ABSTRACTLove is the basis for a moral psychology of forgiveness. I argue for an account of love based on Roy Bhaskar's conception of its five circles, and of the ethical nature of human beings as concrete universals/singulars. Linking this to work of ‘The Forgiveness Project’, I argue that forgiveness can be understood metaphysically in terms of its relation to love of self, of the other, of the relation of self and other, of self, other and the wider community, and of (...) self and other in their ontological depth as unique individuals. Forgiveness involves both a ‘giving to’ and a ‘giving up’, and this can lead to a profound sense of identity between a victim and a perpetrator. Forgiveness is different for each person; it may draw upon a public/legal setting as a proxy for universal judgement; and it confronts social-structural and political elements which may block its development. (shrink)

Mixed method study designs are becoming increasingly popular among nurse researchers. Mixed studies can have advantages over single method or methodological investigative designs. However, these advantages may be squandered where researchers fail to think through and justify their theoretic decisions. This paper argues that nurse researchers do not always pay sufficient heed to the philosophic and theoretic elements of research design and, in consequence, some mixed study reports lack argumentative coherence and validity. It is here suggested that Hempel's concept of (...) equivalence can be stretched to usefully illustrate one of the main threats to argumentative coherence in mixed study design. The critical realist theory of Roy Bhaskar is then introduced and this, it is proposed, offers one means by which Hempel's equivalence dilemma can be overcome. Critical realists recognize the existence of logical connections between the ontological, epistemological, and methodological premises that underpin their work. They are therefore more likely to produce coherent studies than uncritical pragmatists who ignore such linkages and, paradoxically, critical realists can be epistemological pluralists because, in re‐conceptualizing the ontological basis of inquiry, problems associated with the mixing of alternative metaphysics are circumvented. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Roy Bhaskar's philosophy of meta‐Reality creates the middle way to theorize emancipation in critical science education: between empiricism and idealism on the one hand, and naïve realism and relativism, on the other hand. This theorization offers possibilities to transcend the usual dichotomies and dualisms that are often perpetuated in some feminist and multiculturalist accounts of critical science education. Further, meta‐Reality suggests a radically new way to re‐visit the suspect notion of emancipation. The implications for (...) critical science education are discussed. (shrink)

Including the perspectives of scientists about the nature and process of science is important for an authentic and nuanced portrayal of science in science education. The small number of studies that have explored scientists’ worldviews about science has thus far generated contradictory findings, with recent studies claiming that scientists simultaneously hold contradictory sophisticated and naïve views. This article reports on an exploratory study that uses the framework of Bhaskar’s critical realism to elicit and separately analyse academic scientists’ ontological and epistemological (...) views about science in semi-structured interviews. When the views of scientists are analysed through the lens of critical realism, it is clear that it is possible to hold a realist ontological commitment about what knowledge is of, simultaneously with a fallibilist epistemological commitment about knowledge itself. The apparent incongruence of scientists’ so-called naïve and sophisticated views about science is resolved when analysed using a critical realist framework. Critical realism offers a simple and coherent framework for science educators that avoids many of the problems of positivism and social constructivism by finding a middle ground between them. The three pillars of critical realism: ontological realism, epistemological fallibilism and judgmental rationality help to make sense of how socially constructed scientific knowledge can be anchored in an independent reality. (shrink)

After decades of postcolonial development planning in the former colonies of Africa, one question that has been asked over and over again concerns how much has changed in Africa since the launch of what used to be called the first, second, third and other development decades. There is no doubt that national development policies and plans have played significant roles in influencing the direction of the post-political-independence development processes in Africa. This paper argues, however, that far more serious attention needs (...) to be paid by the African public to the important contributions that the nature of their development plans can make in the transformations of their lives. This paper uses development plans as an exemplar of social mechanisms in critical realist philosophy and argues that the development planning authorities in Africa need to take seriously the nature of the relations between their ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ sectors in the formulation and implementation of their development plans. (shrink)

When education is jointly managed by a workplace and academia, causal mechanisms in the culture, structure and agency of these two contexts may unintentionally generate discourse that conveys conflicting messages for learners regarding some of the priorities of the profession. Using the concepts of culture, structure and agency as they are used in critical realism to analyse the discourse generated in two teaching and learning contexts (a radiography division in a university and a radiography workplace in a large state tertiary (...) academic hospital), this paper attempts (i) to identify possible causal mechanisms that generated discourse concerning the role and value of writing competency for radiographers, such that this discourse possibly influenced learners not to be motivated to improve their writing competency to their lecturers’ satisfaction; and (ii) to suggest what practices and influences might successfully generate an alternative emancipatory discourse. Drawing on Margaret Archer’s (1995) morphogenetic approach, the paper argues that the radiography lecturers have the primary agency to address this unsatisfactory situation, as it is through their interaction – both as a team and with other relevant stakeholders – that an alternative emancipatory discourse may be generated. (shrink)

