research, in order to sort out how contingent factors interact with necessary relations to produce specific conjunctural outcomes that can be observed. In a simple example, Dickens (2004) says that gunpowder has an unstable chemical structure giving it the causal power to explode. But whether this power is triggered depends on other contingent factors – how it has been stored, whether it is linked to an ignition source and how much of it there is. Similarly, human beings have certain powers and capacities (human nature), but whether they are able to exercise these depends on historically contingent factors too: are they enabled or constrained by existing social relations, and does society provide enough opportunities for their abilities to be used?
Clearly critical realism approaches knowledge production in a different way than does social constructionism. Constructionist studies very often adopt an ‘agnostic’ stance towards the reality of a social problem such as global warming, leaving such assessments to environmental scientists and others. But realists want to bring together natural and social scientific knowledge, which should produce a better and more comprehensive understanding of global warming and its underlying causes or ‘generative mechanisms’. Some critical realists see Marx’s theory of alienation as an early realist social theory, as it links a theory of human nature to contingent factors such as the emergence of capitalist social relations, which effectively prevent humans from fully realizing their ‘species being’.
Critical Points
One problem with critical realism is its willingness to make use of natural science knowledge. Given that they are not routinely trained in the natural sciences and are not in a position to enter debates on, say, the physics and chemistry of climate change processes, on what basis can sociologists assess this evidence? If we simply accept natural scientific knowledge, this appears to many social constructionists as rather naïve. This is especially the case as there is a long tradition within the sociology of scientific knowledge of studying the processes through which scientific consensus is arrived at. For sociologists of science, it is absolutely necessary to adopt an agnostic stance in order to maintain the relative detachment required to get under the skin of experimental procedures and other scientific methods.
There is also an internal debate within critical realism regarding the extent to which the natural and social sciences can be studied using the same method. Bhaskar himself, for instance, has argued that there are fundamental differences between social and natural sciences. He sees social structures as different from natural structures. Social structures do not endure over long periods of time and are not independent of people’s perceptions of their actions. Hence, it may be necessary to use different methods for studying social and natural phenomena. But, if this is true, then critical realism may not offer the kind of unifying approach which makes it so attractive as an alternative to postmodernism and other ‘decorative sociologies’.
Continuing Relevance
In spite of criticisms, it can be argued that all sociological studies in practice adopt some form of ‘simple’ realism regardless of theoretical and methodological perspective. What would be the point of carrying out research if we did not think there was a real social world out there worth studying? For many sociologists who see strict constructionism as an abdication of professional responsibility, critical realism offers perhaps the most attractive, non-positivist alternative currently available.
Critical realism has been applied to the study of crime and is seen as reinvigorating the policy relevance of criminology. Matthews (2009) argues that much contemporary criminology is pessimistic about reducing crime and recidivism, as nothing seems to work. But he suggests that realism requires interventions to be more than simply strategies or practices. Interventions embody theories about what might work in particular contexts, and an important aspect is not just the intervention but evaluations that identify the points at which the intervention fails. Because all interventions target active human agents, their aim is to change or shape the potential criminal’s reasoning process. For Matthews (2009: 357), even if such interventions do not have a radical transformative impact, ‘even small gains are gains’ that may lead to further reforms.
Gunnarsson et al. (2016) argue that, despite some ‘thematic alignments’, critical realism remains marginal within feminist theorizing. This may be because critical realism is still dominated by men and the central issues it deals with have been ‘masculine’ in nature. The authors also point out that critical theorists have tended to work with a clear distinction between sex and gender and the idea of a basic foundational biology, while queer theorists reject the notion that gendered identities are built on or require a biological base. Nonetheless, feminist theorists have become increasingly interested in ontology or theories of ‘being’, which brings them closer to key concerns of critical realism, while some critical realist work has explored conventionally ‘feminine’ subjects such as love (ibid.: 433–5). Clearly, there are still quite fundamental differences between critical realists and feminist theorists despite their recent constructive exchanges.
References and Further Reading
Bhaskar, R. A. ([1975] 2008) A Realist Theory of Science (London: Verso).
Carter, B. (2000) Realism and Racism: Concepts of Race in Sociological Research (London: Routledge).
Dickens, P. (2004) Society and Nature: Changing our Environment, Changing Ourselves (Cambridge: Polity), esp. pp. 1–24.
Gunnarsson, L., Martinez Dy, A., and van Ingen, M. (2016) ‘Critical Realism, Gender and Feminism: Exchanges, Challenges, Synergies’, Journal of Critical Realism, 15(5): 433–9.
Matthews, R. (2009) ‘Beyond “So What?” Criminology’, Theoretical Criminology, 13(3): 341–62.
Sayer, A. (1999) Realism and Social Science (London: Sage).
Reflexivity
Working Definition
A characterization of the relationship between knowledge and society and/or researcher and subject, focusing on the continuous reflection of social actors on themselves and their social context.
Origins of the Concept
Reflexivity is related to ideas of reflection or self-reflection, and therefore it has a very long history. However, its usage in the social sciences can be traced back to the ideas of George Herbert Mead (1934) and Charles H. Cooley (1902) on the social self, W. I. Thomas’s social constructionist approach, and some early work on self-fulfilling and self-defeating prophecies. Cooley and Mead rejected the notion that the individual self is innate. Instead, Cooley argued that the self is created through social interaction with others as people come to see themselves in the way others see them. In Mead’s theory, this continuous interaction between the biological human organism and the social environment of other people produces a two-part self consisting of an ‘I’ and a ‘me’, which are in constant internal conversation within the individual person. This individual reflexivity forms the backdrop to meaningful social interaction.
However, individual and social reflexivity became more central to social theory from the late twentieth century. In particular, the theoretical ideas of Ulrich Beck (1994) and Anthony Giddens (1984) have extended the concept of reflexivity from the individual to the social level, while a renewed emphasis on qualitative research methods has drawn attention to the fundamentally
