Critical realism and the social sciences : heterodox elaborations / edited by Jon Frauley and Frank Pearce.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-346) and index.

Print version record.

1. Critical Realism and the Social Sciences: Methodological and Epistemological Preliminaries / Jon Frauley and Frank Pearce -- 2. Bhaskar's Critical Realism: An Appreciative Introduction and a Friendly Critique / Frank Pearce -- 3. For Realism and Anti-Realism / Sergio Sismondo -- 4. Critical Realism and God / Garry Potter -- 5. Rescuing Reflexivity: From Solipsism to Realism / Anthony Woodiwiss -- 6. More than Straw Figures in Straw Houses: Toward a Revaluation of Critical Realism's Conception of Post-structuralist Theory / Richard Day -- 7. Thinking across the Culture/Nature Divide: An Empirical Study of Issues for Critical Realism and Social Constructionism / Raymond Murphy -- 8. Beyond Cognitive Critiques: Getting Real about Politics / Jose Julian Lopez -- 9. Objectivity and Marxian Political Economy / Robert Albritton -- 10. Why Is This Labour Value? Commodity-Producing Labour as a Social Kind / Howard Engelskirchen -- 11. Relation between Marxism and Critical Realism / Hans Ehrbar -- 12. Understanding Why Anything Matters: Needy Beings, Flourishing, and Suffering / Andrew Sayer -- 13. Expulsion of Foucault from Governmentality Studies: Toward an Archaeological-Realist Retrieval / Jon Frauley -- 14. From Foucault's Genealogy to Aleatory Materialism: Realism, Nominalism, and Politics / Ronjon Paul Datta -- 15. Gadamer's Minimal Realism / Howie Chodos, Bruce Curtis, Alan Hunt and John Manwaring.

Critical realism is a distinct school of thought in philosophy and the social sciences that has been expanding and growing in significance over the past three decades. It offers important insights into the nature of both our social and natural world, and the nature of the social sciences by challenging conventional notions of the relationship between empirical experiences, actual events, and causal mechanisms. Critical Realism and the Social Sciences brings together contributors from both sides of the Atlantic, all of whom engage with tenets of critical realism, juxtaposing them with traditional representations of social scientific enquiry.United in the belief that the conceptual systems hitherto relied upon affect our styles of thought, ethical choices, political orientations, and so on, the contributors explore realism in relation to other currents of theoretical thought, thus suggesting a basis for evaluation and further elaboration of critical realism. As a whole, the volume seeks to show how this particular approach provides a way to better understand many aspects of social existence, from human attributes to the interrelatedness of human activities and the natural world. In this much-needed study, critical realism is carefully examined, sympathetically assessed, and creatively developed by authors from diverse disciplinary backgrounds.

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