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The Journal of Critical Realism has issued a call for papers for a special issue on "critical realism and the self." The concept of the self is seen as crucial for social change and emancipatory theorizing. The special issue aims to explore various aspects of the self, including subjectivity, reflexivity, authenticity, personhood, and identity. Submissions can be theoretical or applied, and can engage with critical realism or critique it. The deadline for submissions is May 31, 2024, and the final papers are required by November 19, 2024. [Extracted from the article]

The Journal of Critical Realism has issued a call for papers for a special issue on Morphogenetic Régulation (MR). MR is a theoretical and methodological framework that examines complex systemic transformations within contemporary capitalism. It builds on the Immanent Causality Morphogenetic Approach (ICMA) introduced by Knio in 2018, which combines Margaret Archer's Morphogenetic Analysis with Spinoza's concept of immanent causality. The call for papers invites contributions that apply MR to various themes and disciplines in the social sciences. The submission deadline for full papers is September 31, 2024, and all papers will undergo peer review. [Extracted from the article]

Critical realists would argue that they do; and lay much of the blame at the door of mainstream science's actualism, in which correlational knowledge is held to be the ultimate guide to causation. For critical realists, therefore, statistical correlations are not the be-all and end-all of science; they prefer to understand causation in terms of the causal powers of things. [Extracted from the article]

Submission by 31st July 2021 The relationship between pragmatism and critical realism is open to many interpretations. The situation is complicated by the diversity of pragmatist perspectives and indeed the variety of interpretations of critical realism. Papers are invited for a special issue of I Journal of Critical Realism i which examine any aspect of the relationship between pragmatism and critical realism, from any disciplinary perspective. [Extracted from the article]

Thematic analysis (TA) is one of the most popular methods in social science. There are several different approaches to TA that hold different ontological commitments, ranging from positivistic coding reliability TA to constructivist reflexive TA. However, there has been less focus on developing an approach that is informed by critical realism, with the notable exception of Wiltshire and Ronkainen. The first part of this paper proposes a five-step critical realist approach to TA. This approach aims to produce nuanced causal explanations of events, countering the mistaken assumption that qualitative research cannot produce causal knowledge. The second part of the paper brings this critical realist approach to TA into conversation with three alternatives: coding reliability, reflexive, and Wiltshire and Ronkainen's approach. The approach to TA in this paper builds on the strengths of these alternatives, offering an accessible way to adopt a critical realist philosophical grounding when doing TA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frédéric Vandenberghe's paper in this edition describes critical realism as a 'scientific, social and spiritual movement that wants to change not only our conception of sciences, but also the world, starting with ourselves'. In September 2021, Rhodes University's Environmental Learning Research Centre, together with WITS's Centre for Researching Education and Labour (REAL), hosted The 24 SP th sp annual International Association of Critical Realism conference online. Reciprocally, Vandenberghe highlights the role that critical realism plays in bringing hermeneutics "back into the world" by giving it a referent (Vandenberghe [8], this issue). Another significant challenge to Bhaskar's critical realism offered by Vandenberghe is in the relationship between the transitive and intransitive specifically in the social sciences. [Extracted from the article]

This paper applied the philosophical theory of critical realism to the problem of evil. Using the method of critical analysis of related literature, the paper discovered, among other things, that existing theodicies that are responses to the problem of evil can broadly be categorized into the compatibility thesis and the incompatibility thesis, respectively; and that the relevance of critical realism for the problem of evil lies in preserving a logical gap between the idea of the nature of 'God as He really is, and how He is conceptualized or described by human theodicies'. The paper argued that whereas the thesis of the non-observability of the nature of God as He really is, independent of human cognition, conforms to critical realism, the non-observability of the omnibus does not. And to accommodate this, the novel concept of critical theism is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the theoretical foundations of educational psychology from a meta-theoretical critical realist perspective focusing on ethics and values. This examination is considered in light of the increasingly complex educational contexts that require the support of educational psychologists (EPs). It reviews ethics frameworks that have informed ethical practice to date, and reframes this practice within critical realism. This paper presents Fulford's Values Based Practice to strengthen theory and practice to support EPs to resolve ethical issues that can arise. Values Based Practice is presented as a laminated system within critical realism to inform this practice. As a framework, it allows for interdisciplinary practice and the integration of ethical practice, values and the centrality of the child or young person in shared decision making facilitated by an EP in collaboration with other professionals. An overview that demonstrates the applicability of this framework to the applied work of EPs is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the 'meaning of