This paper is a realist argument for the existence of “social objects”. Social objects, I argue, are the outcome states of a contingent causal process and in turn posses causal properties. This argument has consequences for what we can mean by realism and consequences for the development of a realist methodology. Realism should abandon the notion of natural necessity in favour of a view that the “real” nature of the social world is contingent and necessity is only revealed in outcome (...) states. This, I argue, has both theoretical and methodological implications and I develop my argument through two case studies, of homelessness and ethnicity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Critical realist thought has theorised convincingly that epistemic relativism is constellationally embedded in ontological realism which in turn necessitates judgemental rationality. In social science, judgemental rationality involves acting upon plausible decisions about competing points of view. However, the tools for doing this are, as yet, under-articulated. This paper addresses this absence by articulating triangulation and depth-reflexivity as two tools for doing judgemental rationality in empirical research. It draws on the experiences of a diverse team working on an international comparative (...) research project on conversion to Islam in prisons. It demonstrates how epistemic and relational gaps between researchers and research subjects can be bridged by mobilising the ‘laminated’ properties and personal attributes of a diverse research team that factors in attributes that are absent as well as those present. The biographical experiences of the team are analyzed in a variety of intersecting dimensions: faith, ethnicity/ethno-culture, gender, class and professionality. (shrink)

In recent years, realism?particularly critical realism?has become an important philosophical and methodological foundation for social science. A key feature is that of natural necessity, but this coexists alongside an acceptance of contingency in the social world. I argue in this paper that there cannot be any natural necessity in the social world, but rather the real nature of the social world is that it is contingent. This need not lead to an abandonment of realism, and indeed I argue that a (...) contingent form of realism allows us to bring ontological probability back into realism. (shrink)

Building on the insights of the late Roy Bhaskar and the late Roger Matthews, as well as some recent developments in ultra-realist criminology, this article introduces and delineates some core inte...

In this piece the author takes issue with Mario Bunge’s claims that conceptual and semiotic systems have "compositions, environments and structures, but no mechanisms." Structures, according to Bunge, can never be mechanisms in conceptual and semiotic systems. Contra this the author argues that in social systems, social structures (which are concept-dependent and reproduced and/or transformed, at least in part, semiotically), can be mechanisms in the sense that such structures are one of the processes in a concrete system that makes itwhat (...) it is. As such, not only may conceptual and semiotic systems have mechanisms, but they may also themselves be considered some of the mechanisms that make the social what it is. As such, they can be said to possess powers and liabilities that neither reside at lower levels nor are explainable in terms of the lower level. To hold out the prospect of social explanation by conceptual and/or semiotic mechanisms does not represent an attempt to decouple these systems from material factors. What it does mean is that conceptual and/or semiotic systems can, potentially at least, play a role in social explanation; and themselves be subject to explanation. Key Words: mechanisms • social • structures • cause • explanation • realism • emergence • reductionism. (shrink)

This article attempts to assess Mario Bunge’s important but widely neglected criticisms of dialectics. It begins by providing a contextualized interpretation of Friedrich Engels’s metaphysics of the dialectics of nature before embarking on a detailed discussion of Leon Trotsky’s and contemporary “dialectical” scientists’ views on materialist dialectics. It argues that while some of Bunge’s criticisms are eminently sensible, the principles underlying the works of dialectical scientists are compatible with Bunge’s emergentist and systemic approach and can shed light on such issues (...) as the levels of organization, the diachronic and synchronic aspects of emergence, and the individualism-holism-systemism trilemma. This article also submits that dialectics is best interpreted as a guideline for a philosophy of change instead of a magical wand that liberates the investigator from study of facts. Understood as something that serves heuristic purposes, dialectics can be sensibly utilized by scientists to shore up or refine their methodological principles and thereby to facilitate empirical research. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt is widely regarded as a political theorist who sought to rescue politics from ‘society’, and political theory from the social sciences. This conventional view has had the effect of distracting attention from many of Arendt’s most important insights concerning the constitution of ‘society’ and the significance of the social sciences. In this article, I argue that Hannah Arendt’s distinctions between labor, work and action, as these are discussed in The Human Condition and elsewhere, are best understood as a (...) set of claims about the fundamental structures of human societies. Understanding Arendt in this way introduces interesting parallels between Arendt’s work and both classical and contemporary sociology. From this I draw a number of conclusions concerning Arendt’s conception of ‘society’, and extend these insights into two contemporary debates within contemporary theoretical sociology: the need for a differentiated ontology of the social world, and the changing role that novel forms of knowledge play in contemporary society as major sources of social change and order. (shrink)

