The Dictionary of Human Geography

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positivism, the very philosophy that Popper

thought he had demolished in 1935.

Programmatic statements were made on the

behalf of critical rationalism by some geog-

raphers including Wilson (1972), one of the

key proponents of a scientific approach to

geography during the 1960s, and by Bird

(1975, 1989), and Chouinard, Fincher and

Webber (1984) used Lakatos’ critique and

reformulation of Popper’s proposals to outline

the conduct of research programmes in a nom-

inally scientific human geography. But critical

rationalism was never realized in practice

within geography. Indeed, the very idea of

such anormativephilosophical scheme set

out in advance to generate scientific progress

became increasingly unattractive, especially in

the social sciences, after Kuhn’s (1970 [1962])

writings onparadigms, which stressed the

messiness of scientific practice and the role of

ruptures and revolutions in scientific advance.

Further, as human geography moved towards

postmodernismandpost-structuralismand

their various commitments to anti-realism,

relativismand incommensurability, the pro-

spects of Popper’s critical rationalism gaining

hold in the discipline became ever more

remote. tjb

Suggested reading

Bird (1975). See also Critical rationalism study

page: http://www.geocities.com/criticalrationalist/

critical theory A primarily European tradi-

tion of social and political thought centrally

concerned with critical reflection oncapital-

ismandmodernity. It is closely associated

with the work of the so-called Frankfurt

School, which emerged in Germany in the

1920s. The School formed amidst the defeat

of left-wing parties in western Europe, the

degeneration of the Russian revolution into

Soviet Stalinism and the rise offascism. The

members of the School expanded classical

marxism, drawing upon ideas from Freud,

Weber and others outside the Marxist trad-

ition, and in particular sought to supplement

the orthodox focus onpolitical economy

with concepts drawn from the spheres of aes-

thetics, culture andphilosophy. Its key mem-

bers were Theodor Adorno (1903–69), Max

Horkheimer (1895–1973) and Herbert

Marcuse (1898–1979); another scholar asso-

ciated with the School, Walter Benjamin

(1892–1940), committed suicide fleeing

Nazi-occupied France. By then, most mem-

bers of the School had already moved to the

USA, returning to Germany in the 1950s. The

key postwar representative of critical theory is

Ju ̈rgen Habermas (1929– ).

Horkheimer (1975) defined critical theory

in contrast to traditional theory (the neutral,

objective stance claimed in the natural sci-

ences). Unlike traditional theory, critical social

theory had to be reflexive and account for its

own social origins and purposes. Its attitude

was one of distrust towards the social rules

and conventions encountered by individuals

in their daily lives. The critical theorists

identified new trends in capitalism with the

emergence of monopolies, the closer associ-

ation of state and capital, the growth of

bureaucracy, and the rationalization of social

life linked to the dominance of instrumental

reason. They explored issues of identity,

authoritarianism, the spread of commodity

production, reification andalienation. They

were concerned with the way in whichcul-

turehad become an industry, with popular

cultural forms serving to distract workers

from the increasingly repetitive nature of

their daily work, thus promoting a sense of

fatalism and blocking the potential for resist-

ance. Their conclusions on the ideological

barriers to revolution in an increasingly one-

dimensional society tended to confirm a logic

of domination that led to a pessimistic political

immobility that they found it difficult to break

out of.

Ju ̈rgen Habermas has carried on the tradi-

tion of critical theory in the postwar period,

but has also modified it in important ways. His

early work presents a theory ofknowledge-

constitutive interests (technical, practical and

emancipatory) that guide different types of

science – empirical–analytical, hermeneutic

and critical (Habermas, 1987). Here, critical

theory takes on the role of a therapeutic cri-

tique, modelled on Freudianpsychoanalytic

theoryand directed towards freeing society

from ideologically distorted perceptions.

Problems with this formulation led

Habermas to take an important ‘communica-

tive turn’ in the formulation of critical theory

in the 1970s (Habermas, 1984, 1987). Social

life requires co-operative, communicative

interaction and Habermas undertakes the

‘rational reconstruction’ of the underlying sys-

tem of rules that speakers must master in order

to communicate. Speakers uttering a sentence

necessarily (though usually implicitly) make

certain validity claims (to truth, rightness,

sincerity, intelligibility). A genuine rational

consensus on the basis of these validity claims

can emerge only under conditions of free

and unconstrained debate that Habermas

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CRITICAL THEORY