivist realism, critical realists maintain that those
criticisms do not apply to realism writ large. There is some (empirical) truth to this claim but the most significant
critiques of realism go beyond those points regarding positivism that critical realists largely concede. This paper
begins with a comparison of critical realist and phenomenological accounts of 'reality.' I argue that what is at issue is
not alternative ontologies, but what 'ontology' might be. I then outline the deconstructive critique—or, more accurately,
deconstruction—of phenomenology. That deconstruction does not, however, I argue, vindicate the metaphysics of
realism but opens up a further set of criticisms of realism that have subsequently been most forcefully articulated
within contemporary American Pragmatism. In the conclusion I consider the relevance of these debates for sociology,
both for empirical research and our dominant theoretical narratives.
Death Contested. Morphonechrosis and Conflicts of Interpretation
Latsis, J., Al Amoudi, I.
(University of Reading)
This paper lays the groundwork for a realist analysis of the disappearance or 'death' of social forms, which is
particularly relevant in societies experiencing intensified social transformation. Whilst the notion of morphogenesis can
account both for the acceleration of change and for the multiplication of coexisting social forms, it does not allow us,
BSA Annual Conference 2015 220
Glasgow Caledonian University