Explaining Society Critical Realism in the Social Sciences

Fully revised, with an updated bibliography and new, relevant illustrative examples based on work inspired by critical realism, this new edition of Explaining Society constitutes an up-to-date resource connecting methodology, theory, and empirical research. Including discussions of more recent scholarship in the field which connects critical realism with interdisciplinary research, this second edition also clarifies concepts – such as retroduction and retrodiction – so as to render them consistent with developments within critical realism, which are covered in a new chapter. An accessible account of the nature of society and social science, together with the methods used to study and explain social phenomena, Explaining Society will appeal to scholars of sociology, philosophy, and the social sciences more broadly.

1. Introduction Part I: Introduction to Critical Realism 2. Science and Reality 3. Conceptual Abstraction and Causality Part II: Methodological Implications 4. Social Structures and Human Agency 5. Generalization, Scientific Inference and Models for Explanatory Social Science 6. Theory in the Methodology of Social Science 7. Critical Methodological Pluralism – Intensive and Extensive Research Design and Interdisciplinarity 8. Social Science and Practice 9. Conclusion Glossary Index

Berth Danermark is Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology in the School of Health Sciences at the Swedish Institute for Disability Research, Örebro University. He is the co-author of Interdisciplinarity and Wellbeing: A Critical Realist General Theory of Interdisciplinarity and co-editor of The Experience of Hearing Loss: Journey Through Aural Rehabilitation. Mats Ekström is Professor in the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is the co-editor of Talking Politics in Broadcast Media: Media Talk and Political Elections in Europe and America and The Mediated Politics of Europe: A Comparative Study of Discourse. Jan Ch. Karlsson is Professor of Organization in the Faculty of Business, Languages and Social Sciences at Østfold University College, Norway. He is the author of Organizational Misbehaviour in the Workplace, the co-author of Methods for Social Theory and Gender Segregation: Divisions of Work in Post-Industrial Welfare States, and the co-editor of Commitment to Work and Job Satisfaction and Flexibility and Stability in Working Life.