Journal of Critical Realism in Socio-Economics (JOCRISE)

Introduction to Qur'anic Wisdwom

Kausar Ali — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0700

The human Span of Knowability is limited to boundaries defined by Logical Positivism. The Quran as a book of Knowledge is Message contents revealed from God Almighty. The messages in general may broadly be classified into two broad categories i.e. LEARNING and ACADEMIC. The text contents LEARNING in nature are set of Communication materials calling one to change of its behavior voluntarily i.e. Commanding Response appropriate to Specific Message Contents. The other broader class i.e. ACADEMIC are Text Contents that do not command change of behavior or response expressed through conscience, intents, motivations and actions reflected as ATTITUDES. The holy Quran is explored as Message Contents primarily directed to Change of Behaviour and hence LEARNING in nature. The Quranic Learning Texts are attached with dire consequences in terms of Perpetual bliss and Everlasting sufferings and hence referred as Quranic Wisdoms. The success is the result of commitment and actions in due response to such inherent Wisdoms. It provides with basic ingredients for building of Personalities. The Quranic Wisdoms are communicated through combination of Text forms i.e. MUHKAMAAT and MUTASHABIHAAT. The text contents of MUTASHABIHAAT are essentially Unknowable yet Inferable (through reason) whereas as the texts of MUHKAMAAT are direct, precise, perceptible and observable i.e. Knowable in essence. The progress of behavioral change may be evaluated amid various changing environments and circumstances presented as Quranic Templates. The effective monitoring of change observed across various Quranic Templates can be used as tools for right development of Ordinary Self leading to True Islamic Personalities.

BOOK REVIEW: Principal Model of Divergence In Increasing Inequality In Thomas Piketty (Translated By Arthur Goldhammer). Capital In The Twenty-First Century. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2014.

Masud Choudhury — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0700

The section towards the end is a focused extract from the above masterpiece by Thomas Picketty. The question raised in this partial book review is that the current egalitarian expectation of Islamic Economics, Finance, and Social Contract by shari’ah scholars is untenable in a market economy. Thereby, only an abounding rich and enforcing policy mechanism of non-democratic states can provide exogenously power-structure of such countries to institutionalize Islamic socio-economic enforcement structure, while avoiding the endogenous market process. Yet it is the latter socio-economic structure that induces the most central driving force of the Islamic worldview. That is, the endogenous induction of essential qur’anic knowledge of unity of knowledge, explained by the socio-economic structure of participated complementary in the order of ‘everything’. The qur’anic overarching meaning of maqasid as-shari’ah as the DIVINE WAY is invoked and implicated as the Law of Tawhid. This is explained and continuously sustained as the universal law of unity of knowledge induced by consciousness in ‘everything’, That is the unifying structure of pairing as the regenerative structure of ‘pairing’ in ‘everything’.

What is Scientific Reality?

Mohammad Shahadat Hossain — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0700

Scientific progress in AI, Big Data, and FINTECH has revolutionized human life but also intensified inequality, surveillance, and ecological crises. This paper argues that such contradictions arise from modern science’s separation of morality from materiality. It advances the Law of Unity of Knowledge, integrating ethical consciousness (“being”) with empirical reality (“becoming”) through circular causation. The framework, rooted in insights from Einstein, Hawking, Whitehead, and Imam Ghazali, culminates in a Wellbeing Function that links sustainability to moral-material complementarity. Applications include ethical AI in healthcare and Qur’ānic principles of trusteeship in agriculture, redefining scientific reality as holistic, ethical, and transformative

The Advantages of Free Trade Over Tariffs

Emmanuel M. Asprodites, Walter E. Block — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0700

The term paper examines the historic conflict between protectionism and free trade, arguing that unilateral free trade is the superior economic policy. While tariffs are traditionally justified as tools to guard home industries and protect jobs, economic theory and existing evidence confirm that such protectionist behavior ultimately reduces economic efficiency, raises consumer prices, and hurts long-run growth. Drawing from the initial theories of David Ricardo and Adam Smith and Austrian economists today, the paper describes how open markets, specialization, and comparative advantage provide a win-win scenario for trading nations. Historical evidence from case studies like Britain's post-Corn Laws period and the East Asian export-led growth is testimony that countries thrive if free trade is permitted. Lastly, the evidence is in favor of the argument that free trade is not just economically optimal but also ethical, and should be embraced as a means to greater prosperity and global development.

