Realism and Social Science

“…of social science – namely, the relative autonomy of social reality from human perception and that the social order exists within an ever-dynamic world, thus structures and objects may in fact exist without their powers either experienced or activated (Sayer, 2000: 11–12; see also Bashkar, 2008).”

“…social theory; Margaret Archer educational systems; educational decentralization Norway Introduction: critical realist concept formation Concept formation, or conceptual abstraction, is a crucial stage in social research informed by critical realism (Danermark et al. 2002; Sayer 1998, 2000, 2010).”

“The use of qualitative methods also fits within a critical realist paradigm, since ‘critical realism endorses or is compatible with a relatively wide range of research methods’ (Sayer, 2000, p.19).”

“This can be compared to the discussion concerning grand narratives in Sayer, A. (2000). Realism and Social Science.”

“Critical realists regard structures as emergent properties brought about by the conjunction of multiple elements of the social world (Sayer 2000).”

“The concept of contingent embeddedness is a development of the work of Sayer (2000a).”

“Mechanisms are inherent in social or physical structures, allowing or limiting the occurrence of events in a given context (Sayer, 2000; Smith, 2006).”

“In line with critical realism (Sayer 2000), causes should be understood first of all as potentials, inherent in systems, institutions, actors, cultures etc.”

“A mixed methods critical realist philosophy (Sayer 2000) was adopted for this exploratory study.”

“However, we may distinguish between (at least) two interpretations of ‘objectivity’: (1) objectivity as value-neutral or value-free investigations; and (2) objectivity in the search for ‘true’ knowledge (Sayer 2000).”

“In critical realism, a distinction is made between the real (causal powers or mechanisms of objects and agents), the actual (what happens if and when those mechanisms are activated) and the empirical (events which are experienced or observed) domains of reality [35, 36].”

“The strength of these approaches is their ability to provide explanatory power to the analysis (Sayer, 2000) and thus the identification of causal mechanisms.”

“He promotes attention to power imbalances and positionality, especially when doing research with mar-ginalised groups (Sayer, 2000).”

“Instead of dichotomies, critical realism promotes dialectics (Alderson, 2021; Roberts, 2014; Sayer, 2000).”

“Critical realism acknowledges the existence of an external reality that is independent of human perception while also recognizing the influence of social structures and contexts on individuals’ experiences and interpretations (Sayer, 2000).”

“The term essentialism tends to be used in a derogatory fashion while the concept of essence can be used in unproblematic ways (for explanation, see Sayer, 2000: 81 – 104).”

“…(e.g., Archer, 1995, p. 112; Hunt, 2018b, 2010/2014, pp. 231–233, 2003, p. 242; Hunt & Hansen, 2010, p. 111; Mingers, 2004, pp. 373, 380; Niiniluoto, 1999, pp. 10, 85; Sayer, 2000, pp. 43, 53–55; Siegal, 1983, p. 82): (1) The world exists independent of human knowledge of it (classical realism).”

“As such the numbering is generally representative of the iterative abstraction process (cf. Sayer, 1981; Sayer, 2000; Pratt, 1995; Yeung, 1997) through which they have been identified and do not express any further meaning.”

“Critical realists hold ontological beliefs rooted in realism and subjectivist epistemo-logical notions similar to constructivism (Bhaskar, 2008; Dansereau, 2018; Fletcher, 2017; Maxwell, 2012; Maxwell & Mittapalli, 2010; McEvoy & Richards, 2006; Sayer, 2000; Zachariadis et al., 2013).”

“…of objects, their structures, and powers’, which are not necessarily activated; ‘the actual’ indicates ‘what happens if and when those powers are activated’; and ‘the empirical’ denotes ‘the domain of experience’, which does not necessarily represent the real or the actual (Sayer 2000, pp. 11–12).”

“Volveré a estos puntos más adelante, prestándole tanta atención como sea necesaria y tratando de evitar caer en lo opuesto del etnocentrismo: el relativismo (Nelken, 2009; 2010; para una discusión más filosófica, ver Bhaskar, 1986; Sayer, 2000).”

“See Sayer’s ‘pomo-flips’ (Sayer, 2000, 67) also mentioned by Gunnarson in Chapter 4 of the book reviewed.”

“Qualitative methods generate data that are more indepth but narrow in breadth as compared to quantitative methods which produce rigorous statistical data (Sayer, 2000; Bernard, 2006).”

“It is a view expressed in the literature of critical realism: a theoretical approach to social science that seeks to identify causal mechanisms in social processes that, in turn, enable critique of social arrangements and institutions (Sayer 2000).”

“Thus, the researcher takes the metatheoretical stance of Critical Realism following Sayer (2000), where the aim is to explain within a defined context and that observable phenomena as productivity provide credible data.”

“For example, realist social scientists do not ask questions about regularities but explore necessary preconditions for a mechanism to function and qualities of real objects that enable them to act as they do (Sayer, 2000).”

“The perspectives of Sayer (2014; 2004; 2000; 1992) have been used for methodological application of critical realism to this research.”

“…to use a mixed-methods case-study approach - the collection of relevant quantitative data followed by the collection of qualitative data (Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009) - has maximised the possibility of gaining understanding and insights into the mechanism of mimetic effect (Sayer, 2000 p.19).”

“Sayer (2000, 96) offers a broad conception of discourses as generative, if largely unobservable, mechanisms since they are ‘capable of producing change’.”

“We consider this to be a realist methodological approach in which abstract concepts interacting with the qualitative empirical data are utilised to create theoretical meaning (Lourie & Rata, 2016; McPhail & Lourie, 2017; Popper, 1978; Sayer, 2000).”

