Realism, Causality and the Problem of Social Structure

Recent debate over the merits of various realist perspectives on society, most notably the critical realist approach developed by Roy Bhaskar, has focused on the ontological status of social structure. Social structure, critical realists maintain, is ontologically irreducible to people and their practices. This belief differentiates critical realists from those theorists, such as Rom Harré, for whom social structure is immanent to people’s practices. On the latter view, structure is so intimately bound up with agency that to accord the former a distinct ontological status would be to reify it. Central to the debate is the issue of the causal efficacy of social structure. Critical realists contend that although social structure is unobservable it can nevertheless be known to be real because it makes a difference to observable human behaviour. In making this argument critical realists invoke the so-called causal criterion for existence, according to which unobservable entities can be known to exist through their impact on observable events. The critique advanced by Harré and his supporters, most notably in Harré and Varela (1996), maintains that an appeal to the causal criterion is illegitimate in the case of social structure, implying that critical realism’s claim that the social world contains ontologically irreducible social structures cannot be sustained. My aim in this paper is to cast a critical eye over the debate between the two varieties of realist social theory. To this end, having first outlined the basic critical realist position together with Harré and Varela’s critique, the paper will attempt to develop a critical realist response to the charges levelled against it. The objective of the response is twofold. First, it aims to advance the debate by clarifying the key issues which divide the two perspectives and evaluating where the balance of the argument over these issues lies. Second, by suggesting how the weaknesses in critical realism highlighted by Harré and Varela might be dealt with, the hope is that the paper will prompt critical realists to refine some of their arguments and thus will help to advance the critical
realist project.

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