ABSTRACT Abduction as a method for sociological explanation is increasingly gaining interest, but questions remain as to what exactly it is and how it differs from other methods of inquiry. This paper compares abduction as conceived in Peircean pragmatism with the critical realist concept of retroduction. I argue that abduction in the Peircean sense and retroduction in the critical realist sense refer to different, but complementary, modes of inference. Abductive conclusions provide the starting point for retroductive inferences; the latter inform (...) the tenability of the former. Together, abduction and retroduction contribute to theoretical explanation. (shrink)

There are many differing ways to be a realist about language. This paper seeks to classify some of these and to examine the implications of each for the study of language. The principle of classification it adopts is that we may distinguish between realisms on the basis of what exactly it is that they take to be real. Examining in turn realisms that ascribe reality to the external world in general, to causal mechanisms, to innate capacities, to linguistic signs, to (...) social structures, to language systems, and to linguistic groups, the paper summarises the case for a particular critical realist ontology of language. In the process, it engages briefly with the work of Saussure, Chomsky, Halliday, and more recent explicitly realist thinkers such as Bhaskar, Pateman, Archer, Sealey and Carter. One implication is that language itself is not a phenomenon that separates us from a causally structured world, but rather a part of that world, a part with an identifiable causal structure of its own that is similar to that of other normative phenomena. (shrink)

This essay reviews Theatre, Communication, Critical Realism (2010) by Tobin Nellhaus. It begins by outlining the objective of the book and proceeds to evaluate its central argument. The objective is to develop a theory of theatre founded on the premises of critical realism and thereby theoretically situate theatrical performance in its socio-cultural matrix. The argument is that critical realism is effective for developing a comprehensive account of theatrical performance because it has the capacity to reveal truths about the structure of (...) social reality (that correspond to those articulated by critical realism). In the second part of the review, employing the methods of conceptual analysis, I propose that Nellhaus’s thesis of ‘ontological doubling’ (which claims that performance doubles human agency) is undermined by certain epistemological presuppositions regarding the ontology of fictional characters. (shrink)

In the context of calls for "postpositivist" sociology, realism has emerged as a powerful and compelling epistemology for social science. In transferring and transforming scientific realism --a philosophy of natural science--into a justificatory discourse for social science, realism splits into two parts: a strict, highly naturalistic realism and a reflexive, more mediated, and critical realism. Both forms of realism, however, suffer from conceptual ambiguities, omissions, and elisions that make them an inappropriate epistemology for social science. Examination of these problems in (...) detail reveals how a different perspective--centered on the interpretation of meaning--could provide a better justification for social inquiry, and in particular a better understanding of sociological theory and the construction of sociological explanations. (shrink)

Editor’s NoteThanks to the initiative of Alan Norrie, we are pleased to present here a symposium on Nick Wilson’s book The Space that Separates: A Realist Theory of Art. Several authors have contri...

ABSTRACTIt is well acknowledged that the categorization of people with specific political, social and economic characteristics as ‘migrants’ – migrantization – is facilitated by mainstream, positivist versions of science and is associated with the production and/or reproduction of power relations. To date, this important critique has been advanced by academics influenced by interpretivism/poststructuralism who tend to relativize the discussion, and who are unable to provide a space for quantitative research. The main objective of this paper is to offer an alternative (...) approach to avoiding positivism and relativism in ‘migration studies’, based on critical realism, which I term ‘migrantization research’. Critical realist migrantization research is multi-methodological and provides an interdisciplinary framework for conducting mixed-method social research on ‘migration’. It aims to discover, uncover or indicate how various causal powers – of structural, discursive/cultural and agential character – interact and produce certain outcomes. It presupposes that both measurable and non-measurable dimensions of the social world are relevant. (shrink)

Most work on reflexivity has focused on individuals exercising their reflexivity through discourse. However, agents have three major aspects (intentionality, causal efficacy and embodiment) and they are fundamentally social. This article examines the possibility of collective reflexivity conducted not just by saying, but also by doing—that is, through their embodiment. By expanding the concept of ‘performatives’ to encompass not just speech acts but also acts that speak (i.e. embodied activities as socially meaningful) and applying the work of Charles S. Peirce (...) in order to develop an ontology of embodied reflexivity, it becomes possible to determine several criteria defining embodied collective reflexivity. Assessing possibilities such as legislative debate, political demonstrations, religious ritual and dramatic performance reveals that a certain set of practices does in fact meet those criteria and discloses additional aspects of what constitutes embodied collective reflexivity. (shrink)

Social systems theory has been dominated in recent years by the work of Niklas Luhmann, but there is another strand of systems thinking, which is receiving increasing attention in sociology: emergentism. For emergentism, the core problems of systems thinking are concerned with causation and reductionism; for Luhmann, they are questions of meaning and self-reference. Arguing from an emergentist perspective, the article finds that emergentism addresses its own core problem successfully, while Luhmann's approach is incapable of resolving questions of causation and (...) reductionism. On the other hand, neither paradigm yet has a convincing response to the challenges of meaning and self-reference. Key Words: social systems • emergence • paradigms • autopoiesis • critical realism. (shrink)

This essay develops a theory of representation that confirms realism – an objective dependent on establishing that reality is autonomous of representation. I argue that the autonomy of reality is not incompatible with epistemic access and that an adequate account of representation is capable of satisfying both criteria. Pursuit of this argument brings the work of C. S. Peirce and Roy Bhaskar together. Peirce’s doctrine of semiotics is essentially a realist theory of representation and is thus relevant to the project (...) of critical realism. However, critical realism is also required to finesse Peirce’s intricate over-theorising. Although a complete treatment remains absent from Bhaskar’s writings, his philosophy, I discovered, incorporates an implicit theory of representation. Peirce can be employed to extract this theory and amplify it. The only way the problem of representation can be addressed adequately is to locate it in a realist framework. This, however, is contingent on re-conceiving representation as a process rather than an object. Such a ‘perspectival switch’ reconfirms the intentional structure of representation but also suggests that it be considered in teleological terms as an activity oriented to a trans-representational object. Representation finally emerges as a form of inquiry with the aim to make being accessible in its autonomy. (shrink)

Intellectual traditions can be seen as complex patchworks of ideas, constructed differently by each observer as they learn about the tradition, and harmonized to an extent through the boundary work...

Pragmatic Critical Realism has been acclaimed by several scholars as one of the most versatile, application friendly and philosophically consistent paradigms for the social sciences, especially management research (Fleetwood and Ackroyd 2004). One of the more visible methodological offshoots of this epistemological school, being the case study, which has been extensively deployed as a dominant method in strategic management, organizational studies and marketing literatures. Until recently, there was some consternation in the academic world about the insufficiency of recourses available to (...) aggregate individual case studies and extract more generalizable learnings within delimited boundaries. However, the development of the QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis) by Ragin (2000; 2014) has changed that perception. In this paper, we argue that all of these case study-based methods, especially as they relate to Norbert Elias’ conception of figurations, and all of which fall under the broader heading of the Abduction methodology; are especially suited to gaining marketing insights in emerging market economies for a host of reasons. This is the issue that we seek to explore through theoretical argumentation and to establish with a review of the methods literature. (shrink)