Routledge Studies in Critical Realism
About the Book Series
Critical Realism is a broad movement within philosophy and social science. It is a movement that began in British philosophy and sociology following the founding work of Roy Bhaskar, Margaret Archer and others. Critical Realism emerged from the desire to realise an adequate realist philosophy of science, social science, and of critique. Against empiricism, positivism and various idealisms (interpretivism, radical social constructionism), Critical Realism argues for the necessity of ontology. The pursuit of ontology is the attempt to understand and say something about ‘the things themselves’ and not simply about our beliefs, experiences, or our current knowledge and understanding of those things. Critical Realism also argues against the implicit ontology of the empiricists and idealists of events and regularities, reducing reality to thought, language, belief, custom, or experience. Instead Critical Realism advocates a structural realist and causal powers approach to natural and social ontology, with a focus upon social relations and process of social transformation.
Important movements within Critical Realism include the morphogenetic approach developed by Margaret Archer; Critical Realist economics developed by Tony Lawson; as well as dialectical Critical Realism (embracing being, becoming and absence) and the philosophy of metaReality (emphasising priority of the non-dual) developed by Roy Bhaskar.
For over thirty years, Routledge has been closely associated with Critical Realism and, in particular, the work of Roy Bhaskar, publishing well over fifty works in, or informed by, Critical Realism (in series including Critical Realism: Interventions; Ontological Explorations; New Studies in Critical Realism and Education). These have all now been brought together under one series dedicated to Critical Realism.
The Centre for Critical Realism is the advisory editorial board for the series. If you would like to know more about the Centre for Critical Realism, or to submit a book proposal, please visit www.centreforcriticalrealism.com.
Platform and Agency: Becoming Who We Are
1st Edition
By Mark Carrigan
October 27, 2025
This book examines how digital platforms are reconfiguring the parameters of agency and reflexivity in contemporary social life. Drawing on Margaret Archer's social realist framework, it moves beyond treating platforms merely as tools or environments to conceptualize them as distinct sociotechnical...
Educational Leadership and Critical Realism
1st Edition
By Anthony Thorpe, Jean Pierre Elonga Mboyo
September 18, 2025
Adopting a critical realist approach to educational leadership, this book shows how applied theory can contribute to the development of mechanisms allowing for the effective leadership of organisations. Through an examination of pertinent theories and debates in educational leadership and critical ...
Codes of Corruption: A Critical Realist Discourse Analysis of Illicit Transactions
1st Edition
By Karin Zotzmann
March 31, 2025
Corruption is expanding internationally and so are strategic accusations of others being corrupt. It has become quite common for some politicians and their supporters to make false accusations of corruption against opponents in order to win power. A precise understanding of the phenomenon is ...
Explaining Morality: Critical Realism and Moral Questions
1st Edition
By Steve Ash
September 25, 2023
Adopting a critical realist approach to morality, this book considers morality as an aspect of social reality, enquiring into the nature of moral agency and asking whether we can legitimately argue for a specific moral position and whether moral positions can be understood to apply universally. ...
The Morphogenesis of the Norwegian Educational System: Emergence and Development from a Critical Realist Perspective
1st Edition
Edited
By Margaret S. Archer, Unn-Doris K. Bæck, Tone Skinningsrud
September 25, 2023
Based in the philosophy of critical realism, this book employs a range of Margaret Archer’s theoretical concepts to investigate temporal and spatial aspects of Norwegian education. Stemming from Archer’s engagement as visiting professor from 2017 to 2019 in the Department of Education at UiT The ...
A Critical Realist Theory of Sport
1st Edition
By Graham Scambler
December 30, 2022
This book argues that sport in the era of global or financialised capitalism has undergone a process of fracturing, which requires a re-assessment of longstanding and consensual accounts of traditional-to-modern sporting activity. Considering rival concepts of sport, it presents detailed, ...
Working with Critical Realism: Stories of Methodological Encounters
1st Edition
Edited
By Alpesh Maisuria, Grant Banfield
December 30, 2022
This international and interdisciplinary collection gathers stories from researchers and research students about their methodological encounters with critical realism. Whether the contributors are experienced or novice researchers, they are predominantly new to critical realism. For various reasons...
Big Picture Perspectives on Planetary Flourishing: Metatheory for the Anthropocene Volume 1
1st Edition
Edited
By Nicholas Hedlund, Sean Esbjörn-Hargens
July 29, 2022
This book, split across two volumes, is a follow-up and companion to Metatheory for the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2016). All three of these volumes are the dialogical outcome of a multi-year symposia series wherein critical realists and integral theorists deeply engaged each other and their ...
Ethical Consumption: Practices and Identities: A Realist Approach
1st Edition
By Yana Manyukhina
October 17, 2019
This book engages with the topic of ethical consumption and applies a critical-realist approach to explore the process of becoming and being an ethical consumer. By integrating Margaret Archer’s theory of identity formation and Christian Coff’s work on food ethics, it develops a theoretical account...
Explaining Society: Critical Realism in the Social Sciences
2nd Edition
By Berth Danermark, Mats Ekström, Jan Ch. Karlsson
March 29, 2019
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 ...
Sociology, Health and the Fractured Society: A Critical Realist Account
1st Edition
By Graham Scambler
March 21, 2019
It is now accepted that many of the determinants of health and health care are social. This volume offers a philosophical and theoretical frame within which the nature and extent of this might be optimally examined. The analysis is rooted in Roy Bhaskar’s basic and dialectical critical realism, ...
Interdisciplinarity and Wellbeing: A Critical Realist General Theory of Interdisciplinarity
1st Edition
By Roy Bhaskar, Berth Danermark, Leigh Price
July 06, 2017
In this book, the authors provide a much-needed general theory of interdisciplinarity and relate it to health/wellbeing research and professional practice. In so doing they make it possible for practitioners of the different disciplines to communicate without contradiction or compromise, resolving ...