work', especially concerning the Global South, is scarce. This paper aims to reduce this scarcity by applying critical realist meta-theory to the work and life history interviews of workers in Sri Lanka. A key discovery is that finding meaning in life through work is a personal emergent power and that, as such, it explains the way that individuals consciously manoeuvre their life-journeys towards a desired end - a modus vivendi - in a dialectic which involves both emergent structural change (morphogenesis) and agency. This paper also reveals that Margaret Archer's theory of reflexivity, based on interviews with Western individuals, cannot be transferred rigidly to the reflexivity of Global South individuals, and therefore more work on reflexivity within this context is required. This paper therefore makes a theoretical contribution to the existing meaning of work scholarship, and it extends existing understandings of the concepts of reflexivity and emergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper promotes critical realism as a suitable and fruitful philosophical foundation for the development and implementation of urban digital twins. The proliferation of a-theoretical digital twin research and practices, not declaring their philosophical positions, is threatening the scientific soundness of this new paradigm and offers little evidence for reflecting on the knowledge it produces. To address this issue, first, this paper uses focus group discussions to explore digital twin experts' perceptions of digital twin best practices for urban management and uncover the philosophical worldviews underlying these perceptions. A philosophical worldview is a general orientation about the world that is described in terms of ontological and epistemological assumptions and views on human nature. The inferred philosophical worldviews are then compared with critical realism principles, supporting the argument that critical realism provides a suitable philosophical foundation for digital twin practices in urban management envisaged by participating experts, as well as enhancing current forms of digital twin practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how academics navigate the Higher Education (HE) landscape being reshaped by the convergence of unbundling, marketisation and digitisation processes. Social Realism distinguishes three layers of social reality (in this case higher education): the empirical, the actual and the real. The empirical layer is presented by the academics and their teaching; the actual are the institutional processes of teaching, learning, assessment, mode of provision (online, blended); the real are the power and regulatory mechanisms that shape the first two and affect academics' agency. Two dimensions of academics' experiences and perceptions are presented. The structural dimension reflects academics' perceptions of the emergent organisation of the education environment including the changing narratives around digitisation, marketisation and unbundling in the context of digital inequalities. The professional dimension aspects play out at the actor level with respect to work-related issues, particularly their own. This dimension is portrayed in academics' concerns about ownership and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of our current university student cohort, known as GenZ, have grown-up in a digitally connected world with access to various technological devices and social-media platforms. While technology can assist to engage students, in the learning environment many students spend a significant amount of time switching between devices engaging in non-learning activities. This results in decreased engagement which can adversely affect their academic performance. Conversely, students who can self-regulate their technology usage are more likely to be engaged in the learning process. Mindfulness is a strategy that can encourage students to self-regulate their thoughts and behaviours to stay on task. Previous research has focused on student's in-class technology usage, self-regulation and mindfulness to enhance engagement. This study adds to current research by investigating short mindfulness practices in a higher education first year business degree. The paper examines the usefulness of two mindfulness interventions to encourage students to self-regulate their in-class technology use and enhance engagement. Using a critical realist lens, the paper incorporates quantitative and qualitative data analyses through student surveys and focus groups. Twenty-nine first year undergraduate students were exposed to the mindfulness interventions. Results indicate the mindfulness interventions improved students' ability to self-regulate, contributing to student engagement and feeling connected at university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research necessarily entails the close interrelation of concepts and arguments, including solutions to a range of meta-questions, whether acknowledged explicitly or not. Despite this, few detailed accounts currently exist that support researchers to develop their complex conceptual architectures, especially in critical realist spheres. Indeed, many published accounts often omit much of this 'messiness' that sits behind, yet is foundational to, research projects. Those accounts that do seek to portray how/why researchers have made decisions (e.g. about connections between research philosophy, methodology, methods, theory and empirical evidence) tend to focus on one set of meta-questions, or occasionally on the relationships between two sets, at a time. Therefore, this paper presents a flexible framework – supported by specific examples from studies – that we hope will be useful in supporting researchers from all traditions, but especially critical realists, to carefully think through and develop more holistic connections in their conceptual architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does it entail to study the climate crisis from – or consistently with – a critical realist perspective? The paper addresses