Abstract

This article concerns a recent methodological debate in American sociology that generated widespread attention in the United States. It was a debate that spanned at least four journals: American Journal of Sociology, Sociological Methods & Research, Qualitative Sociology and American Journal of Cultural Sociology. As the debate was not just about methods per se but about the ‘theory of reality’ underlying each method and its ‘social ontology’, critical realism has much to say about it. Although at the end everyone comes around to critical realism's position of methodological pluralism, what makes the debate interesting is the reasoning, the ontological assumptions, and the surprising directions of attack. Above all this article will take issue with the assumption common to all disputants that people tend ‘to give self-contradictory and inadequate accounts of their actions and motives’.