The argument presented in this book is that the recent 'spiritual' trajectory of Roy Bhaskar's work, upon which he first embarked with the publication of his From East to West, undermines the fundamental achievements of his earlier work. The problem with Bhaskar's new philosophical system (Transcendental Dialectical Critical Realism or simply Meta-Reality), from the critical-realist Marxist perspective endorsed here, is that it marks both a departure from and a negation of the earlier concerns of Bhaskar to develop a realist philosophy of science and under-labour for an emancipatory materialist socio-historical science. The end-result is a meta-philosophy which is irrealist, speculative, under-theorized, internally self-contradictory, and which cannot provide philosophical guidance to liberatory social practices.
In opposition to theist ontological logics more generally (including the rather more rational theism presented by Margaret Archer, Andrew Collier and Doug Porpora), the argument of this book is that the earth-bound materialist dialectics of the classical Marxist tradition, and the naturalistic humanism these dialectics under-labour on the terrain of socio-historical being, offer a much more promising way forward for critical realist theory and for liberatory politics and ethics.
Table of Contents:
1. Globalising Community-oriented Policing Part 1: Community Policing − Models and Critiques 2. Community-oriented Policing − the Anglo-American Model 3. Anglo-American Community Policing − Ten Myths 4. Community Policing on the Asian Pacific Rim 5. Aspects of Community Policing in the European Union and in Western Europe Part 2: Community Policing in Transitional and Failed Societies 6. South Africa: The Failure of Community Policing 7. Community Policing in Transitional Societies 8. Community Policing in Failed Societies 9. Creating Community Policing in Northern Ireland 10. Community Policing and Democratic Policing