Within recent feminist theorizing the significance of social location has been overestimated, while the power of argument has been underestimated. We do not need to retreat to notions of ‘story-telling’ as the strongest claim to knowledge possible by feminist analysis. Rather, we should draw on the power of argument. This article addresses some dilemmas in debates around the projects of recognition, redistribution and transformation, and the claims to knowledge made in each. Further, it argues for the integration of the concerns (...) of equality and difference. The theoretical argument is supported by examples drawn from practical politics, including the development of democratic procedures, postcolonialism, the UNDP indicators sometimes used in development policy and suffrage movements. (shrink)

This paper offers a realist critique of socialresearch on health inequalities. A conspectus of thefield of health inequalities research identifies twomain research approaches: the positivist quantitativesurvey and the interpretivist qualitative `casestudy'. We argue that both approaches suffer fromserious philosophical limitations. We suggest that aturn to realism offers a productive `third way' bothfor the development of health inequality research inparticular and for the social scientific understandingof the complexities of the social world in general.

In this review essay, I examine the central tenets of sociologist Dave Elder-Vass’s recent contribution to social ontology, as put forth in his book The Causal Power of Social Structures: Emergence, Structure and Agency. Elder-Vass takes issue with ontological individualists and maintains that social structures exist and have causal powers in their own right. I argue that he fails to establish his main theses: he shows neither that social structures have causal powers “in their own right” (in any sense of (...) this expression) nor that they exist. (shrink)

Within cultural history there is a widespread eschewal of speculative reasoning. This article notes the complicity of the general postmodern avoidance of metanarratives with Anglo-Saxon empiricism and locates the major problem facing cultural history in postmodernism's conflation of trajectories and teleologies. Any discussion of the directionality of history is imputed to be a full-blown teleology. Using previous discussions from different fields, the difference between a teleology and trajectory is defended and, after clarifying certain confusions, it is argued that trajectories, as (...) following the working of generative mechanisms, are necessary to theorize in order to make interesting progress within the field of cultural history. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAs a comment on the debate between Dave Elder-Vass and Leigh Price, I propose a dialogue between Bhaskar and Habermas. If we could introduce critical realism into critical theory, we might...

This introduction to the special issue on data and agency argues that datafication should not only be understood as the process of collecting and analysing data about Internet users, but also as feeding such data back to users, enabling them to orient themselves in the world. It is important that debates about data power recognise that data is also generated, collected and analysed by alternative actors, enhancing rather than undermining the agency of the public. Developing this argument, we first make (...) clear why and how the question of agency should be central to our engagement with data. Subsequently, we discuss how this question has been operationalized in the five contributions to this special issue, which empirically open up the study of alternative forms of datafication. Building on these contributions, we conclude that as data acquire new power, it is vital to explore the space for citizen agency in relation to data structures and to examine the practices of data work, as well as the people involved in these practices. (shrink)

Let it be a network of voices... A network of voices that not only speak, but also struggle and resist for humanity.

The proliferation of digital data has been the impetus for the emergence of a new discipline for the study of social life: ‘computational social science’. Much research in this field is founded on the premise that society is a complex system with emergent structures that can be modeled or reconstructed through digital data. This paper suggests that computational social science serves practical and legitimizing functions for digital capitalism in much the same way that neoclassical economics does for neoliberalism. In recognition (...) of this homology, this paper develops a critique of the complexity perspective of computational social science and argues for a heterodox computational social science founded on the meta-theory of critical realism that is critical, methodological pluralist, interpretative and explanative. This implies diverting computational social science’ computational methods and digital data so as to not be aimed at identifying invariant laws of social life, or optimizing state and corporate practices, but to instead be used as part of broader research strategies to identify contingent patterns, develop conjunctural explanations, and propose qualitatively different ways of organizing social life. (shrink)

