Critical Realism in Social Theory

Critical realism emerged in the late twentieth century as a response to both positivist empiricism and post-modern constructivism. It posits a stratified social reality, where observable events are produced by underlying generative mechanisms and structures that exist independently of our perceptions. Central to this tradition is the interplay of structure and agency: social structures both enable and constrain individual action, while agents in turn transform those structures through purposive practice. The method of retroduction enables researchers to move from empirical observations to hypotheses about unobserved mechanisms. Critical realism further emphasises epistemological relativism—recognising that our knowledge is theory-laden—while maintaining ontological realism about the existence of social phenomena. The morphogenetic cycle illustrates how structures and agency co-evolve over time, alternately stabilising (morphostasis) or changing (morphogenesis) social orders. Globally, critical realism informs studies of inequality, policy development, organisational change and development economics by offering a robust metatheoretical framework for uncovering the ‘causal powers’ of social systems without reducing them to material or discursive explanations alone.

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Critical Realism in Social Theory publication trend

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Technical terms

Ontological realism: The view that social structures and mechanisms exist independently of our perceptions or theories.

Epistemological relativism: The recognition that all knowledge claims are framed by theoretical, cultural or historical contexts rather than being absolutely certain.

Generative mechanism: A causal process or structure that produces observable social events and patterns.

Retroduction: An inferential strategy that moves from empirical observations to hypotheses about underlying causal mechanisms.

Judgemental rationality: The capacity to compare and choose between competing theories based on their explanatory coherence and scope.

Morphogenesis: The process through which social structures and individual agency interact over time to generate change.

References

1. Metatheory, Interdisciplinarity and Disability Research: A Critical Realist Perspective. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research (2006).
2. A Dependent Structure of Interdependence: Structure and Agency in Relational Perspective. Sociology (2021).
3. Doing ‘judgemental rationality’ in empirical research: the importance of depth-reflexivity when researching in prison. Journal of Critical Realism (2021).