What we can learn from the former workers of a Vietnamese state farm to understand privatised employment-based pension systems : engaging with critical realism?

This paper first revisits the discussion between Tony Lawson and Sandra Harding in the journal Feminist Economics in light of the author's own research into basic mechanisms of capitalist economies, research that has been influenced by feminist standpoint theory. The paper then presents a brief summary of field research in Vietnam, which has led to the development of a theoretical framework that allows the identification of particular forms of capital valorisation. The author then uses this framework for a critical analysis of the Australian superannuation system to illustrate the framework's more general use in analysing capitalism at the beginning of the 21st century. At the end the paper returns to the debate between Lawson and Harding and endeavours to illustrate, based on the author's own research, some of the shortcomings of contrastive explanations as advocated by Tony Lawson's variety of Critical Realism.