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Realist Methodology
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Realist Methodology

Four Volume Set
Edited by:


March 2010 | 1 544 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
Realism is an approach to humanity which recognizes the real existence of social objects as well as physical objects. Thus realism does involve being realistic. But more importantly, it asserts that the things we are studying in social research have some prior existence and would continue to exist even if our knowledge of them was limited. Indeed, sometimes our knowledge is quite wrong, and realists assert that the real world will tend to constrain science so that wrong claims get challenged.

Volume One: Practical Realist Ontology covers the nature of the world, the role of the person, the need for social theory, the nature of language, open systems theorizing, and the avoidance of the fallacies of upward and downward conflation.

Volume Two: Realist Methods takes up the triangulation debate in some detail as well as querying the nature of quantitative data and of qualitative data.

Volume Three: Knowledge and Meta-knowledge in Realism explores the concept of epistemology and the social basis of human knowledge.

Volume Four: Realist Empirical Research runs through lessons to be learned from research that has been conducted under explicit realist assumptions in many disciplines in many different countries.

 
VOLUME 1: PRACTICAL REALIST ONTOLOGY
For Structure: Its reality, properties and powers: a reply to Anthony King

Margaret S. Archer
Consequences of Realism for Sociological Theory-Building

Thomas Brante
Complexity, Configuration and Cases

David Byrne
For Emergence: Refining Archer's account of social structure

Dave Elder-Vass
Causal Explanation of Social-Action: The contribution of Weber, Marx and of critical realism to a generative view of causal explanation in social science

Mats Ekström
Global Capitalism and Critical Awareness of Language

Norman Fairclough
Causal Laws, Functional Relations and Tendencies

Steve Fleetwood
Ontology in Organization and Management Studies: A critical realist perspective

Steve Fleetwood
For Structure: A critique of ontological individualism

Martha Gimenez
Feminism, Realism, and Universalism

Tony Lawson
Beyond Empiricism? The promise of realism

Derek Layder
Essentialism, Social Constructionism, and Beyond

Andrew Sayer
Commitment and Investigation in Knowing the Social World

Malcolm Williams and Tim May
Situated Objectivity

Malcolm Williams
Can Scientists Be Objective?

Malcolm Williams
 
VOLUME 2: REALIST METHODS
Structured Pluralism

Sheila Dow
Critical Realism, Empirical Methods and Inference: A critical discussion

Paul Downward, John H. Finch and John Ramsay
Retroduction as Mixed-Methods Triangulation in Economic Research: Reorienting Economics into Social Science

Paul Downward and Andrew Mearman
Intertextuality in Critical Discourse Analysis

Norman Fairclough
Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse: The universities

Norman Fairclough
Five Misunderstandings about Case-Study Research

Bent Flyvbjerg
Reclaiming Habit for Institutional Economics

Geoffrey M. Hodgson
On Positive Readings of Realism and Foucault

Jonathan Joseph
Realism, Regularity and Social Explanation

Stephen Kemp and John Holmwood
Theory Creation and the Methodological Foundation of Post Keynesian Economics

Frederic Lee
Critical Realism: A way forward for evaluation research in nursing?

Phil McEvoy and David Richards
Realism, Deconstruction and the Feminist Standpoint

Caroline New
Regression Analysis and the Philosophy of Social Sciences: A critical realist view

Amit Ron
The Spiritual Turn in Critical Realism

Douglas V. Porpora
A Critical Realist Rationale for Using a Combination of Quantitative and Qualitative Methods

G. Rolfe
Critical Realism and Realist Research in Human Geography: A method or a philosophy in search of a method?

Henry Wai-chung Yeung
 
VOLUME 3: REALIST EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
Sociology for One World: Unity and diversity

Margaret S. Archer
The Myth of Cultural Integration

Margaret S. Archer
Making Time for Change: On temporal conceptualizations within (critical realist) approaches to the relationship between structure and agency

Stephen R. Bates
Language, Structure, and Agency: What can realist social theory offer to sociolinguistics?

Bob Carter and Alison Sealey
A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Farmers' Suicides in Andhra Pradesh, India

Namrata Chindarkar
A Realistic Theory of Health Sector Management: The case for critical realism

Jim Connelly
Critical Realism and Health Promotion: Effective practice needs an effective theory

Jim Connelly
Between Constructionism and Neuroscience: The societal co-constitution of embodied subjectivity

John Cromby
Longitudinal Case Research: A critical realist perspective

Phillip J. Dobson
The Philosophy of Critical Realism: An opportunity for information systems research

Phillip J. Dobson
A Method for Investigating Practitioner Use of Theory in Practice

Jerry Floersch
Embracing a Human Political Economy: A critique of 'abstraction' within studies of the ACP-EU Cotonou partnership agreement

Mark Langan
A Realist Perspective on Contemporary Economic Theory

Tony Lawson
Abstraction, Tendencies and Stylised Facts: A realist approach to economic analysis

Tony Lawson
Globalization: Beyond the ultra-modernist narrative to a critical realist perspective on geopolitics in the cyber age

Christopher Lloyd
Empire Inhuman? The social ontology of global theory

Jamie Morgan
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping: Cultivating open-mindedness in development studies

Wendy Olsen
Realist Ontology For Futures Studies

Heikki Patomäki
Critical Realist Ethnography: The case of racism and professionalism in a medical setting

Sam Porter
Turning the Tables: How case-oriented methods challenge variable oriented methods

Charles C. Ragin
Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A development in culturalist theorizing

Andreas Reckwitz
Realisms through Thick and Thin

Andrew Sayer
Critical Realism and Empirical Research Methods in Education

David Scott
Objectivity and Emancipation in Learning Disabilities: Holism from the perspective of critical realism

Michael M. Warner
Is Anybody There? Critical realism, chronic illness and the disability debate

Simon J Williams
 
VOLUME 4: KNOWLEDGE AND META-KNOWLEDGE IN REALISM
The Textual Disembodiment of Knowledge in Research Account Writing

Judith Aldridge
Varieties of Discourse: On the Study of organizations through discourse analysis

Mats Alvesson and Dan Karreman
Odd Couple: Making sense of the curious concept of knowledge management

Mats Alvesson and Dan Karreman
Beyond Neopositivists, Romantics, and Localists: A reflexive approach to interviews in organizational research

Mats Alvesson
On the Ontological Status of Ideas

Roy Bhaskar
Metatheory, Interdisciplinarity and Disability Research: A critical realist perspective

Roy Bhaskar and Berth Danermark
Situated Knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective

Donna Haraway
Representing Reality: The critical realism project

Sandra Harding
Levels of Reality

John Heil
A Realist Theory of Empirical Testing: Resolving the theory-ladenness / objectivity debate

Shelby Hunt
Once More, With Feeling: Feminist economics and the ontological question

Julie Nelson
Realism, Deconstruction and the Feminist Standpoint

Caroline New
A Critical Epistemology of Analytical Statistics: Addressing the sceptical realist

Wendy Olsen and Jamie Morgan
Realist Social Theorising and the Emergence of State Educational Systems

Tone Skinningsrud
Against Epistemological Chasms: The science question in feminism revisited

Sylvia Walby