Local Labour Markets, Labour Relations, and Complex Moral Reasoning

1. Local Labour Markets, Labour Relations, and Complex Moral Reasoning Wendy Olsen Global Poverty Research Group www.gprg.org >>Publications >>Working Papers FUNDED BY UK ESRC

2. Local Labour Markets and Tenancy • Class relations • Locality-specific class-caste nexus and agroclimatic conditions • Religion is variegated over space, too • Civil society and social networks are village-specific (two village studies) • Contracts are flexible, negotiated, bargained in a class context

3. Previous Research • 4 or 5 schools of thought • (See Table 1) • Each had a different ontology (a theory of what objects exist and why they matter) • Each has moral overtones, which are complex moral reasoning strategies (CMRs) • Each has moral undertones

4. Olsen, Journal of Economic Methodology • Moral undertones are the nuances of affect, preference, and goodness/badness that are carried by descriptive and explanatory statements about the economy. • For example, the neoclassical author Skoufias suggests that paying a man a high wage to work with bullocks is good for the man (but also efficient for farming in general), while paying women low wages is good for efficiency too.

5. Mixed-Methods Study of Labour Relations • 40 household ‘cases’ • Interviews with each • Questionnaires 2006 • Questionnaires 1994 • Daniel Neff is conducting in-depth research • This Olsen study is based on repeat visits and teamwork How to do such studies: See Olsen, W.K., Methodological Triangulation and Realist Research: An Indian Exemplar, in B. Carter and C. New, eds., Making Realism Work: Realist Social Theory and Empirical Research , NY: Routledge, 2004.

6. Characteristics of Strategies  and acts, then observes.

7. Some Strategies at a Personal Level

8. The judgemental rationality of agents is complex and ongoing, judging actions in light of the past. Is judgemental rationality a moral reasoning...? For the argument about 1st, 2nd and 3rd order strategies, see W. K. Olsen, “Structure, Agency, and Strategy Among Tenants in India”, forthcoming in late 2007 in the Asian Journal of Social Sciences, special issue ‘Beyond Sociology’, editor A. Giri. Available from the author via email.

9. Some Strategies at a Policy Level

10. Six or seven main usual moral reasoning strategies are found in economics. • Neoclassical growth reasoning. • Pareto optimality reasoning. • Human capabilities reasoning. • Social equality reasoning. • Redistributive reasoning. • Transformation via praxis reasoning. See table 3. • and so on, e.g. sustainability reasoning, Corporate Social Responsibility etc.

11. Comparison of Complex Moral Reasoning Strategies - example

12. Needs an explanatory component • A causal mechanism is... • Discerned using observation or feeling; • Can be found from patterns or from texts and representations; • Described using discourse • ‘Context’’Mechanism’’Outcome’ • Causes do not work deterministically. They are best described as tendencies. • Some causes arise from structures. • Describing processes of change involves identifying causes.

13. The Role Critical Realism is Playing Here in the Background • “One would typically expect something like a new idea which was coming from "out of the blue" or from an undiscovered stratum of reality or dimension of being, to be coming from a stratum which was both epistemologically transcendent and ontologically immanent…” • [ if we can think in this way of the ] “dialectics of co-presence” [of the good along with false ideas about reality] . . . we are nevertheless free. • --Roy Bhaskar (2004), From Science to Emancipation, London: Sage: pgs 131-134.

14. Applies virtue reasoning • Sen on capabilities as functionings that are valued in a given context • Nussbaum on capabilities as living a good life [in context] • Moral relativism arises, and is discussed by E. Anderson, 1993 Value in Ethics and Economics • Contextualised virtue ethics also arose in Macintyre After Virtue • Similar to the Jackson Position

15. Which CMRs advise us to foster deliberation? • Habermas • What kind of deliberation? • Who gets a voice? • Which voices are silenced? • the commercialisation paradox • Bohman • Kabeer and GAD generally • Agarwal • Charles Taylor on the social agent

16. Applies an explanatory critique • Explanatory critique arose in Critical Social Science • Also in scientific realism (Sayer, 1992 Method in Social Science; Sayer, 2000; Bhaskar, 1975; Olsen, JDS 2006) • Also elsewhere in post-structuralist thought

17. What is explanatory critique? • Most critiques are from within a paradigm • Most hypothesis-testing occurs from within a given theory • But to do pluralist research you cut across theories: • question the factual assumptions of other paradigm or theory • question others’ beliefs • criticise harm arising from the practices of those who use the other theory • MARX; VEBLEN How to do it: see Olsen, 2004

18. From Hertwig, M., ed. (2007) Dictionary of Critical Realism • a cognitive explanatory critique is doubly critical; it involves cognitive critique (falsity) of the belief • And ethical critique of the cause of the false belief being held. • (By Hugh Lacey; pages 196-197)

19. General Conclusions • I have offered a very explicit way to examine the moral reasoning of different schools of thought. • These reasoning forms are found in policy dialogues too. • Explanatory critique is useful but does not falsify the entirety of neoclassical economics’ explanatory framework, only its moral undertones / nuances.

20. Background Reading • Danermark, B. (2001). Explaining society : an introduction to critical realism in the social sciences. London, New York, Routledge. (introduces scientific realism) • Flyvbjerg, B. (2001). Making social science matter : why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. (explicitly Aristotelian)

21. Thank you! • wendy.olsen@manchester.ac.uk