Critical Theory for Library and Information Science: Exploring the Social from Across the Disciplines

349 Pages·2010·1.41 MB·English

by  Gloria J. Leckie

CRITICAL THEORY FOR
LIBR ARY AND
INFORMATION SCIENCE
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CRITICAL THEORY
FOR LIBR ARY AND
INFORMATION
SCIENCE
Exploring the Social from
across the Disciplines
Gloria J. Leckie, Lisa M. Given,
and John E. Buschman, Editors
Copyright 2010 by ABC-CLIO, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission
in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Critical theory for library and information science : exploring the social from across the
disciplines / Gloria J. Leckie, Lisa M. Given, and John E. Buschman, editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59158-938-9 (acid-free paper) · ISBN 978-1-59158-940-2 (ebook)
1. Library science·Sociological aspects. 2. Library science·Philosophy.
3. Information science·Sociological aspects. 4. Information science·Philosophy.
5. Critical theory. I. Leckie, Gloria J. II. Given, Lisa M. III. Buschman, John.
Z665.C778 2010
020.1·dc22 2010012813
ISBN: 978-1-59158-938-9
EISBN: 978-1-59158-940-2
14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook.
Visit www.abc-clio.com for details.
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Contents
Introduction: The Necessity for Theoretically Informed Critique in
Library and Information Science (LIS) vii
Gloria Leckie and John Buschman
1. Michel Aglietta and Regulation Theory 1
Siobhan Stevenson
2. Roland Barthes: On Semiology and Taxonomy 15
Hans Dam Christensen
3. Roy BhaskarÊs Critical Realism 29
John M. Budd
4. Social Capital, Symbolic Violence, and Fields of Cultural Production:
Pierre Bourdieu and Library and Information Science 41
Lisa Hussey
5. Beyond a Signpost for Resistance: The Promise of Michel de CerteauÊs
Practices of Everyday Life for LIS Scholarship 53
Paulette Rothbauer
6. Michel Foucault: Discourse, Power/Knowledge, and the Battle for Truth 63
Michael R. Olsson
7. Deconstructing the Library with Jacques Derrida: Creating Space for the
„Other‰ in Bibliographic Description and Classification 75
Joseph Deodato
8. Transformative Library Pedagogy and Community-Based Libraries:
A Freirean Perspective 89
Martina Riedler and Mustafa Yunus Eryaman
9. Psychoanalysis as Critique in the Works of Freud, Lacan,
and Deleuze and Guattari 101
Ronald E. Day and Andrew J. Lau
10. Anthony GiddensÊ Influence on Library and Information Science 119
Howard Rosenbaum
vi CONTENTS
11. The Public Library as a Space for Democratic Empowerment:
Henry Giroux, Radical Democracy, and Border Pedagogy 131
Mustafa Yunus Eryaman
12. Hegemony, Historic Blocs, and Capitalism: Antonio Gramsci in Library
and Information Science 143
Douglas Raber
13. The Social as Fundamental and a Source of the Critical: Jürgen Habermas 161
John E. Buschman
14. Martin HeideggerÊs Critique of Informational Modernity 173
Ronald E. Day
15. Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations 189
Will Wheeler
16. Jean LaveÊs Practice Theory 205
Sanna Talja
17. Henri Lefebvre and Spatial Dialectics 221
Gloria J. Leckie and Lisa M. Given
18. Herbert Marcuse: Liberation, Utopia, and Revolution 237
Ajit Pyati
19. Chantal MouffeÊs Theory of Agonistic Pluralism and Its Relevance for
Library and Information Science Research 249
Joacim Hansson
20. Antonio Negri on Information, Empire, and Commonwealth 259
Nick Dyer-Witheford
21. Ferdinand de Saussure: Duality 273
Paul Solomon
22. Investigating the Textually Mediated Work of Institutions:
Dorothy E. SmithÊs Sociology for People 283
Rosamund K. Stooke
23. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Deconstructionist, Marxist,
Feminist, Postcolonialist 295
Hope A. Olson and Melodie J. Fox
Index 311
About the Editors and Contributors 319
Introduction: The Necessity for
Theoretically Informed Critique in
Library and Information Science (LIS)
Gloria Leckie
University of Western Ontario
John Buschman
Georgetown University
THE EVOLUTION OF CRITICAL THEORY
The rise of critical theory is usually identified with the Institute for Social Research
( Institut für Sozialforschung), formed in 1923 and associated over the years with the
University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany.1 The institute was the home of what
b ecame known as the Frankfurt School of social thought/critique. Particularly under the
leadership of Max Horkheimer during the 1930s, the institute became a focus for the
radical critique both of the fabric of society (including the economy and its attendant
sociopolitical formations) and the social theories that were purported to be explanatory
of social phenomena. Dahms (2007) remarks that
Critical theory began as the project of illuminating how „traditional‰ theories of modern society,
conceptions of social science, approaches to studying social life, and practices of doing research
start out from largely implicit yet highly problematic assumptions about the relationship between
social science and society, in the sense of social science and concrete socio-historical context.
