Pictures normatively informed
In one of the most quoted and controversial lines in the discipline, Robert Cox in
the early 1980s wrote that ‘theory is always forsomeone and forsome purpose’.^10 He
was able to capture, in a few words, the epistemological claim of critical theory that
knowledge is socially situated, historically produced, and normatively pregnant
(whether intended or not). Coxian theory here combined with the traditions of
Gramscian and Frankfurt School thinking to challenge hubristic social science claims
about ‘objectivity’ and ‘neutrality’ in the study of human society. Cox also made
the distinction (discussed in Chapter 1) between ‘problem-solving’ and ‘critical
theory’ – a ‘nice distinction’ in Waltz’s view, it may be recalled. For critical theorists,
interested in meta-problem-solving (seeking to transcend the problems inthe status
quo by dealing with the problems of the status quo) theory is for the potential
community of humankind and for the purpose of emancipation.^11
A standard assault against critical theorists by traditional social scientists, pregnant
as they are with normativity, is that they are misguided; the claim is that the
academic goal must be to seek objectivity in the study of humans, eschewing work
of a ‘political’ or ‘normative’ character. Critical theory is seen from this traditional
viewpoint to be rejection of theorising in ‘purely academic terms’, which in turn
leaves ‘no neutral way to decide which theory is the best’.^12 In reply, critical theorists
counter that while scholarship in any discipline requires the pursuit of certain
academic norms (logical argument, concern for concepts, respect for evidence, the
achievement of some critical distance from whatever is being analysed, etc.) these
norms must also include some recognition that when humans study humans there
can be no ‘purely academic terms’ nor ‘neutral’ standpoints. Observer and observed
do not live in a value-free environment. There is no real outside where the observer
can stand. Neutral ground does not exist. History cannot be escaped. ‘Truth is born
of the times’.^13
As much as Darwin may have thought differently when he studied worms and
vegetable mould, his thoughts were shaped by more than purely scientific terms.
We now understand Darwin much more as a person than simply as a remarkable
scientist; and this includes interpretations of the science being normatively
embedded. According to Adrian Desmond and James Moore, ‘Darwin’s human
project... is foundational, and without understanding it, we cannot understand
why Darwin came to evolution at all.’^14 This argument is that Darwin’s revolu-
tionary theory was inseparable from his ‘Sacred Cause’: his commitment to the
abolition of slavery. And the theory he developed opened up not only recognition
of the equality of the ‘races’, but even more importantly, it showed that we – the
global-weof humankind – share common roots. It is difficult to imagine that Darwin’s
picture of the ‘unity of humankind’, all descended from common organisms, could
have been ‘mentally formed’ by a Nazi biologist, raised in a racist family embedded
in a society infused by ideas of racial superiority. Our pictures of the social world
do not come from nowhere, as ‘neutral’ observations, the creations of ‘purely
academic’ spirit. Our pictures are ‘mentally formed’ by social situation, by historical
The inconvenient truth 329