The second lecture of the David Graeber Philosophical series will be about Bhaskar. It will be delivered by Frederic Vandenberghe and Douglas Porpora and is entitled ‘Critical realism and baseline communism. A heavenly discussion between Roy Bhaskar and David Graeber.’

 

Critical realism is a philosophical movement in the social sciences associated with the work of Roy Bhaskar. It offers a rigorous alternative to both positivist and post-modernist accounts of science and truth. In this talk, we will explore the philosophical affinities and the political implications of Graeber’s adherence to the basic tenets of critical realism.

The lecture will take place on 24th March at 7pm (London time).

Frederic Vandenberghe is professor of sociology at the Institute of philosophy and social sciences of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and visiting professor at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris (2018-2022). He’s a social theorist and has written numerous articles and books on the history of ideas and the philosophy of the social sciences. He was a colleague of David Graeber at Yale. He’s a chief-editor of MAUSS international. In English he published (with Alain Caillé): For a New Classic Sociology. A Proposition, followed by a Debate (Routledge, 2021) and What’s Critical about Critical Realism (Routledge, 2016).

 

Douglas Porpora is a professor of sociology in the Department of Culture and Communication at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He has published widely on social theory. He’s the editor of the Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. Among his books are Public Debate in Post-Ethical Society: The Attack on Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and the Moral Failure of the Secular (Chicago University Press, 2013) and Reconstructing Sociology. The Critical Realist Approach (Cambridge University Press, 2016).