MonographDOI
Realist social theory : the morphogenetic approach
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The Morphogenetic Cycle: the basis of the morphogenetic approach 7. Structural and cultural conditioning 8. The morphogenesis of agency 9. Social elaboration.Abstract:
Building on her seminal contribution to social theory in Culture and Agency, in this 1995 book Margaret Archer develops her morphogenetic approach, applying it to the problem of structure and agency. Since structure and agency constitute different levels of stratified social reality, each possesses distinctive emergent properties which are real and causally efficacious but irreducible to one another. The problem, therefore, is shown to be how to link the two rather than conflate them, as has been common theoretical practice. Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach not only rejects methodological individualism and holism, but argues that the debate between them has been replaced by a new one, between elisionary theorising and emergentist theories based on a realist ontology of the social world. The morphogenetic approach is the sociological complement of transcendental realism, and together they provide a basis for non-conflationary theorizing which is also of direct utility to the practising social analyst.read more
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Dissertation
Information behaviour in construction project management teams: Contradictions, motivations and influencing factors
TL;DR: In this paper, cultural historical activity theory, underpinned by critical realism and supported by repertory grid technique and constant comparative method, is used to interpret data from two local authority case studies to address the following questions: what is the information behaviour of project teams involved in local government construction projects at concept stage?
Journal ArticleDOI
Working with ‘necessary contradictions’: a social realist meta-analysis of an academic development programme review
TL;DR: In this article, the problem of making program evaluation sufficiently meaningful and cognisant of context such that practitioners, in this case of academic development, can gain new understandings of their situation in order to improve their practice is addressed.
Book ChapterDOI
Instinct and Habit Before Reason: Comparing the Views of John Dewey, Friedrich Hayek and Thorstein Veblen
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Journal ArticleDOI
Gaining access to agency and structure in industrial marketing theory A critical pluralist approach
TL;DR: In this article, a case for critical pluralism within industrial marketing scholarship is made and a three-dimensional (theoretical, methodological and methodical) framework is proposed to aid this.
Journal ArticleDOI
Top-down causation and social structures.
TL;DR: A critical realist view of causation and emergence is summarized, shows how it supports a plausible account of top-down causation and then applies this account to the social world.