Since the early 1930s, critical theory has stood as a reminder that the specific economic, political,
cultural and ideological configurations of socio-historical contexts have a direct bearing on the
form, content, practice and normative orientation of both social life and social sciences (18).
Early critical theorists of the Frankfurt School included Theodor Adorno, Walter Ben-
jamin, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, and later,
Jürgen Habermas. While this group of scholars had a wide-ranging intellectual agenda,
they were united in their neo-Marxist thinking and analyses, which they brought to
bear on issues such as the sociohistorical origins of capitalism and the nature of work /
labor in a capitalist system, historical materialism, the characteristics and functioning
of the modern state, processes of cultural hegemony/domination, exclusion and ideol-
ogy, alternate views of existence, the nature of reality, and the psychosocial processes of
everyday life. In addition, members of the Frankfurt School took aim at contemporary
viii INTRODUCTION
social theory, including logical positivism and pragmatism, and the nature of dialectics.
Although the Frankfurt School now refers to a particular historical period and group
of theorists, the Institute for Social Research continues, with the current director being
Axel Honneth, and associated prominent scholars including Nancy Fraser, Seyla Ben-
habib, and Agnes Heller, among others.
While in some academic circles the term critical theory is still used as shorthand spe-
cifically for the Frankfurt School, this was not the only group of theorists who offered a
penetrating critique of the social. Dant (2003) points out that there was an „overlapping
but slightly later Gallic tradition‰ (3) of critical theory, including the writings of Roland
Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Andre Gorz, Henry Lefebvre, and Alain Touraine. Dant notes
that both the Germanic and Gallic critical theorists took „MarxÊs analysis of the mode of
production as a starting point that needs to be developed to cope with the changes in cap-
italism that had become apparent by the middle of the twentieth century,‰ and from there
attempted „to extend the Âcritique of political economyÊ towards a broader critique of so-
ciety and culture as a whole‰ (4). However, the critique does not end there; rather the
emphasis shifts towards what we might call the „culturisation‰ of the economy: the way that
modern culture follows the underlying rationale of the economy. . . . What emerges in both the
Germanic and Gallic critical theory traditions is a concern to modify MarxÊs analysis, sometimes
drawing on Freud, to mount a critique of culture and society beyond the critique of political econ-
omy. At times this critique is of society as culture, in distinction to MarxÊs critique of society as
political economy, but consistent is a critique that addresses society as a totality and treats culture
not as epiphenomenal, as Marx was prone to do, but as the form in which the modern mode of
production resides (4).
In addition to those noted by Dant, there were other French scholars whose work has
come to be considered in the realm of a loosely defined critical theory, but who did not
see themselves as aligned with the project of the Frankfurt School and who rejected,
or at least resisted, the Marxian and Hegelian foundations of the Frankfurt scholars.
