Abstract

This article addresses the issue of theory development in critical realist research. It shows how findings that cannot be accounted for by an established critical realist theory pertaining to a domain, so-called anomalies, may be used to elaborate the domain theory and increase its explanatory power. The main resource for such theoretical repairs is the multi-level character of critical realist theories, i.e. specific theories and theories of domains are based in general meta-theoretical models and assumptions. The specific case examined here is the historical development of education in Norway, which deviates from the expectations generated by Archer's domain theory of the emergence of state educational systems. A reformulation of Archer's theory so that it includes two-cycle developmental trajectories as well as one-cycle trajectories, will accommodate the Norwegian findings and increase the theory's explanatory power. This elaboration of the theory can be seen as an example of an epistemological dialectic, partly constituted by cultural syncretism, but more completely understood as the absenting of an absence in the established theory.