Decentering - from Ptolemaic to Planetary (or Oneness) Paradigm

Rodney Shakespeare — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0700

The Ptolemaic paradigm put the Earth at the centre of the universe giving rulers a Divine Right (to rule) and awarding humans high status as God’s Children who had planetary dominion. However, in the sixteenth century, the Copernican Revolution decentered the Earth and so began undermining the Divine Right although it continued the high status and planetary dominion. Three centuries later, Darwinian Evolution, establishing that Homo sapiens is only one species among many, decentered humans from their high status. Nevertheless, it did not check the dominion. Indeed, Evolution did the opposite and gave humans a licence to pillage. Moreover, the licence exacerbated the aggressive tendencies of Homo economicus as developed by John Stuart Mill. Influenced by Malthus and Tennyson, Herbert Spenser then united Darwin and Mill proclaiming Survival of the Fittest thereby encouraging the imperialism and economic expansionism which would plunder the planet and result in today’s environmental crises. However, the Planetary (or Oneness) Paradigm, in a third decentering, remembers that humans are part of, and not separate from, the planet as a whole and enables Homo economicus to evolve into Homo co-operans thereby creating beneficial outcomes and enabling A Shared World View.

BOOK REVIEW: NOBEL LAUREATE PROFESSOR DR. MUHAMMAD YUNUS, (2017). A WORLD OF THREE ZEROS, THE NEW ECONOMICS OF ZERO POVERTY, ZERO UNEMPLOYMENT AND ZERO NET CARBON EMISSIONS.

Masud Choudhury — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0700

This book review critically examines A World of Three Zeros by Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, which advocates for a new economic paradigm centered on zero poverty, zero unemployment, and zero net carbon emissions through the model of social business. While Yunus proposes social business as a moral and practical alternative to profit-maximizing capitalism, the review highlights key limitations in his framework. It notes the lack of epistemological depth and systemic methodological rigor in challenging entrenched capitalist structures. Moreover, while Yunus emphasizes microcredit and entrepreneurship, he under-theorizes the institutional transformation necessary to sustain a global order of social business. The book's optimism about technological change and development partnerships with capitalist entities also reveals contradictions in its critique of neoliberal economics. The reviewer introduces an alternative worldview based on the episteme of Tawhid and critical realism, advocating for a consciousness-based civilization rooted in unity of knowledge, justice, and moral purpose. Through diagrams and conceptual models, the review suggests that Yunus’s vision, though morally appealing, lacks the structural, philosophical, and theological grounding needed to realize sustainable transformation. A more coherent socio-economic alternative would require integrating ethics, consciousness, and systemic complementarity into the heart of development discourse.

Monetary Policy in Debt System and in Risk-Sharing System

Abbas Mirakhor — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0700

This paper critically examines the operations of monetary policy within two fundamentally contrasting financial architectures: the interest-based debt system and the equity-based risk-sharing system. Drawing upon recent global financial developments—particularly the debt distress and monetary tightening episodes of the 2020s—it highlights how conventional monetary policy, centered on interest rate manipulation and fractional reserve banking (FRB), has led to excessive global indebtedness, financial fragility, and widening socioeconomic inequality. The study underscores that in debt-driven systems, monetary expansion often results in wealth concentration among rentier classes and creates systemic moral hazards, whereby financial institutions are shielded from the consequences of their risk-taking behavior through government guarantees and bailouts. In contrast, the risk-sharing model rooted in Islamic economic principles offers a fundamentally different monetary architecture. It proposes a financial system that is closely integrated with the real economy, free from interest-based debt, and governed by participatory contracts such as mudarabah and musharakah. Monetary policy in this system relies on asset-backed, equity-based instruments that align public and private sector incentives, enhance financial inclusion, and promote macroeconomic stability without reliance on pro-cyclical interest rate tools. The paper concludes that transitioning toward a risk-sharing framework presents a viable alternative to the debt-based monetary paradigm, not only in theory but as a necessary step toward achieving long-term sustainability, equitable growth, and resilience against future financial crises.

Debt And Riba Avoidance In The 100% Reserve Requirement Monetary System: A TSR Perspective On Sustainable Complementarities

Mustafa Kamal — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0700

This paper explores the systemic roots of debt and riba (interest) in conventional monetary systems and presents a morally grounded alternative based on the Tawhidi String Relations (TSR) framework. Within the prevailing fractional reserve system, money creation through debt issuance has led to financial instability, speculative cycles, and wealth concentration—dynamics that conflict with the foundational principles of Islamic economics, particularly the prohibition of riba and the imperative for distributive justice. In response, the paper proposes a 100% reserve requirement monetary system that aligns with TSR’s epistemology of unity (tawhid), emphasizing complementarity between ethics, economic institutions, and real sector activities. The study argues that under the TSR framework, money is not a neutral tool but a moral instrument tied to real value creation and governed by ethical purpose. Through the principles of circular causation and knowledge-ethics-action integration, the full reserve system facilitates participatory finance, eliminates the structural basis for riba, and enhances financial inclusion and macroeconomic stability. Banks are reconceptualized as ethical intermediaries operating through profit-and-loss sharing contracts, while investments are directed toward socially beneficial and risk-shared ventures. Supported by both theoretical rigor and empirical evidence, this paradigm offers a holistic, sustainable, and shari‘ah-compliant alternative to debt-based finance. Ultimately, the TSR-aligned full reserve model offers not only a monetary reform, but a civilizational shift toward a justice-oriented Islamic economic order.