“…and particularly Sayer’s critique of “closed system” social scientific models of power which pretend to be able to know the world in advance according to grand theoretical constructs, we approach the problematic of politics, power, and space in terms of “powers”, in the plural (Sayer 2000, 10–28).”

“…which ignore the open, contingent-laden context of reality, to produce regular outcomes and make law-like generalisations; it also rejects strongly the socially constructed world of multiple realities, which is sceptical of any kind of knowledge claims or scientific progress (Sayer, 2000)”.”

“Relevant concepts will be discussed and taken forward to enrich data analysis, consistent with the theory-laden approach that my methodology follows (Danermark et al. 2002; Easton 2010; Sayer 2000).”

“Conversely, explanations in critical realism depend on identifying causal mechanisms and how they work, and discovering whether they have been activated and under what conditions (Sayer, 2000).”

“It could be argued that the term itself is an abstract aspiration, a chaotic conception or a nebulous guiding principle with no concrete definition (Sayer, 2000) (See also Raven, this issue).”

“Emphasis in original) Although he rejects the notion of absolute truth, Sayer does not reject the idea of assessing the justification of beliefs altogether, and like Bhaskar he criticizes “judgemental relativism” (see Sayer 2000a, 47, 48).”

“Critical realism has a ‘realist’ ontology but it is not a naïve realism which positivism assumes(11) (Sayer, 2000; Cruickshank, 2003; Delanty, 2005; Gorski, 2013).”

“The ‘real’ and the ‘actual’ as part of the critical realist ontology presuppose that not all the structures of the things that we experience may be in fact observable (Sayer 2000).”

“Later, as CR gained influence particularly in British academe, Bhaskar and a growing number of colleagues turned attention to the social sciences (e.g., Archer et al. 2013; Bhaskar 1979; Sayer 1992).”

“In similar fashion to critical realists, he argues that the hermeneutical circle is a central part of the human experience (Sayer 2000a, 76), but it is not a vicious circle because language has referents that provide the possibility of epistemic checks.”

“The research is underpinned by the participatory paradigm, which provides a foundational theory for action research, and is conceptually underpinned by an integrated theoretical approach, combining critical gerontology (Donnelly and Torres 2022) and critical realist ontology (Sayer 2000).”

“Epistemologically, the protocol is grounded in a critical realist orientation with interpretivist sensitivity to institutional meaning, context, and actor interpretation (Bhaskar, 1978; Sayer, 2000; Maxwell, 2012).”

“This is especially so since these days some of its more dif fi cult texts (see comment from Sayer, 2000; Price 2016) come ‘ pre-interpreted ’ – especially some of the later works of Roy Bhaskar – in the form of simpli fi ed selective works, such as Hubert Buch-Hansen and Peter Nielsen ’ s Critical…”

“We argue that epistemic stewardship in scholarly peer review is not a call for realism or antirealism (Brock, 2007; Sayer, 2000); rather, it is a call to combine both, committing to evaluating research for both methodological rigor and its capacity to interpret the practices and debates shaping the…”

“The research philosophy is grounded in critical realism, which acknowledges the existence of an objective reality while recognizing the influence of social and contextual factors on its perception and interpretation (Sayer, 2000).”

“CPE, together with its broader grounding in critical realist scholarship, provides the conceptual foundation for the three dimensions—structural, semiotic, and material—on which our model is anchored (Archer, 1995; Fairclough et al., 2004; Sayer, 2000; Sum and Jessop, 2013b).”

“A phenomenological approach (Creswell and Poth 2017), from a critical realist standpoint, where multiple perspectives on the same reality are conceptualised (Sayer 2000), was used for this study.”

“Each of these processes may have distinct causal dynamics, stemming from the particular interactions involved 11 .”

“In this case, however, the critical realist concept of ‘practical adequacy’ can be used as a defence (Sayer, 2000).”

“Whilst the open-ended choice of method contributes to the concerns about methodological ambiguity, the highly fl exible approach of CR enables the method to be selected based on the attributes of what is being studied and what knowledge is being sought (Ackroyd and Karlsson 2014; Sayer 2000).”

“Critical realism motivates researchers to transcend mere description and causal connections, urging them to explain the causal mechanisms that give rise to social phenomena (Archer 1995; Bhaskar 1979; 2011; Danermark, Ekström, and Karlsson 2019; Sayer 2000).”

“…since our aim is to address the theoretical gaps in the trust and corruption and CEE literatures, which were highlighted above, a choice was made to adopt a realist approach and therewith a semi-structured interview protocol (Guba & Lincoln, 1994; Sayer, 2000; Miller & Tsang, 2011; Fletcher, 2017).”

“…Kukla 2000; Zammito 2004) often present it as a tendency — and an object of controversies — proper to postwar sociology of science (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Knorr-Cetina 1981; Myers 1990; Holstein and Miller 1993; Velody and Williams 1998; Hacking 1999; Sayer 1999; Rorty 2008; Pickering 2010).”

“layered nature of reality is stratified between the domains of the empirical, the actual, and the real (Bhaskar 1998; Sayer 2000; Scott and Bhaskar 2015).”

“Giddens 1984; Bhaskar 1986; Sztompka 1993; Archer 2000; Sayer 2000; Kuhmonen 2010) tarkastelun.”

“Considerando que todo fenómeno social es producto de relaciones de otras entidades, emergencia significa que las propiedades de los distintos fenómenos no se pueden reducir a los aspectos de la realidad que les dieron origen (Sayer, 2000).”