This article attempts to evidence the idea that progress in social theory is impeded by central theoretical procedures embodying a host of conceptual mistakes. The article focuses on realist theorizing, examining both early realist work on science and contemporary critical realism, and demonstrates how conceptual procedures employed therein lead to error and confusion. The standard use of these procedures entails, among other things, that social theoretical debates tend to remain irresolvable and that understanding of what it takes to demonstrate a (...) theoretical scheme as superior remains poor. Alternative ways of proceeding are outlined, which lead to defensible social theoretical practice. (shrink)

This article argues against ontology as an intelligible project for social theory. Ontological questions have proliferated in social thought in the past decades mainly as a way of recasting traditional sociological questions about individuals/society and structure/agency. Far from being an advance in our understanding, however, this form of reasoning has frequently brought confusion. This is demonstrated with detailed reference to a contribution from an ongoing debate, centred on the issue whether social structures are causally efficacious. I argue that the ontological (...) project is mainly fuelled by a misconception of language and that, once this picture is exposed as incoherent, ontology loses its intelligibility. (shrink)

In recent years a number of writers have defended and attacked various features of structural, or neo-realist theories of international politics. Few, however, have quarrelled with one of the most foundational features of neorealist theory: its assumptions about the nature of science and scientific theories. In this essay I assess the views of science underlying much neorealist theory, especially as they are articulated in the work of Kenneth Waltz. I argue not only that neorealist theories rest on assumptions about science (...) and theory that have been questioned by postpositivist philosophers and historians of science, but also that the failure to consider the work of these writers yields theories of international politics that are deficient in several respects: they are weak theories in the sense that they cannot illuminate crucial features of international politics, they presuppose and sustain a narrow view of power and power relations, they reify practices and relations in the international arena and they offer little promise of producing the sort of Copernican Revolution for which Waltz called (or, more modestly, even a minimally satisfactory theory of international politics). In light of these shortcomings, I sketch an alternative approach to the study of international affairs, one that has been termed prototype studies. I contend that such an approach provides scholars with a rigorous way of studying international politics, without being a theoretical science. (shrink)

In the last couple of years there have been some attempts to introduce Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts into the critical realist conception of social science. But these attempts either limit themselves to the constitution of a philosophical connection between Bourdieu and critical realism or confine Bourdieu’s theoretical contributions to analyses of human agency, whereas Bourdieu’s habitus can provide a deepening of the critical realist conception of what the ‘social’ is. We can establish a socio-ontological connection between the concept of habitus and (...) the idea of the social as a stratified reality. In this way, it may be possible to employ real-actual-empirical stratification for the purpose of defining the domain-specific ontology of social science, and to comprehend the habitus-field relation as a component of the stratification in question. To this end, the paper suggests that habitus is ‘the missing link between structure and agency’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTCritical realism is an established post-positivist philosophy applied by researchers in a number of fields and yet it is little used in educational leadership and management research. This article responds to calls from the field for a more critical approach to educational leadership and management research by offering critical realism as a way to address these concerns and it explores why critical realism has not featured more in the field, particularly as it could provide that more critical approach. The use (...) of critical realism as an analytical approach as well as a content enables the linkage of the calls from ELM to critical realist features and then to some constraints upon its use in the field. The theory around the application of critical realism is advanced providing insights for researchers in its use, though no claim is made that critical realism is the only way to do so. (shrink)

A common theme in the contemporary medical model of psychiatry is that pathophysiological processes are centrally involved in the explanation, evaluation, and treatment of mental illnesses. Implied in this perspective is that clinical descriptors of these pathophysiological processes are sufficient to distinguish underlying etiologies. Psychiatric classification requires differentiation between what counts as normality (i.e.- order), and what counts as abnormality (i.e.- disorder). The distinction(s) between normality and pathology entail assumptions that are often deeply presupposed, manifesting themselves in statements about what (...) mental disorders are. (shrink)

In line with its institutional commitments and in order to strengthen the relevance of its business education program in addressing the persistent social challenges facing the Philippines, Mission University revised its Master of Business Administration curriculum in 2012. A core change in the curriculum was the incorporation of action research training and the requirement for graduation of implementing and defending an action research project. The introduction of action research, which is based on critical realist philosophy of science, was intended to (...) enable the university’s MBA graduates to become reflexive and humanistic agents of change in their work contexts through the application of observation, critical reflection, collaborative analysis and action and scholarly skills. The implementation of the action research requirement is beginning to yield positive results based on the types of projects implemented by the students and their resulting sense of efficacy in the workplace. Challenges in implementation include the need to further hone student skills in pursuing more emancipatory projects and the need to further orient faculty in the critical realist philosophy underlying action research, as distinct from traditional positivism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I explain why I disagree with David Pilgrim’s claim that critical realists should deny any ‘natal male’ claim to womanhood. Specifically, Pilgrim and I have different definitions of the transitive and intransitive dimensions of reality. In my version – which I believe is in the spirit of the Bhaskarian version – the transitive dimension embraces everything that is currently being affected by human praxis. This allows for an intersectional view of gender in which it is perfectly possible (...) for the same human, in different contexts, to be an ontological woman, an ontological trans woman ; and an ontological person with a prostate gland, some might say a man. In the same way, it is perfectly possible for a room to contain 17 people for the purposes of setting out tea cups, but 18 people for the purposes of providing lecture hand-outs. For the purposes of everyday life, and even, I argue, for the fight against sexism, trans women have the same claim to being women as cis women. (shrink)