Social Networks and Legal Transfers: A Study on the Contractual Relations of Afghan Taxi Drivers

Nafay Choudhury — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0700

This study examines the phenomenon of legal transfers in developing countries through the lens of social network analysis, using the case of Afghan taxi drivers to explore the interaction between formal legal reforms and embedded social norms. Drawing on field research conducted in Kabul, the paper investigates how taxi drivers conduct their contractual affairs in the context of a weak formal legal system. Despite significant international efforts to transplant formal contract law regimes and strengthen judicial institutions in Afghanistan, the findings reveal that formal law plays a minimal role in regulating everyday transactions. Instead, drivers rely heavily on social networks—particularly guarantors—whose legitimacy stems not from state authority, but from trust and reputation within the community. Intriguingly, these guarantors increasingly include government-affiliated individuals, whose bureaucratic registration makes them traceable and thus pragmatically valuable, while still operating within informal norms. The paper argues that rather than replacing traditional norms, legal reforms have been absorbed into existing social networks, resulting in a hybrid regulatory model. This underscores the resilience of local social structures and challenges conventional assumptions in law and development discourse that equate legal reform with normative transformation. By introducing social network analysis into legal transfer studies, the paper provides a more nuanced framework to understand how legal ideas are localized, reinterpreted, or resisted. The study ultimately advocates for greater contextual sensitivity in assessing the impact of legal transfers, recognizing that recipient environments are governed not merely by legal institutions but by complex webs of interpersonal relationships and social meaning.

It Is Time, It Is Past Time, To Resolve The Abortion Debate

Walter E. Block — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0700

Debates over bodily autonomy and abortion often polarize between pro-choice and pro-life positions. “Evictionism” offers a third perspective, framing pregnancy through the lens of property rights and bodily sovereignty: a woman has full ownership of her body, and a fetus is considered an innocent but unauthorized occupant. This study explores evictionism within a critical realist paradigm, recognizing the layered reality of biological processes, social structures, and technological possibilities. It situates the argument in socio-economic contexts where access to reproductive healthcare, legal frameworks, and medical technology shape women’s autonomy and fetal viability. Using a critical realist approach, this research employs theoretical analysis and socio-economic contextualization. The study identifies ontological layers of pregnancy (biological, legal, and cultural), explores causal mechanisms (property rights discourse, medical technologies enabling fetal survival, and social norms), and evaluates agency-structure interactions. Data are drawn from legal texts, bioethical literature, and socio-economic reports on reproductive healthcare access. The methodology emphasizes retroduction to uncover underlying mechanisms and assesses how technology and policy mediate ethical positions on evictionism. Findings indicate that evictionism functions as a contingent ethical framework, deeply dependent on material conditions. In socio-economic settings with advanced neonatal care, evictionism converges with pro-life outcomes in late-term pregnancies while maintaining bodily autonomy. In contexts with limited healthcare infrastructure, evictionism’s overlap with pro-choice outcomes becomes pronounced due to technological constraints. The analysis reveals that bodily autonomy cannot be abstracted from socio-economic realities and power structures. Critical realism highlights evictionism’s emancipatory potential while cautioning against reducing bodily integrity to property metaphors without addressing systemic inequalities.

Islamic Communication: A Critical Realist Perspective

Muhammad Taqiyuddin — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0700

In this paper, I explore Islamic communication through a critical realist lens, aiming to enhance the understanding of its principles and applications in contemporary society. The research addresses how critical realism can be utilized to tackle modern challenges in Islamic communication, focusing on three key areas: the conceptualization of Islamic communication within critical realism, the practical implications for contemporary media, and the strategies for addressing intercultural communication challenges. Employing a qualitative methodology that includes theoretical analysis and case studies, I identify significant gaps in the existing literature and propose solutions to bridge these gaps. My findings reveal that integrating critical realism into Islamic communication theory enriches its framework, facilitates the development of practical media applications, and offers valuable strategies for enhancing intercultural communication. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of Islamic communication and suggests avenues for future research.

