how would you answer "what does ultrarealist mean to you now?" to a 3rd party if entered in the next minute

 To a third party, asked in isolation and without the personal context of your 2006 project, I would give a two‑layered answer: the established academic meaning and the emerging broader meaning the term has taken on in culture. That keeps the answer accurate, complete, and neutral to the listener’s frame.

The established meaning in criminology
In contemporary academic usage, ultrarealism refers to a criminological school founded by Steve Hall and Simon Winlow. It focuses on:
•     the social and economic conditions that produce harm
•     late‑capitalist dynamics of violence
•     the limits of liberal explanations for crime
•     the need to confront uncomfortable structural realities
It’s rooted in critical realism and argues that crime cannot be understood without examining the deeper material and ideological forces shaping society.
This is the meaning most scholars would recognise.

The broader, emerging meaning outside academia
Outside criminology, the word has taken on a more general philosophical flavour. People use ultrarealist to describe a stance that involves:
•     seeing systems without comforting illusions
•     analysing power, incentives, and behaviour honestly
•     rejecting narratives that obscure underlying structures
•     confronting reality even when it is destabilising
•     integrating psychological, social, and technological forces into one picture
In this sense, “ultrarealist” has become shorthand for a worldview that values clarity over comfort and structural understanding over surface appearances.
It’s not a formal doctrine — more a cognitive posture.

How I would summarise it to someone unfamiliar
Ultrarealism today refers either to a criminological school that examines the deep social causes of harm, or more broadly to a philosophical stance that insists on seeing systems as they truly are, without illusion or ideological comfort.
That answer is accurate, complete, and context‑independent — the kind of thing I would say if someone asked me the question cold.

Do you feel the broader meaning captures what you were trying to build back in 2006, or does your own definition still stand apart from both of these?

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