Liberal Theory (liberal + theory)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Anthropological Knowledge and Native American Cultural Practice in the Liberal Polity

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2002
Professor James P. Boggs
U.S. Indian policy is caught between two incommensurable theories or paradigms. First, liberal theory extended the worldviewof early physical science to understand human nature. Providing the conceptual foundation for liberal polities, it largely underwrote U.S. Indian policy into the mid-20th century. Liberal theory recently has been superceded, as theory, by anthropological culture theory, which better accounts for variations between peoples and the realities of human life. The advent of culture theory marks a major paradigm shift within science and public consciousness. Liberal theory, however, remains the foundation for the powerful ideology of liberalism and the institutional practices of Western capitalism and democracy. Thus arise uncomfortable disjunctions,first, between incommensurable theories that both remain vital forces in public life, and, secondarily, between knowledge and practice. This article explores these contending theoretical formations, disjunctions between them, and illustrates how these disjunctions translate into contemporary argument in U.S. Indian policy. [source]


Privatizing the private in rural Paraguay: Precarious lots and the materiality of rights

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 2 2009
DR. KREGG Hetherington
ABSTRACT In this article, I look at the apparent contradiction of Paraguayan peasants who live on privately titled homesteads but who oppose the "privatization" of their land. The changes against which they are fighting are massive upheavals in the peasant landscape and subtle legal shifts that undermine the basis for land redistribution. I argue that the problem with privatizing the private reveals an underlying tension in liberal theories of property between a conception of a right as an abstract relation between people and one in which a right is a relation between people that is mediated, and troubled, by the frailty of material things. [Paraguay, property law, land reform, peasant movement, liberalism, privatization, agrarian transition] [source]


Liberal-Idealism: A Constructivist Critique,

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 1 2007
BRENT J. STEELE
Recently, scholars have connected US constructivism to liberal-idealism. International relations theorists have branded US constructivists as "liberal theorists" for three notable reasons: (1) realists apply an "idealist" tag on constructivism so that it can efficiently be dismissed as a form of theoretical naïvete, (2) rational choice empiricists are motivated with amending constructivist assumptions to make them viable for quantitative analysis; and (3) certain constructivist scholars have attempted to build bridges with rationalist scholarship, especially on epistemological terms, and this "bridge-building" has opened a door for a liberal,constructivist synergy. This essay demonstrates how constructivism can, and must, be distinguished from liberalism. It uses the recent Iraq War to illustrate three constructivist critiques of an important liberal theory: democratic peace "theory." The three critiques are (1) ontological,liberal democratic peace researchers' focus on events leads to an incomplete understanding of processes, structures, and agency; (2) epistemological,unlike constructivism, liberal democratic peace research fails to acknowledge the contamination of subject and object or that state agents use theory to inform their actions; thus the traditionally positivist emphasis on outcomes instead of processes makes for faulty conclusions; and (3) normative,liberalism's radical celebration of the individual desocializes states thereby inhibiting, in structurationist terms, the reflexive monitoring of actions. The essay concludes with some general theoretical statements about democratic peace's future as a paradigm for research. [source]


Neutrality, Rebirth and Intergenerational Justice

JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2002
Tim Mulgan
A basic feature of liberal political philosophy is its commitment to religious neut-rality. Contemporary philosophical discussion of intergenerational justice violates this com-mitment, as it proceeds on the basis of controversial metaphysical assumptions. The Contractualist notion of a power imbalance between generations and Derek Parfit's non-identity claims both presuppose that humans are not reborn. Yet belief in rebirth underlies Hindu and Buddhist traditions espoused by millions throughout the world. These traditions clearly constitute what John Rawls dubs "reasonable comprehensive doctrines", and therefore cannot be dismissed by political liberals. In many societies, including the USA, the UK, and India, belief in rebirth exists alongside other traditions, as well as modern Western views. A liberal theory for such societies must be impartial regarding rebirth, and the after-life in general. Two alternatives forms of liberal neutrality are sketched, based on Contractualism and Consequentialism. [source]


Anthropological Knowledge and Native American Cultural Practice in the Liberal Polity

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2002
Professor James P. Boggs
U.S. Indian policy is caught between two incommensurable theories or paradigms. First, liberal theory extended the worldviewof early physical science to understand human nature. Providing the conceptual foundation for liberal polities, it largely underwrote U.S. Indian policy into the mid-20th century. Liberal theory recently has been superceded, as theory, by anthropological culture theory, which better accounts for variations between peoples and the realities of human life. The advent of culture theory marks a major paradigm shift within science and public consciousness. Liberal theory, however, remains the foundation for the powerful ideology of liberalism and the institutional practices of Western capitalism and democracy. Thus arise uncomfortable disjunctions,first, between incommensurable theories that both remain vital forces in public life, and, secondarily, between knowledge and practice. This article explores these contending theoretical formations, disjunctions between them, and illustrates how these disjunctions translate into contemporary argument in U.S. Indian policy. [source]