The Financial Architecture of Systemic Ecocide and Genocide: Investigating Systemic Criminality and Institutional Failure in Flanders

Koenraad Priels — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0700

The global financial architecture proves to be a fundamental systemic driver of the currently escalating planetary polycrisis, causing enormous systemic risk by financial instability, economical inefficiency, increasing social inequalities, ecological overshoot and geopolitical tensions. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of systemic criminality and institutional failure in Flanders, focusing on the global banking system's role in perpetuating systemic ecocide and genocide. Drawing on empirical evidence from Werner's research on bank money creation, Gauvin & Dominguez's mathematical demonstration of monetary system instability and documented regulatory failures, we expose a pattern of institutional protection mechanisms in Flemish regulatory bodies and academic institutions. The paper culminates in a groundbreaking legal complaint filed with the Belgian Public Prosecutor, invoking the new Belgian Ecocide Law to challenge the current financial system's legality. This research demonstrates how Flemish institutions actively perpetuate a criminal system that generates approximately €15 trillion in annual interest payments globally, forcing 3.3 billion people to live in countries spending more on interest than education.

Psychopathic Capture within Financial Capitalism: Albert Dunlap, Scott Paper, and Sunbeam Corporation

Clive Boddy — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0700

This paper aims to explore the concept of ‘psychopathic capture’ within shareholder capitalism by examining the rise and fall of Albert Dunlap, one of the most self-congratulatory and media-applauded heroes of 20th-century capitalism. A historical analysis via a literature review of academic commentary on Albert Dunlap was undertaken. Additionally, Dunlap’s writings, press coverage, and reports from journalists who interviewed Dunlap was examined. The findings of this research: Dunlap’s tenure as CEO at Scott Paper and then Sunbeam Corporation saw him actively decreasing and eliminating the means of production by closing factories and making thousands of people redundant across the USA and elsewhere. Rather than building long-term capital, he destroyed it and was praised to the point of hero worship by the financial sector and rewarded for his destructiveness. This current paper demonstrates that ‘psychopathic capture’ exists within capitalism. Dunlap was psychopathic in his attitudes and behavior, and he captured (took over) the leadership of Sunbeam Corporation for at least two years. The results were psychopathic in that wealth was destroyed; employees were ruthlessly devalued, abused, and bullied, careers were ended, and shareholders were eventually impoverished. This is the first paper to specifically examine Priels’ idea of ‘psychopathic capture’ in relation to a detailed example from organizational history.

The Dual Mandate: Profit And Public Good In Pharmaceutical Corporations : A Critical Realist Perspective

Mukhtar Ahmed — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0700

This study explores the enduring conflict between profit motives and public health responsibilities in pharmaceutical corporations through a critical realist lens. It aims to reveal how corporate behaviors, such as pricing strategies and CSR initiatives are not random but deeply shaped by systemic capitalist structures and regulatory frameworks. Utilizing critical realism’s layered ontology (empirical, actual, and real), the analysis highlights how surface practices are driven by underlying economic imperatives, investor pressures, and intellectual property regimes. Case studies on insulin pricing and COVID-19 vaccine access demonstrate the challenges corporations face in balancing innovation with equitable healthcare delivery. Findings indicate that although some firms attempt to align business goals with societal needs, the dominant structures favor short-term profitability over long-term public benefit. The research argues that incremental reforms are insufficient and recommends systemic strategies, including patent law revisions, alternative financing mechanisms, and the incorporation of social impact metrics in corporate evaluations. By addressing root causes rather than symptoms, pharmaceutical corporations can better fulfill their dual mandate, ensuring both sustainable innovation and broader healthcare equity. A critical realist perspective thus provides a deeper understanding of why tensions persist and how more transformative changes can be achieved

BOOK REVIEW: AFTER THE EXODUS: Gender and Belonging in Bangladesh’s Rohingya Refugee Camps

Farhana Rahman — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0700

After the Exodus examines how forced migration of the Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh has affected the gendered subjectivities and lived experiences of Rohingya refugee women, and transformed gender relations and roles in displacement. Based on 14 months of feminist ethnographic fieldwork in Bangladesh’s KutupalongBalukhali refugee camp in 2017 and 2018, the book uncovers the everyday strategies employed by refugee women to create a sense of belonging and to make a life for themselves after forced migration. Rohingya women adapt to camp life by negotiating marriage and intimate experiences, adjusting to changing gender divisions of labour, and navigating encounters with humanitarian aid agencies and male camp leaders. These women strategically bargain shifting power relations to reconstruct their lives in displacement, thereby reclaiming agency and asserting their identity through the spaces they create, inhabit, and reshape; the coping mechanisms they employ; and the bonds of kinship and community they forge.
Farhana Afrin Rahman is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Isaac Newton Trust Fellow at the Department of Politics
and International Studies, University of Cambridge, and a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge. Her research interests include gender, refugees and forced migration, international development, lived experiences, and violence and conflict, amongst others