this question in three steps. First, it considers the boundaries of critical realism in relation to climate crisis research. In this context it identifies climate science as a field that in important respects resonates implicitly with critical realism. Conversely, a book by human ecologist Andreas Malm is introduced as an example of a work that, while sympathetic to critical realism, in key respects contradicts core features of it. Second, to illustrate what an analysis of the crisis informed by critical realism can look like, the paper brings into focus the main causes of the climate crisis – including the capitalist growth imperative, neoliberalism, and consumer culture. Finally, the status quo project, the green growth project and the degrowth project are identified as fundamentally different ways of approaching the climate crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the utility of critical realism as an ontological foundation for the analysis of education policy in emergencies. By exploring the synergy between critical realism and a method to analyse policy known as Critical Policy Analysis, the paper argues for the use of conceptual analytical tools when examining education policy in conflict-affected contexts. It illustrates the value of theory-informed analysis by reflecting on a recent study of Afghanistan's higher education strategic planning, and advocates for critical engagement with broader cultural, political, and economic factors in the analysis of education policies during conflicts and crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the practice of chemistry is viewed in terms of the interaction of three elements – the physical world (at the molecular level), the conceptual world (the canon of chemistry) and the social world (the community of chemists). This interaction, which is based on critical realist ideas such as, for example, the transitive and intransitive dimensions of reality, affords a clear distinction between the practice of chemistry as science and the practice of chemistry as technology. It also shows the significance of the particularity of the chemist in the practice of chemistry. Finally, it allows a coherent philosophical foundation for chemistry research and chemistry education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between pragmatism and critical realism, first as alternative philosophies for the social sciences in general, and second, as an illustration, in the social study of monetary valuation. The paper argues that both traditions are internally diverse. Hence, the relations between the two are complex, with both substantial overlaps and real differences revealed in encounters between them. Perhaps the most significant difference is pragmatism's distrust of invocations of structural power in social explanations, whereas realism encourages them, in interaction with other explanatory elements. The paper problematizes claims that recent work in the study of value is predominantly pragmatist. Nevertheless, it argues that pragmatist influence has encouraged valuation studies to focus on the micro level at the expense of the macro. From a realist perspective, however, there is much to be gained from an approach that embraces both micro and macro levels and the relations between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism as a social phenomenon is still in a status of ethicality that we hope can be improved. However, we still do not know how to effectively enhance morally guided tourism. It is argued that this knowledge gap is attributed to the absence of an appropriate philosophical underpinning informing the epistemological approaches adopted in ethical tourism studies. In this paper, the author posits that critical realism is a robust and fruitful underlabourer that will help researchers to uncover the 'deep' domain of ethical tourism. It is proposed that future research should investigate (1) what structural, cultural, and agential emergent properties of the systemic components of the ethical tourism system are operant, and (2) how a generative mechanism functions to influence, not determine, the moral conduct of tourism stakeholders. By addressing these two areas of knowledge, we will be able to understand how things work in ethical tourism so that we can make changes to enhance its uptake. Some examples are provided to illustrate how a realist inquiry can be carried out. It is hoped this paper will initiate further discussions on theorizing ethicality in tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, it has been suggested that critical realism offers a potential lens to understand sport and social change. This paper utilizes a case study with a Swedish martial arts club, renowned for its social inclusion culture and undertaking of a refugee initiative. I analyze this material according to Archer's (1995) morphogenetic approach. The results show that several issues prevent the refugees' social inclusion. According to the morphogenetic approach, these issues are due to structural- and cultural conditions, which partially set the stage for how the club responds to diversity. In contemplating incidents that hamper the initiative, informants deliberated how refugees fail to adopt specific ways of training and behaving. The narratives reflect the broader Swedish political climate concerning migrants' adaptation, where assimilation, rather than integration, is preferred. Thus, the paper contributes towards the (critical) realist-understanding of sport and social inclusion and offers insights into generative mechanisms that underpin exclusionary practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only too often critical realist contributions to understanding and explaining social phenomena fall into one of two discrete categories: exercises in philosophy or social theory, or empirical research that strikes as more or less atheoretical. This paper continues a long-term project to build bridges between abstruse issues of philosophy and theory and attempts to grasp the 'how' and 'why' of actual social events. The