Critical social science and emancipation: II, development and application

• Date: 01 July 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12104
• Author: Paul Edwards
• Published date: 01 July 2015

Critical social science and emancipation:

II, development and application

Paul Edwards

ABSTRACT

How can industrial relations scholars engage with practice while remaining critical?

Part I argued that a notion of real interests establishes the grounds for action. This

notion can be developed in terms of differing dimensions of interests. These dimen-

sions are illustrated using concrete examples. The dimensions do not provide direct

answers in specific instances; personal judgement remains essential. But they provide

some tools for thinking about these issues. They also help to identify the conditions

under which intervention is unproblematic and hence where institutional reform in

industrial relations and ‘uncritical management studies’ more generally can be accept-

able from a critical point of view.

Part I of this article laid out a ‘radical pluralist’ view of the links between academic

analysis and practical engagement. It made four points. First, analysis needs to rest on

ontological realism: the principle that the world is in principle knowable, so that

action is based on objectivity and not a particular standpoint. Second, the concept of

real interests is a way of applying the general principles of realism; in particular, we

can ascribe such interests to people while recognising that interests are multiple and

changeable and that a set of real interests exists in relation to a given situation, as a

worker or a manager for example, rather than in some absolute sense. We are thus

moving beyond sterile debates as to whether workers are falsely conscious if they do

not work for the overthrow of capitalism. We consider instead contexts, ask why

interests are structured in them in certain ways and then debate what workers might

do to promote their (real) interests. There can be such interests in improved produc-

tive efficiency if the efficiency is genuine: Workers have interests in the development of

the productive forces as well as in matters of distribution.

Third, the work of Heery (2010) was used to develop specific dimensions of interests

so as to ground the idea further. Finally, and of most relevance to the present

discussion, the work of Sayer (2011) was deployed to show how the relationship

between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ can be addressed. It was noted that even Sayer does not deal

with concrete cases, and some brief illustrations were given. Yet these illustrations did

not unpack the range of dimensions on which any claim for engagement must be

judged. Most obviously, if we promote some immediate interest of workers in higher

❒Paul Edwards is Professor of Employment Relations, Birmingham Business School, University of

Birmingham. Correspondence should be addressed to Paul Edwards, Management, University of Birming-

ham, Edgbaston Park Road Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT; email: P.K.Edwards@Bham.ac.uk

Industrial Relations Journal 46:4, 275–292

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

wages, do we endanger their longer-term interests in their jobs, and how can we think

about the issues involved? The present article takes up these issues by identifying

appropriate dimensions and offering illustration of engagement in practice. It sug-

gests that grounds for action can be found in social science, and hence that those who

seek engagement have options other than the model of participatory action research

advocated by Brook and Darlington (2013).

This analysis cannot of course establish rules for any concrete situation, where

personal political judgement will necessarily be involved. But it establishes some tools

for making such judgement. The method is to use examples from my own experience,

because I am more aware of the dilemmas involved than would be the case from

reading others’ published accounts.

The article first specifies its focus and terms and elaborates a position linking ‘is’

and ‘ought’. It then makes some reasonably straightforward distinctions around

direct/indirect and intended/unintended effects before addressing the identification of

the parties who are likely to be affected by some effort at emancipation and how their

differing interests can be considered. A short discussion of the mechanisms through

which interventions have their effects is followed by a fuller account of the most

fundamental of Heery’s categories: the depth of interests. If people have immediate

and deeper interests, is it possible to say how these can be balanced? The lessons are

drawn together in the Discussion section.

1 LOCAL ENGAGEMENT, PARTISANSHIP AND GROUNDED IDEALISM

There is a growing recognition among ‘critical’ scholars of the limits of what Barros

(2010: 166) calls ‘grand narratives of emancipation’ and the need to focus on ‘local

dynamics’. We should address, in other words, real interests in concrete situations and

not larger questions about a whole mode of production and emancipation from its

constraints. A popular approach, followed by Barros, is that of participatory action

research, in which the researcher works with social actors to pursue emancipatory

projects. Brook and Darlington (2013: 233, 235) ground this method in a wider model

of the researcher who is ‘overtly partisan and active on the side of the marginalized

and labour’, and who is a Gramscian intellectual ‘rooted in, and bound to, a specific

social group’.

As argued in Part I, a partisan approach is not the only basis for emancipation.

It is possible to take a stance lying between partisanship and the conventional aca-

demic position of the ‘dispassionate’ scientist, as adopted by Pawson (2006: 6) for

example. This stance necessarily has a normative component, for as Sayer (2011)

argues, one cannot move from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ without making some value commit-

ments. Within industrial relations, both ‘classic’ and ‘radical’ pluralism (Ackers,

2014) share commitments to such principles as democracy and the rule of law. One

‘radical’ specifies due process, the rule of law, and freedoms of speech, publication

and association as among the liberal values to which he is committed, even though

as a radical he questions how far they are attained in existing societies (Fox, 1979:

106). The normative commitment is thus to certain principles, and not a specific

social group.

We can apply this idea at local level using Beirne’s (2008) concept of grounded

idealism—though whether Beirne would prefer a more partisan reading of his analysis

is a separate question. He argues that micro or local emancipation is not to be

dismissed as meaningless. It can be real, as some of the early researchers on employee

276 Paul Edwards

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd