ABSTRACT

Neoliberalism, health and illness are all vast topics that range from global to local, personal to political. Critical realism offers valuable concepts, which help to extend and deepen analysis of these large, complex research areas. These include attending to unseen causal influences, absence, values, power, interests, structure and agency and morphogenesis. The four planes, which connect all interrelating forms of social being, provide a framework for managing large, wide-ranging and inter-disciplinary research data and for contextualizing small studies. Critical realism is contrasted with paradigms such as positivism, realist evaluation and actor network theory. This paper is based on a 20-hour generic course about critical realism for doctoral students, initiated by Roy Bhaskar. It uses the example of neoliberalism, health and illness to illustrate how useful critical realism can be as a research resource. The paper is also about the importance of understanding contemporary health in the context of neoliberalism.

摘要

新自由主义、健康和疾病都是广泛的话题，从全球到地方，从个人到政治。批判现实主义提供了有价值的概念，有助于扩展和深化对这些大型复杂研究领域的分析。这些包括关注看不见的因果影响、缺席、价值观、权力、利益、结构和代理以及形态发生。这四个平面连接了所有相互关联的社会存在形式，为管理大型、广泛和跨学科的研究数据以及将小型研究置于情境中提供了一个框架。批判现实主义与实证主义、现实主义评价和行动者网络理论等范式形成对比。本文基于 Roy Bhaskar 发起的关于博士生批判现实主义的 20 小时通用课程。它使用了新自由主义的例子，健康和疾病来说明批判现实主义作为一种研究资源是多么有用。该论文还讨论了在新自由主义背景下理解当代健康的重要性。