topic selected is elite professional rugby union and the principal theme is its emergence as an extreme sport and the risk of serious injury. It is argued that the injurious nature of elite rugby has its causal genesis in the professionalization of the sport and that a critical realist-oriented sociology has an important contribution to make in framing and gasping how and why this is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant meta-theories in contemporary sociolinguistics include interactionism, social constructivism, poststructuralism and similarly relativist, anti-realist approaches (hereby grouped within the broader category of interpretivism). This paper argues that anti-scientific, anti-realist tendencies in contemporary sociolinguistics are ill-justified, confuse science with positivism, and weaken sociolinguists' necessary commitment to objectivity (hereby understood as commitment by scientists to explain the ontological order, or what exists regardless of whether it is known by people). The anti-realism in interpretivist sociolinguistics also considerably diminishes the ability of sociolinguists to, for example, make ontological claims about language and its users, study phenomena including linguistic hierarchies and linguistic/social oppression as systems, and develop robust and effective strategies for critical engagement and social emancipation. By reaffirming sociolinguistics as part of the scientific project, and by reframing sociolinguistics within critical realism (CR), this paper offers conceptual alternatives to the dominant interpretivist tendencies in contemporary sociolinguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I Sustainability, Interdisciplinarity and Transformative Change: A Critical Realist Response to the Crisis System. i This was the main theme addressed at the 21st Annual Conference for International Association for Critical Realism (IACR) in Lillehammer, Norway, the last week of August 2018. The conference attracted about 70 quality keynote speakers, paper presenters and panel participants. As conference organizers, our impression is that all the participants, whether they attended the pre-conference and/or the conference itself, were interested in the main conference theme in one way or another. The seven conference papers and contributions gathered in this special issue examine and discuss aspects of sustainability, interdisciplinarity and transformative change from different angles and make important contributions to critical realist theorizing in general. [Extracted from the article]

Demography was heavily involved in the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century but, along with most other social science disciplines, largely rejected eugenic thinking in the decades after the Second World War. Eugenic ideology never entirely deserted academia, however, and in the twenty-first century, it is re-emerging into mainstream academic discussion. This paper aims, first, to provide a reminder of demography's early links with eugenics and, second, to raise awareness of this academic resurgence of eugenic ideology. The final aim of the paper is to recommend ways to counter this resurgence: these include more active discussion of demography's eugenic past, especially when training students; greater emphasis on critical approaches in demography; and greater engagement of demographers (and other social scientists) with biologists and geneticists, in order to ensure that research which combines the biological and social sciences is rigorous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberalism, health and illness are all vast topics that range from global to local, personal to political. Critical realism offers valuable concepts, which help to extend and deepen analysis of these large, complex research areas. These include attending to unseen causal influences, absence, values, power, interests, structure and agency and morphogenesis. The four planes, which connect all interrelating forms of social being, provide a framework for managing large, wide-ranging and inter-disciplinary research data and for contextualizing small studies. Critical realism is contrasted with paradigms such as positivism, realist evaluation and actor network theory. This paper is based on a 20-hour generic course about critical realism for doctoral students, initiated by Roy Bhaskar. It uses the example of neoliberalism, health and illness to illustrate how useful critical realism can be as a research resource. The paper is also about the importance of understanding contemporary health in the context of neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interest in educational and professional aspirations of students transiting to post-secondary education has gained prominence in academic debates and policy agendas internationally. Political interventions for raising aspirations quite often draw on narrow instrumental and rationalistic assumptions of individual decision-making that, as we will argue, do not capture adequately the meanings students attribute to these aspirations. By means of in-depth interviews and combining a critical realist approach to social action with capabilities approach, the paper explores the educational and professional aspirations of students at the end of secondary TVET in Chile. We consider that high educational aspirations of secondary TVET students in Chile need to be understood as a reflexive response to significantly high social inequalities in the country, the precarity of working conditions in a highly liberalised labour market, and the enduring neoliberal tenet of meritocracy. We also argue that understanding aspirations is key to reimagine TVET's roles and purposes at individual, institutional and national levels, towards fairer opportunities for human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligence appears to be a pragmatic, or even cynical, profession. Any "practical" or "pragmatic" enterprise, however, contains implicit assumptions about purpose, priorities, ethics, and even moral constraints. At the