Critical realism is a philosophical approach to understanding science, and in particular social science, initially developed by Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014). It specifically opposes forms of empiricism and positivism by viewing science as concerned with identifying causal mechanisms. In the last decades of the twentieth century it also stood against various forms of postmodernism and poststructuralism by insisting on the reality of objective existence. In contrast to positivism's methodological foundation, and poststructuralism's epistemological foundation, critical realism insists that (social) science should be built from an explicit ontology. Critical realism is one of a range of types of philosophical realism, as well as forms of realism advocated within social science such as analytic realismAltheide, D. L., and Johnson, J. M. (1994). "Criteria for assessing interpretive validity in qualitative research". In: N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research, first edition (pp. 485–499). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. and subtle realism.Hammersley, M. (1992). Ethnography and realism. In What's Wrong with Ethnography? (pp. 43–56). London: Routledge.Madill, Anna (2012), "Realism", in Lisa M. Given (ed.) The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods (pp. 732–735), Thousand Oaks NJ, Sage.
Main principles A 2016 summary of what various accounts and versions of critical realism have in common, coauthored by nine scholars including Margaret Archer, Philip Gorski, Daniel Little, Christian Smith, and George Steinmetz, drew out four tenets:
Ontological realism: Critical realists assert that "much of reality exists and operates independently of our awareness or knowledge of it", including social reality. Epistemic relativism: Our knowledge of reality is limited and fallible. Judgmental rationality: It is possible to judge that some accounts of social reality are better than others. Cautious ethical naturalism: Although the is–ought fallacy ought to be avoided, ethical values can be empirically studied.
Ontological realism Proponents of critical realism believe an objective reality exists, but they understand this reality as layered.Pretorius, L. (2024). Demystifying research paradigms: Navigating ontology, epistemology, and axiology in research. The Qualitative Report, 29(10), 2698-2715. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2024.7632 It includes both layers that are observable as well as hidden layers that shape the observable phenomena.
Epistemic relativism Critical realists distinguish the transitive (epistemological) dimension and the intransitive (ontological) dimension. In the context of knowledge production, the "transitive object of knowledge" is the concepts used in "reference" to the world and the "intransitive object of knowledge" is the entity of the world that is referred to, the "referent". Depending on the context, a transitive object can become a intransitive object (e.g. a theory can itself be an object of study). This is because knowledge (the transitive) is part of the world rather than exterior to it.
For critical realists, knowledge is relative because all knowledge can potentially be wrong, but also because the definition of what is valuable knowledge can vary and is the product of history and the position of the knower. In addition, knowledge of the world is always mediated by existing stock of knowledge.
Judgmental rationality The distinction they make between ontology (intransitive) and epistemology (transitive) allows critical realists to argue that it is possible to identify shared reference points to choose rationally among alternative theories and explanations.
Cautious ethical naturalism Although it is not possible to infer a normative value from an empirical finding, it is still possible to use findings to draw conclusions about values. This is because values "have a 'factual' element to them". For example, if we assume that a social policy (which rests on certain values) should produce a particular change in society, then we can examine whether it actually does so. If the policy is effective, then, according to the values that motivated it, the policy should be continued.
Contemporary critical realism
Overview Bhaskar developed a general philosophy of science that he described as transcendental realism and a special philosophy of the human sciences that he called critical naturalism. The two terms were combined by other authors to form the umbrella term critical realism.
Transcendental realism attempts to establish that in order for scientific investigation to take place, the object of that investigation must have real, manipulable, internal mechanisms that can be actualized to produce particular outcomes. This is what we do when we conduct experiments. This stands in contrast to empiricist scientists' claim that all scientists can do is observe the relationship between cause and effect and impose meaning. Whilst empiricism, and positivism more generally, locate causal relationships at the level of events, critical realism locates them at the level of the generative mechanism, arguing that causal relationships are irreducible to empirical constant conjunctions of David Hume's doctrine; in other words, a constant conjunctive relationship between events is neither sufficient nor even necessary to establish a causal relationship.
The implication of this is that science should be understood as an ongoing process in which scientists improve the concepts they use to understand the mechanisms that they study. It should not, in contrast to the claim of empiricists, be about the identification of a coincidence between a postulated independent variable and dependent variable. Positivism and naive falsificationism are also rejected on the grounds that a mechanism may exist but either a) go unactivated, b) be activated, but not perceived, or c) be activated, but counteracted by other mechanisms, which results in its having unpredictable effects. Thus, non-realisation of a posited mechanism cannot (in contrast to the claim of some positivists) be taken to signify its non-existence. Falsificationism can be viewed at the statement level (naive falsificationism) or at the theorem level (more common in practice). In this way, the two approaches can be reconciled to some extent.
