Reconstructing Sociology

Critical realism is a philosophy of science that positions itself against the major alternative philosophies underlying contemporary sociology. This book offers a general critique of sociology, particularly sociology in the United States, from a critical realist perspective. It also acts as an introduction to critical realism for students and scholars of sociology. Written in a...

Critical realism is a philosophy of science that positions itself against the major alternative philosophies underlying contemporary sociology. This book offers a general critique of sociology, particularly sociology in the United States, from a critical realist perspective. It also acts as an introduction to critical realism for students and scholars of sociology. Written in a lively, accessible style, Douglas V. Porpora argues that sociology currently operates with deficient accounts of truth, culture, structure, agency, and causality that are all better served by a critical realist perspective. This approach argues against the alternative sociological perspectives, in particular the dominant positivism which privileges statistical techniques and experimental design over ethnographic and historical approaches. However, the book also compares critical realism favourably with a range of other approaches, including poststructuralism, pragmatism, interpretivism, practice theory, and relational sociology. Numerous sociological examples are included, and each chapter addresses well-known and current work in sociology.

The first book-length introduction to critical realism for a sociological audience

Coverage of the broad array of current sociological perspectives makes it an accessible introduction to sociological theory as well as a novel argument concerning critical realism

The philosophical ideas are explained clearly with numerous sociological examples

Douglas V. Porpora is a Professor of Sociology at Drexel University, Philadelphia. His previous publications include Post-Ethical Society: The Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, and the Moral Failure of the Secular (2013).