highest theoretical level, intelligence involves unavoidable assumptions and presumptions about heuristics, the nature of truth, the definition of risk, and the possibility of a "scientific" approach to predictive analysis. This paper proposes that there is no single, "philosophy of intelligence," but that the application of philosophy is critical for understanding what intelligence is, why we pursue intelligence, what limits expectations from intelligence, and what the normative constraints on intelligence should be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In keeping with the 2021 IACR Conference theme (Re) Envisaging Emancipatory Research, Science and Practice, this paper reviews over fifty instances of critical realist research in Africa which have sought to establish emancipatory research praxis by using critical realism to underlabour a range of applied studies in a diversity of disciplines and countries. The initiators of this research have been drawn to critical realism for several reasons, most notably its return to ontology, its interest in transformed, transformative praxis, and its potential for addressing knowledge and experiences exclusions. The paper ends with a reflection on 'What's in a Conference Theme', returning to the earlier 2012 IACR conference hosted in Africa, and the 2021 conference's focus on emancipatory research. It argues both for the deepening of conversations between critical realism and Africana Critical Theory; and for the grounding of these conversations in the voices and power of the people in our communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heritagization of religious sites has been increasingly studied in recent decades, with the focus shifting from the impact of mass tourism to considering the appropriation and commodification of religious sites as processes characterised by institutional dynamics and conflicting values. Drawing on an integrative-synthetic review as its methodological backbone, through critical heritage theory, advocating an epistemological turn towards post-secular strategies, this conceptual paper explores how the complex relationship between heritage, religion and tourism has been discussed and problematised by a growing literature addressing the heritagization of religious sites. Findings show that previous work has been limited to examining issues of commodification and living religion highlighting a hybrid sacred/secular space, while few researchers have addressed issues of conservation and authenticity. This is evident in the lack of qualitative studies examining the impact of gentrification, restoration and curatorial strategies in the way religious sites are experienced. Thus, the agency of visitors to construct alternative narratives is concealed, while there remains uncertainty regarding the multiplicity of institutional mechanisms influencing conservation assemblages. The paper concludes that research needs to further engage with the dialectics that underpin religious heritage planning assemblages and critically examine the epistemological assumptions under which religious heritage consumption have been considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the integration of critical realist ontology, epistemology, and methodology into giftedness and gifted education research. Although there is no consensus about the complex nature of giftedness, a paradigmatic shift is underway, emphasizing the impact of contextual and social factors in shaping gifted performance. Despite this shift, the ontological, epistemological, and methodological stances are often overlooked, leading to an incomplete understanding of the complex interaction between individuals and their context and constraining the potential to offer realistic and functional interventions for gifted education. Critical realism enables us to explore complex interactions, generate hypotheses, identify causal mechanisms, advance theoretical frameworks, and construct functional interventions for policy practices with its ontological, epistemological, and methodological arguments. This work contributes to the field by showcasing how critical realism's core concepts and tenets can be applied to various aspects of giftedness and gifted education and suggesting multiple avenues for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a lack of research explicitly demonstrating the potential of applying critical realism in qualitative empirical Management and Organization Studies (MOS). If scholars are to obtain the explanatory value that can be developed through detailed applications of critical realism, the existing gap between the philosophical foundation, methodological recipes and hands-on practices of applied critical realism must be bridged. Through a literature review and analysis of existing applications of critical realism in MOS studies, this paper presents five particular potentials of applying critical realism. The five potentials each address significant aspects of critical realism that, when explicitly applied in a research process, can contribute to the understanding of management and organizations. Following the analysis, we discuss what characterizes a detailed application and how this can add to the future of critical realism in MOS studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent to which infrastructures being deployed for a postcarbon transition can be considered sustainable has been increasingly scrutinized within the critical turn in energy justice research. However, the focus therein tends to be on how new megaprojects still reveal Global North–Global South colonial relations and energy-related injustices. In this paper, we aim to contribute to widening critical energy justice research by illustrating how it needs to also consider the spatio-temporalities of renewable energy colonialism in the Global North. To that end, we undertake a psychosocial historiography of selected large-scale hydroelectric power plants in Portugal, from the twentieth century to the present day. This historiography is undertaken via archival data