Critical naturalism argues that the transcendental realist model of science is equally applicable to both the physical and the human worlds. However, it argues, when we study the human world we are studying something fundamentally different from the physical world and must, therefore, adapt our strategy to studying it. Critical naturalism, therefore, prescribes social scientific methods which seek to identify the mechanisms producing social events, but with a recognition that these are in a much greater state of flux than those of the physical world (as human structures change much more readily than those of, say, a leaf). In particular, we must understand that human agency is made possible by social structures that themselves require the reproduction of certain actions/pre-conditions. Further, the individuals that inhabit these social structures are capable of consciously reflecting upon, and changing, the actions that produce them—a practice that is in part facilitated by social scientific research.
Critical realism has become an influential movement in British sociology and social science in general as a reaction to, and reconciliation of postmodern critiques.
Developments Since Bhaskar made the first big steps in popularising the theory of critical realism in the 1970s, it has become one of the major strands of social scientific method, rivalling positivism/empiricism, and post-structuralism/relativism/interpretivism.
After his development of critical realism, Bhaskar went on to develop a philosophical system he calls dialectical critical realism, which is most clearly outlined in his weighty book, Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom.
An accessible introduction to Bhaskar's writings was written by Andrew Collier. Andrew Sayer has written accessible texts on critical realism in social science. Danermark et al. have also produced an accessible account. Margaret Archer is associated with this school, as is the ecosocialist writer Peter Dickens.
David Graeber relies on critical realism, which he understands as a form of 'heraclitean' philosophy, emphasizing flux and change over stable essences, in his anthropological book on the concept of value, Toward an anthropological theory of value: the false coin of our own dreams.
Recently, attention has turned to the challenge of implementing critical realism in applied social research, including its use in studying organizations.). Other authors (Fletcher 2016, Parr 2015, Bunt 2018, Hoddy 2018) have discussed which specific research methodologies and methods are conducive (or not) to research guided by critical realism as a philosophy of science.
Critical realist meta-theories
At its core, critical realism offers a theory of being and existence (ontology), but it takes a more open position in relation to the theory of knowledge (epistemology). As a result, a wide range of approaches have developed that seek to offer a framework for social research. Because they are not theories in specific disciplines nor theories relating to specific aspects of society, these approaches are generally known as 'meta-theories'. Critical realist meta-theories include: the transformational model of social activity, the morphogenetic approach, Cambridge social ontology, critical discourse analysis, cultural political economy, critical realist feminism, and critical realist Marxism.
The morphogenetic approach The morphogenetic approach is a critical realist framework for analysing social change originally developed by Margaret Archer in her text Social Origins of Educational Systems and systematised in a trilogy of social theory texts, Culture and Agency (1988), Realist Social Theory (1995), and Being Human (2000). The approach was developed primarily as a critical realist response to the structure-agency problem in which "we are simultaneously free and constrained and we also have some awareness of it". At the centre of Archer's answer to this problem is 'analytical dualism', which entails an analytical separation of structure and agency so that the interaction between them can be studied and modelled by researchers; on this basis, Archer rejects alternative approaches that 'conflate' structure and agency into the single concept of 'practice', primarily directing her critique at Giddens' structuration theory. Archer extends the notion of analytical dualism to the distinction between "the material and the ideational aspects of social life", identifying 'culture' as a third fundamental aspect of society, alongside structure and agency. Therefore, the analysis of social change depends on modelling structure (S), agency (A), and culture (C), so that "social life comes in a SAC – always and everywhere". These concepts form the basis for the 'morphogenetic cycle', which splits social change into three processes: [T1] conditioning → [T2-T3] interaction → [T4] elaboration: At T1, agents (as individuals and as groups) are conditioned by the social structure and cultural system. From T2 to T3, agents act, react, and interact At T4, the social structure and cultural system are changed (morphogenesis) or maintained (morphostasis). The morphogenetic approach has been advanced by Douglas Porpora, whose Reconstructing Sociology sought to introduce morphogenetic critical realism into the mainstream of American sociology. Before becoming explicitly aligned with the morphogenetic approach and critical realism, Porpora published two papers on the nature of culture and social structure that later had a major influence on morphogenetic critical realism.
Cambridge social ontology