Critical Realism

Critical realism (CR) is commonly known for its ostensible and practicable capacity to successfully combine and reconcile a realist ontology with a relativist/constructivist epistemology. CR adapts an ontological realist position which stratifies the world into the real the actual and the empirical and suggests that although the world does exist out there what we experience are subjected to our interpretation. This double recognition is relatively novel in social science. Besides CR is a post-positivist methodological orientation. Hence it can perform serious and useful works in social research especially in terms of conceptualization and conduct of qualitative research. CR also allows one to avoid ‘intellectualist fallacy’ by regarding allegedly contradicted things such as structure and agency in terms of dialectical promoting an ‘and-and’ approach rather than an ‘either-or’ one. The aim of this work is not to give an exhaustive account of CR but rather to highlight some of its key philosophy and methodological implications. It is hoped that this work can be an alternative concise (and maybe amatuer) introduction to CR and its research implications.