and interviews. Our analysis illustrates how hydrocolonialism has been enacted – discursively, infrastructurally, and psychosocially – in rural areas in Portugal, across different socio-political regimes; and also how it can be contested, by identifying some examples of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the domain of Information Systems, assumptions around sociotechnical change cohesively build on establishing a stable and balanced relationship between the social and technical structures. When these structures become too rigid, revolutionary moments that punctuate the status quo are required for the structures to accommodate to a new situation. Approaching sociotechnical change with "punctuation of equilibrium" is becoming increasingly ineffective. In line with rising instability and rapid digital development, we argue that new sociotechnical change approaches are needed. In this paper we investigate how individual knowledge workers respond to the increasingly complex challenges they face when orchestrating social and technical structures to support efficient and creative knowledge work. We suggest a new perspective that covers an unstable equilibrium emerging from the interplay between individuals and their usage of "the collection of rigid and flexible workplace technologies". Our study is based on data from interviews made with 40 knowledge professionals over a period of three years, inquiring into individual experiences with sociotechnical change. Our study reveals contradictory patterns of both technological-individualisation and -socialisation. A universal generative mechanism emerges when these patterns complement each other and generates continuous change that seems to diminish inertia from rigid structures while also intensifying agile responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influence is at the very core of physical education and sport pedagogy. Indeed, a large and growing body of work has focused on the (inter)actions of sport pedagogues which are deemed to be influential in terms of shaping the thoughts, feelings and actions of others. In comparison, little attention has been paid to the practices of sport pedagogues that are noninfluential or unintentionally influential. That is, when pedagogues or learners choose not to do something, how they are not influenced/influential, or when practice (unintentionally) influences those who were (or were not) the original target. Paying greater attention to these issues holds strong potential to develop more critical and ethical understandings of influence that can inform the education and development of sport pedagogues. The aims of this study are two-fold. Firstly, we seek to break new ground by providing novel insights into how, when, why, for whom, and under which circumstances pedagogical (inter)action is not influential, and where (inter)actions have had an unintended influence. Secondly, and relatedly, we seek to advance and illustrate methodological perspectives capable of critically understanding this topic. Data were generated using a bricolage of methods (i.e. participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and stimulated recall interviews) as part of a critical realist ethnography with one representative-level junior cricket squad in the UK. Data were subject to emic and etic readings in response to the aims of the study. In total, 182 h of observational data and 46 h of interview data were generated and analysed using the Critical Incident Technique (CIT). Here, the primary sense making devices were provided by Jones and Wallace's (2005) theorising of orchestration, Elder-Vass' (2010) causal power of social structures, and Mason's (2002) concept of noticing. A small number of richly detailed and critical coaching (inter)actions are presented to illustrate the emergent meaning-making of different tacticians and targets of (non)influence. Specifically, the analysis introduces incidents that are illustrative of three novel types of (non)influence. The examples all highlight pathos between the coaches' original intentions for (and reading of) influence, and the actual influence of practice for the athlete(s). Here, the discussion provides accounts of (a) noninfluence on targeted individuals, (b) unintended influence on non-targeted individuals, and (c) unintended influence on targeted individuals. Overall, this paper contributes to a growing body of critical pedagogical research, positioning the work of influence less obtrusively. It provides a novel methodological, theoretical, and empirical contribution which practitioners, educators, researchers, and other stakeholders can engage with to critically consider how, when, why, for whom, and under which circumstances (inter)actions are (likely to be) influential or not. Further work could examine what pedagogues and learners decide to do and not do, as well as what they notice and do not notice as a basis to develop more critical and ethical practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is there little discussion around positionalities and desires in enterprise research within economic geography and beyond? This paper advocates an ethico-political methodology by drawing on research praxes that articulate a need for situated knowledges. This article develops the case for enterprise research in which our positioned desires matter. Positioned desires acknowledge the role of desires as a critical aspect to appreciate the ethico-political aspects of knowledge production in enterprise research. These desires are positioned in a concrete historical and material-institutional context and should be open to interrogation in the research process. In order to arrive at this idea, I first review dominant forms of critical realism in economic geography, according to which the researcher analyzes an external ontological reality. I show how this misses to specify the ethico-political stakes of knowledge production. I exemplify this claim through an analysis of the 'missing researchers' in the Global Production Network literature and the performative