POSITIVISM, POSTMODERNISM, OR CRITICAL THEORY?
A CASE STUDY OF COMMUNICATION STUDENTS’ UNDERSTANDING OF CRITICISM
By: Christian Fuchs and Marisol Sandoval of University Of Salzburg, Austria

A REVIEW BY
SAIED SULAIMAN TAFIDA


INTRODUCTION
The paper was published in the Journal for Critical Education Policy studies, 6 (2). The paper tries to provide the result of case study that analyze how students understand the importance of critical thinking.1 the distinctions between the major theories of positivism, postmodernism and Marxian critique. The research is based on the analysis of 52 students writing about a notion of critique.2
The writers grouped the paper into 5 main Sections of: Introduction; The notion of critiques, Research method; Presentation of results; and interpretation of the results and conclusion. This review will attempt to summaries the chapters and assess the write up.

REVIEW
The writers opened their first chapter with an introduction of the study and what they hope to achieve after the paper. They questioned the emergence of different protest of students in 1960 against wars, the overwhelming rise of capitalism and economization of societies. The movement according to them looks like a leftist movement but with less revolutionary tendencies. However according to them, 40 years has passed now and what the students protest against, still stand. Hence they seek to bring out “how important is critical political thinking for students today? Do they consider Marxian critique of society rather important and topical or rather unimportant and outmoded?”3
The second section of the paper focused on different notions of criticisms. First is the notion of critique in Marxist critical theory. The section sees and defines Marxist theory as the notion of critic they wished to advance in explaining the role of economic interest play in capitalism. The writers based the critic notion on “introduction to the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of rights”, written in one of Carl Marx’s write ups in 1844. They went further to group the important elements of the notion of critique into three: epistemology, ontology and axiology.
Epistemology or what they refer as dialectical materialism is grasped as the human use of knowledge to define or assess a certain social phenomena. The use of dialectical materialism was to advance the human pessimism or optimism as the history has it, in the defining of knowledge. Ontology or materialism is the distribution materials in the society. Since critical theory is materialistic in nature. It looks at private ownership and distribution of resources. And finally axiology focuses on negating the negative. Critical theories usually stand on the position of the exploited, the masses, and assess the bourgeois. The axiological dimension of critique is the interface between theory and political praxis. 4
Secondly, the writers brought positivistic notion of critic to table. They brought the argument of Karl R. Popper (1962) which says “the method of social sciences is gaining and differentiating knowledge by testing solutions to problems5. They brought the importance of positivism and given the opportunity for others to simply observe the analyses and criticize or adopt for the improvement of knowledge.
Thirdly is the postmodern notion of critique. They portray this notion to argue that, there are no universal communalities of human societies as shown by dialectical materialism. Social structures are pure social constructions. For them the yard stick of measurement is also constructed. Such constructions are not to be considered with reference to the ground or foundation of things but by relating them to the body of rules that enable them to form.
The authors brought out the shortcoming of all the theories. They brought out that Marxist theory is utopia, and that positivist thinking is not easly reliable because man cannot be subjected to numbers due to his dynamic nature. For the postmodernist, the enmity towards universalism and essence makes it impossible to envision a state of society, in which there is universal wealth and well-being for all.
The second section rounded up with a typology of defining critique. For the writers, they don’t need a typology of what a critique can be but how he can be potentially defined. That the task of the case study they undertook is to investigate which among Marxist critique, positivistic and postmodern understandings is predominant in 52 students write ups they are analyzing.
Research method makes the 3rd section. In this section the researchers explaining their method of analysis. According to them, they adopted a quantifying qualitative content analysis as research method. The sample is restricted to the 52 undergraduates write ups on the notion of critical analysis. After studying the write ups, the writers tested four hypotheses.
The results of the hypothesis were presented in the forth section of the paper. The analysis portrays the involvement of opinions in the write ups and they found that positivist arguments were predominant (more than 70%). On the contrary those “student who employ Marxist understanding of critique, took a normative standpoint”6 . The writers went further to interpret the results in the fifth section.
Section 5, interpreted the general findings. The writers started by laying foundations of the contextual are were the research was conducted. They found that the students focus more on education and unemployment, than student radicalism in the campuses. This according to them may be because in 2008 radicalism in universities is not a norm. Unemployment is seen as a factor against student performance.
However in the research under scrutiny, positivistic thinking was wide spread to about 75 percent. Critical/Anti capitalism though is present but to a lesser degree (17.3%). According to them, “the increase penetration of the academic system with economic reasons that is brought about by neoliberal policies and that could be strongly observed in Austria during the past decade, has contributed to the strong dominance of positivistic thought among students.7
According to the researchers, one dimensional thought seems to be overwhelming other thoughts. For them critical views has moved to the corridors of schools and are thought just in books, because even the bigots are seen as aliens in the schools. “the commodification of education not only takes on the form that students have to pay school fees…they have to take up paid employment…universities becoming more directly related to industry”8 for them disciplines that cannot be related to capitalist economy are gradually vanishing into the thin air. The implication of such according to the writers is the lost in student interest in socio-political issues. And such students will only nurture a totalitarian and undemocratic society,
The writers concluded by suggesting some ways to arrest the one dimension thought in the society. They suggested that Marxian theory should be connected to student’s actual experience. And particular emphasis should be given to social problems in social science courses. They linked the necessity of such steps to avoid the reoccurrence of global economic meltdown witnessed in 2008 to 2009.
CONCLUSION
The writers aim at conveying out how social science can be used in bringing out knowledge and betterment of our societies. It is obvious; the aim of the paper is achieved. However, the writer’s analysis of data is too small for over generalization. The writers sampled 52 write-ups from a certain socio-political background as a basses of analysis. The theoretical outcome may be different if the students where from Moscow or Nigeria, Austria is more dominant a capitalist state than Russia or undeveloped Nigeria. It will be recommendable if a greater sample that cut across cultures, classes and regions will be used, before conclusions are deduced.

End Notes
1 Fuchs, Christian et al. Positivism, postmodernism, or critical theory?
A case study of communication students’ understanding of criticism Journal for critical education policy studies 6, (2): 113
2 Ibid: 113
3 Ibid: 113
4 Ibid: 114
5 Ibid: 116
6 Ibid: 125
7 Ibid: 135
8 Ibid: 135

Bibliography:
Barbie, Earl (2001) The practice of social research: 9th edition, Wads worth/ learning, Belmont, USA 2001