Why critical realism makes sense in social science and management studies

Ivan Mitchel (Dept. of Business & Management)
& Math Noortmann (dept. of Social Sciences & School of Law)
Wednesday May 8th, 2013, 12-1.30pm Room E212 at Wheatley
Campus.
How should we make sense of the way the social world is? How should
we consider how the social world should be? Since the mid-twentieth
century, the debate around the ontological status of the social world
and what we can know about it has continued to garner significant
attention in social science and management studies. However, until
fairly recently this debate has predominantly been focused on the
competing paradigms of ‘empirical realism’ and a range of
perspectives which might loosely be termed as ‘postmodernism’. In
this seminar, therefore, we invite people to contemplate the value of
an alternative philosophy that is concerned with deeper
conceptualisations of ‘reality’ and being ‘critical’ – namely, ‘critical
realism’. We will introduce and contextualise the main tenets of the
philosophy and explore its critical distinctiveness as a basis for social
science and management knowledge.
All welcome

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