exclusions that this positioned desire-free lacuna entails. Subsequently, I illustrate the implications of a 'postcolonial ethico-onto-epistemology', by examining the importance of positioned desires for doing enterprise research in Armenia and Georgia, showing the need for creativity in navigating ethically through a difficult terrain of manifold power differentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss critical realists' and contemporary sociological pragmatists' approaches to conceptualizing social mechanisms, which, on my reading, each involve some ambiguities or confusions. I sketch some corrections and clarifications that bring into view ways pragmatism and critical realism might inform each other in a constructive fashion on the question of what social mechanisms are. Finally, I suggest a concept of social mechanisms that is compatible with both critical realist and pragmatist insights, as a starting point from which to launch further conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Realist evaluation has gained prominence in the field of evaluation in recent years. Its theory-driven approach to explaining how and why programmes work or not makes it attractive to many novices, early career researchers, and organizations implementing various programmes globally and relevant to policymakers and programme implementers. While realist evaluation seeks to be pragmatic, adopting principles and methods that can be used to help focus an evaluation, its deep ontological and epistemological foundations make its application in real-life situations challenging. In this paper, we seek to unpack the key tenets scaffolding the practical application of realist evaluation. Although Pawson and Tilley foreground realist evaluation in applied scientific realism, we argue that an amalgam of scientific and critical realist principles underpins realist evaluation. We unpack these principles and illustrate how they fit into each other to provide a cogent theoretical foundation for realist evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions of children's agency have experienced a resurgence in education theory over the past years. Yet, there have been few attempts to examine children's agency in the context of a primary classroom from the viewpoint of the curriculum. This gap is being addressed by a longitudinal project exploring the impact of the National Curriculum for England on children's agency through a critical discourse analysis of the curriculum text and an ethnography of three primary schools in England. This paper reports on the results of the critical discourse analysis examining how children's agency is talked about (or silenced) in England's curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the development of a critical realist approach to discourse analysis by combining aspects of 'critical discourse analysis' (CDA) and 'the morphogenetic/morphostatic approach' (M/M). Unlike poststructuralist discourse theory, CDA insists on the maintenance of two distinctions: (i) between discourse and other aspects of social reality; (ii) between structure and agency. However, CDA lacks clarity on these distinctions. M/M, on the other hand, offers a coherent modelling of these distinctions that can underpin the application of CDA. The paper begins by introducing CDA, M/M and the existing literature on critical realist discourse analysis. It then establishes the M/M model of social change within CDA's existing social theory by focusing on 'analytical dualism' and 'social practice'. Finally, the paper locates the concept of discourse within M/M's model of social change by theorizing discourse as one of four objective structures of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the article of John Mingers on management science and multimethodology in Great Britain. He asserts that the article of Mingers has emphasized that management science has been dominated by an empiricist philosophy. He argues that Mingers believes that idea that practice is driven by philosophy and theory. An overview of the argument of Minger is offered.

This paper is an expanded version of a paper presented at the 22nd meeting of the International Association for Critical Realism at Southampton, England. The paper presents a critical realist take on the right-wing populism that has surfaced in a number of our countries. That means in the first place employing what has been called SAC, which is an acronym for structure, agency, and culture. Reference to all three are necessary to account for current populism. The paper will argue further that critical realism helps us in still another way. The right-wing populism we see is bound up with a crisis of truth that raises fundamental questions about our moral responsibilities as democratic citizens. This paper will address these responsibilities as well, which relate to the agentic element of SAC. In that connection, this paper will comment on how critical realism uniquely helps us with truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impacts of the PREVENT Counter-Terrorism Strategy. The conclusion is reached that violence may be being promoted rather than prevented by government attempts to counter 'radicalisation' and 'extremism'. The motivation for this paper is the author's experience of the PREVENT Counter-Terrorism Strategy in a school in east London; and its main recommendation is that counter-extremism strategies can and should be contested. This conclusion, and the explanation for it, is reached by using a critical realist approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, supported by the framework of the semiotic triangle in the context of Bhaskar's transformational model of social activity. This brings in a time dimension that, it is argued, has previously been neglected in critical realist versions of Critical Discourse Analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is known for its capacity to reveal ideology reproduced through discourse, but when applied to educational research, its focus on mere language constrains