As microeconomic calculus and macroeconomic estimation superseded earlier approaches to political economy, broad questions about how things are (ontology), how things might be known (epistemology), and how science should proceed (methodology) were neglected. As a corrective, Critical Realism (CR) has been proposed as an alternative to the orthodox deductive‐nomological (ODN) tradition; i.e., to mathematical deduction and statistical induction. In their place, retroduction—the use of analogy, metaphor, intuition and ordinary language—is supposed to illuminate root causes by identifying the deep mechanisms that (...) govern events. CR offers guidelines for social science that are of a most general kind: from initial “premises,” retroduction proceeds to hypotheses about deep structures and mechanisms. The initial premises are determined by a desire to understand events that surprise us. However, nothing is thereby excluded, including ODN. And since historical processes are revealed neither by assumption nor by the net effects of whatever initial conditions hold, it might be apposite to drop the search for (deep) socio‐economic laws and to use whatever evidence is at hand to see whether, and the extent to which, ideal types apply to any given historical sequence. (shrink)

Informed by a critical realist approach, this article criticizes the dearth of research on the question of the need for capital that prospective owners of modern Norwegian second homes are faced with. The main method used for theorizing capital need is the model for an applied explanatory science proposed by Bhaskar, the RRREIC schema, which helps us understand the necessary components of a second home transaction. This leads to an in-depth analysis of this phenomenon and specifically traces the mechanisms related (...) to and activated by obtaining a bank loan. Through this a paradox arises and doubt is cast on the sustainability of a loan-based second home ownership. Besides uncovering this paradox, the article concludes that a research approach such as the RRREIC schema can provide expanded understanding of the mechanisms involved in Norwegian second home ownership. (shrink)

Field theory is often criticized because sociologists applying it fail to follow two seminal rules: the three key concepts of field theory—capital, habitus, and field structure—must be implemented in relation to each other and reconstructed for the historically specific moment of their application. I claim that Bourdieu developed his conceptual tools in response to Bachelard’s insight that scientific progress requires a break from common sense. Once we appreciate the epistemological foundation of field theory concepts, we can better appreciate the rules (...) for their application, avoid their typical criticism, and further improve them. (shrink)

Background: Randomized controlled trials have been criticized for their inability to identify and differentiate the causal mechanisms that generate the outcomes they measure. One solution is the development of realist trials that combine the empirical precision of trials' outcome data with realism's theoretical capacity to identify the powers that generate outcomes. Main Body: We review arguments for and against this position and conclude that critical realist trials are viable. Using the example of an evaluation of the educational effectiveness of virtual (...) reality simulation, we explore whether Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling can move statistical analysis beyond correlational analysis to support realist identification of the mechanisms that generate correlations. Conclusion: We tentatively conclude that PLS-SEM, with its ability to identify ‘points of action’, has the potential to provide direction for researchers and practitioners in terms of how, for whom, when, where and in what circumstances an intervention has worked. (shrink)

