Explaining Society: Critical Realism in the Social Sciences

Abstract

Different paradigms of the philosophy ofscience influence the perception of reality, and byextension the logic of research processes, strategiesand outcomes. Among the theories of social science,there have been a variety of paradigms with their ownspecific ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies,like positivism, hermeneutics, critical tradition,etc. The book of Danermark et al. introduces the keyand fundamental elements of critical realism, whichis a metatheory developed since the mid-1970s basedon the criticism of the positivist position.