Among these are included both structuralist and poststructuralist theorists, most notably
Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-François
Lyotard.2 These thinkers, and the areas of scholarship they have influenced, have at-
tacked a wide-ranging set of issues and contradictions, from the hegemony of vari-
ous socioeconomic systems, to unexamined forms of domination and social regulation,
forces of marginalization, and the constraints of a curriculum and pedagogy based upon
a privileged canon of literature. Their critique is rooted in a shift in emphasis to aes-
thetic, textual, and quasi-political strategies, demonstrating a commitment to celebrat-
ing those who have been defined as the Other by those with power. Pluralism has thus
become a primary value, justifying movements to dismantle processes and hierarchies
of power that have enabled the divisive selecting and sorting of people, thus creating the
Other (Rose 1989).
These notions dovetail with the refusal to accept Western privileging of mathemati-
cal and scientific definitions of reality at the expense of other ways of knowing. The
overall project supports inclusion and democratic justice for persons of color, women,
and gay men and lesbians in society, bringing a refreshing poignancy to conceptions of
fairness. These critical theorists „drew attention to the inadequacy of class reductionist
accounts of human society [and] the marginalization of women and minorities‰ in ways
that other forms of critical analysis were not able to do (McCarthy and Apple 1988, 18).
Introduction ix
The recognition of the complex heterogeneity of people is now a core idea, and the re-
lationship between genuine multiculturalism and democracy was established. Further-
more, critical theorists have shown that the actions of professionals are implicated in
power·asymmetrical relations based on class, race, ethnicity, and sexual preference.
Edward Said (in Leonard 1993, 388) has pointed out that „ Âall cultures are involved in
one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily dif-
ferentiatedÊ; . . . that we are in our Âhistory-makingÊ less the Âsymphonic wholeÊ. . . than
Âan atonal ensembleÊ of complementary and interdependent . . . rhetorics.Ê ‰
In earlier phases, critical theory has had to overcome two resulting problematics:
radical pessimism (Held 1980) and the later conflation of culture and philosophy. Hall
(1986) made this second point some time ago on the danger of collapsing analysis and
prescription and going beyond „identifying new trends or tendencies, new cultural con-
figurations, but in learning to love them‰ (45). While some still find in critical theory a
tendency towards these two problematics, nonetheless, as the definition of critical the-
ory has shifted in the last few decades, new critical approaches, such as poststructural-
ism, postcolonialism, feminist and queer theory, have developed and solidified. In this
wider sense, critical theory is evident across more diverse disciplines than ever before,
including education, literary studies, philosophy, management, communication /media
studies, international relations, political science, geography, language studies, sociol-
ogy, and psychology, to name a few. Yet while the idea · or definition · of what critical
theory is may have broadened in recent decades (see, for instance, Sinnerbrink, Deranty,
and Smith 2006; Badminton and Thomas 2008, 1–5), within its theoretical heritage are
two concepts that have been carried forward and form underlying assumptions within
this volume. The first is that critical theory opposes all theory that „renders its own va-
lidity claim dependent on the concealment of its grounds‰ (Bauman 1991, 277). In this
sense, critical theory as it is manifested in this volume is not „theory in the ordinary
sense, but a theory of the foundation and validation of theory‰ (Bauman 1991, 277).
The second is that critical theory now culturalizes the interpretation of the world instead
of naturalizing it (Bauman 1991, 284). In other words, it is a short leap in post-Frankfurt
critical theory to move from the earlier basis of the analysis of categories of social rela-
tionships to now say that:
• History is made by human beings, but in turn history shapes human experience and
„produces outcomes which [people] neither intend nor foresee‰ (Giddens 1987,
156);
• The mode of production, as it exists in various societies, is embedded within all so-
ciocultural practices and institutions and cannot be separated from the analysis of
culture;
• Knowledge is socially constructed and must be understood in its sociocultural con-
text. The „genesis of what has heretofore seemed to be natural and necessary involves
contingent relations. . . . Categories, principles, rules, standards, criteria, procedures,
techniques, beliefs, and practices formerly accepted as purely and simply rational
may come to be seen as in the service of particular interests‰ (McCarthy 1991, 45,
47; see also Sim 2005, vii–xiv);
• Finally, the critic herself must both conduct a „theoretically informed analysis of so-
cial phenomena‰ while at the same time acknowledging that she is unable to assume
a superior or neutral position. The critic is always and only a „partner in dialogue, a
participant, even when observing or criticizing‰ (McCarthy 1991, 128).