The Morphogenetic Approach; Critical Realism’s Explanatory Framework Approach

Abstract

Critical Realism, the philosophy of the social sciences used here is equally applicable to all such disciplines and accords no special place to economics. In fact there has been disappointingly little take-up of it by heterodox economists (notable exceptions in Britain being Tony Lawson and Jamie Morgan). The generality with which Roy Bhaskar advanced CR means that necessarily theorists in each discipline must develop their own explanations, although these will share the same philosophical ‘under-labouring’ as Bhaskar characterized his own contribution. Specifically, this involves common endorsement of the following:-(a)A rejection of Humean ‘constant conjunctions’ as a deficient, because empiricist basis for conceptualizing social reality and causality.(b)A stratified ontology of the social order, endorsing emergence and the causal consequences of the second or third-order interplay between emergent properties and powers. In turn this spells acceptance of upwards and downwards causality between strata.(c)A refusal to assign automatic priority to structure (or culture) versus agency when accounting for causation in the social domain.(d)A reliance upon CR’s ‘three pillars’ for explanatory adequacy:-Ontological realismEpistemic relativismJudgemental rationality I will attempt to show how my own ‘Morphogenetic/Morphostatic’ explanatory programme usefully supplements the above with an interdisciplinary approach to accounting for change and stability in all social forms and institutions. This framework is obedient both to the four above principles but also provides a toolkit for those seeking to theorize about the development of particular social processes, practices and policies (and resistance to them) at any given S1 T1, wherever this is situated historically and geographically. In itself, the M/M approach is not a theory. Should some prefer to assign it to ‘methodology’, I would not object.