its utility for understanding and improving social reality. In this paper, through the example of a textbook study, we explore how CDA can be strengthened by critical realism. As a theory of ontology and epistemology, critical realism seeks to explain how causal mechanisms in society constrain and enable the emergence of human agency. As a practical framework, it can offer a research design for the textbook study, featured by a stratified ontology, a dialectic epistemology and a methodological requirement for self-reflexivity. Such a design can overcome the limitations of positivism and interpretivism. It can enable CDA to demonstrate both criticalness and a higher level of explanatory power, with the potential to identify real (rather than Utopian) possibilities for human emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I assess some recent critical realist constructive criticisms of Theodor Adorno, one of the leading thinkers of the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory. I argue that while there are similarities between Adorno's treatment of causality and the critical realist notion of powers, these connections should not be taken to imply that Adorno's conception of critique requires a critical realist powers ontology. I show that Bhaskar's transcendental realism is at odds with the basic commitments of Adorno's historical materialism. I go on to clarify such materialism and show that to Adorno, capital is the historical compulsion characteristic of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In international politics, bridging the gap between the real and knowledge poses a persistent challenge as translating the real into concepts and narratives can nurture the epistemic fallacy. Critical realism addresses this by separating ontology from epistemology at the meta-theoretical level, yet in practical research, critical realism tends to impose assumptions about the ontological complexity of the real at the transcendental level. This paper examines the practical difficulty of overcoming the epistemic fallacy in International Relations inquiries, asserting that critical realism does not effectively guide practical inquiries in separating ontology from epistemology at a methodological level. Despite the meta-theoretical separation, research inquiries can remain theory-laden and epistemically dependent. The solution lies in problematizing ontological presentation, and sustaining critique at the discursive level on International Relations theories, methodologies, and implications. This approach maintains a critical focus on ontological aspects at the practical level to deal with the challenge of the epistemic fallacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gregory Bateson's career from anthropologist, through his development of cybernetics and systems theory, to developing ideas around 'the sacred', has parallels with Roy Bhaskar's intellectual journey. This paper proposes that as well as Bateson's theory of cybernetics and systemic thought making a contribution to basic and dialectic critical realism, his final and posthumously published Angels Fear: Towards and Epistemology of the Sacred adds to our understanding of Bhaskar's metaReality. Similarities between the development of Bateson's work from 1936 to 1987 and Bhaskar's work from 1975 to 2016 enable the development of theory that adds to both of their respective appreciations of metaReality and the sacred. Thus, by starting a conversation between Bateson and Bhaskar, we can develop a higher order understanding of the world than proposed by Bhaskar's metaReality alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data collection in resource-constrained environments, particularly in the Global South, is challenging for a variety of philosophical, theoretical, methodological, and ethical reasons. Challenges may involve using research approaches designed in the Global North that are not appropriate when using data from the social and cultural contexts in the Global South. Adopting a reflective approach, this paper examines research projects in Bangladesh, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda and highlights the challenges encountered on these projects. Along with the problems, attempted ameliorations are discussed, and insights are offered on how the authors overcame these challenges. The paper posits that these challenges can be mitigated by adopting contextualist methodology resulting in theories that are based on local social and cultural processes. The paper proposes that a critical realist-philosophical approach and methodology are appropriate because of contextual specificity and the innate ability to alleviate problems associated with the Global North methodology and generalisable theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative researchers wishing to circumnavigate the limitations of positivism, on the one hand, and strong constructionism, on the other, tend to be attracted to critical realism (CR), which offers a middle ground between the two: CR combines ontological realism and epistemological relativism. As a philosophical position for qualitative research, CR has been adopted by researchers utilising diverse data collection and analytic methods. However, there are at least two distinct approaches claiming the CR name: one developed by Joseph Maxwell, with qualitative research specifically in mind, and one developed by Roy Bhaskar and colleagues, as a general philosophy of natural and social sciences. In this paper I compare these two forms of CR on four dimensions, which on the surface they appear to share: (1) what does 'critical' mean; (2) epistemological relativism; (3) ontological realism; (4) causality. It is obvious that, below the surface when the details are examined, the two approaches to CR differ considerably on at least the last three dimensions, if not all four. I propose four reasons for preferring Bhaskar's CR over Maxwell's CR, arguing the former is more appropriate for qualitative research in psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]