Marketing systems research has the potential to contribute to the well-being of individuals, communities and our environment but we need to ensure that we do not mechanistically apply inadequate approaches. This article identifies tensions and limitations within the developing marketing systems theory and literature. Using the tools of critical realism, we aim to critique the omissions in the metatheory of marketing systems research and then put forward CR to reconstruct a more comprehensive basis for the development of marketing systems theory. (...) We draw attention to the failings of current metatheory in its use of conflationary approaches to theorizing before setting out the features of a CR informed study of marketing systems. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper is premised on the call to re-orientate marketing as a contributing social science. It gathers together criticisms of marketing research which identify inconsistencies that prevent our progress. It posits that we are driven to reproduce these inconsistencies because of a closed-system of practice and because of the generative absence of an effective, reflexive and integrative metatheoretical structure. In response to these problems, the paper aims to offer an integrative metatheoretical structure from which to ground our research and intervene (...) in the identified inconsistencies. The paper therefore offers a perspective on the constitution of the world, before addressing the terms and conditions on which the world is to be researched and explained. This conceptual contribution employs tools developed in the critical realist philosophy of social science to address: instances of absence within marketing research; and how these instances are generated and reproduced. It then suggests how these absences can be rectified. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of Roy Bhaskar's philosophical evolution from critical realism to the philosophy of meta-Reality. Following Bhaskar's own terminology, I define his intellectual journey as the ‘identification of dualism and duality within non-duality’ by proposing that anti-anthropism plays a key role in the developmental consistency of his system from critical realism via dialectical critical realism to meta-Reality. For this purpose, I compare Bhaskar's philosophy with Andrew Collier's theory of human rationality and spiritual emancipation based (...) on Christianity and Tu Wei-Ming's anthropocosmic understanding of human beings and nature based on Confucianism. (shrink)

The article discusses the connection between theory formation and historical research in the study of religion. It presupposes that the study of religion is conceived of as an empirical discipline. The empirical basis of theories is provided primarily by historical research, including research in the very recent past, that is, the present time. Research in the history of religions, therefore, is an indispensable part of the study of religion. However, in recent discussions on the methods, aims, and theoretical presuppositions of (...) the discipline, research in the history of religions largely is ignored. To shed some light on this blind spot, the article builds on the philosophy of science of Critical Realism. While the first part deals with the role of historical research in theoretical discourses of the discipline, the second part explains fundamental ontological and epistemological positions of Critical Realism and their implications for empirical research. On this basis, some methodological problems of theory formation in the study of religion are discussed in the third part. In particular, it is argued that it is impossible to validate empirically theories of religion that aim to explain what religion is. The concluding part sketches ways of theory formation in the study of religion that does not take religion as the explanandum but as the theoretical perspective that guides research. (shrink)

This article criticizes Bourdieu's and Giddens's overintellectualizing accounts of human activity on the basis of Wittgenstein's insights into practical under standing. Part 1 describes these two theorists' conceptions of a homology between the organization of practices (spatial-temporal manifolds of action) and the governance of individual actions. Part 2 draws on Wittgenstein's discussions of linguistic definition and following a rule to criticize these conceptions for ascribing content to the practical understanding they claim governs action. Part 3 then suggests an alternative, Wittgensteinian (...) account of the homology between practices and actions that avoids this pitfall. (shrink)

Critical realism, a philosophical framework originally developed by Roy Bhaskar in the 1970s, represents a relatively new approach to research generally and to nursing research in particular. This article explores the ontological and epistemological tenets of critical realism and examines the application of critical realist principles to nursing research and practice through a review of the literature. It is evident that few published nursing research studies have, as of yet, utilized critical realism as their paradigm of choice. Both the strengths (...) and limitations of the presentation and use of critical realism in these studies are discussed in this article. Given the varying degrees of success of the authors in explicating critical realism as a philosophical framework, the value of critical realism to the research study, and the ways in which usage of the critical realist framework influenced development of the study and interpretation of findings, it is evident that the quality of future publications espousing the use of critical realism must continue to be strengthened significantly. (shrink)

Russell McCutcheon is one of the foremost proponents of what he calls “the critical study of religion,” that is, the shift to reflect critically on the concepts used in the academic study of religion, who invented them, and why. The critical study of religion leads to the realization that the concepts with which we think were invented by particular people, at a particular historical location, for a particular purpose. What are the philosophical implications of this? McCutcheon defends a debunking or (...) non-realist answer and contrasts this with my realist approach, and he is right to do so. This paper argues that those involved in the critical study of religion therefore face a choice between a non-realist and a realist metaphysics, that McCutcheon’s arguments against realism fail, and that those who wish to offer any kind of materialist account in which religious social structures shape human agency and subjectivity should adopt a critical study of religion that is also realist. (shrink)

This paper argues for theoretical modeling and model-construction as central types of activities that philosophers of social ontology engage in. This claim is defended through a detailed case study and revisionary interpretation of Raimo Tuomela’s account of the we-perspective. My interpretation is grounded in Ronald Giere’s account of scientific models, and argued to be compatible with, but less demanding than Tuomela’s own description of his account as a philosophical theory of the social world. My approach is also suggested to be (...) applicable to many other methodologically naturalist accounts of collective intentionality and social ontology. (shrink)