Critical realism, as a toolkit of practical ideas, helps researchers to extend and clarify their analyses. It resolves problems arising from splits between different research approaches, builds on the strengths of different methods and overcomes their individual limitations.
This original text draws on international examples of health and illness research across the life course, from small studies to large trials, to show how versatile critical realism can be in validating research and connecting it to policy and practice.
To meet growing demand from students and researchers, this book is based on the course at UCL, first taught by Roy Bhaskar, the founder of critical realism.
Introduction Bhaskar’s enunciation of critical realism (CR) is now well established within the social sciences and social work scholarship ( Danermark et al, 2019 ; Buch-Hansen and Nielsen, 2020 ). Offering an alternative to positivism and postmodernism ( Collier, 1994 ), this branch of philosophy enables the social professions to gain a deep-seated understanding of causality in the social world. In doing so, it links outcomes with mechanisms triggering change, contextual factors, spatio-temporal considerations and human agency. With its declared commitment
PART II Critical realism and public housing
list of critical texts about mental health service provision. This article argues that his perspective, which rejected a biomedical orthodoxy, but was also doubtful about the true radical potential of ‘anti- psychiatry’, reflected a direction of intellectual travel that, with hindsight, can be seen to reflect the philosophy of critical realism. A case is made in relation to this by examining Sedgwick’s concern for combining ontological realism and epistemological relativism. Some of the underdeveloped aspects of his analysis may have reflected his necessary lack
inclusive sustainable development and regional economies. We then illustrate how we applied the core elements of the social ecosystem model to the four cases, enabling us to develop a more nuanced and textured understanding of local vocational skill formation. Through this analytical work, we lay the foundation for the theoretical expansion of the notion of skills ecosystems in the final section of the chapter. There we draw on critical realism to help us shape a conceptual and theoretical framework that does not succumb to reductionist conceptualizations of vocational
practitioners involved in our study. Our article specifically examines the mechanisms that align SW practices with RSW in one of the five agencies that participated in our research project on adult SW (ASW) in Finland ( Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius, 2023: 3–4 ). Our objective is to make a substantive contribution to the ongoing discourse by utilising critical realism (CR) in SW practice research as a philosophy-of-science approach. CR is relevant in SW research because of its critical and emancipatory components ( Schoppek, 2021 ). We apply CR with theoretical
, to develop and spread new ideas, as research grants and academic journals are today. John Snow set examples of health and illness research that critical realism (CR) supports. He used three methods. Induction: when he observed many cases and began to form theories about the cause of cholera. Deduction: when he formed his hypothesis that cholera is waterborne and set out to test it through counting households and mapping people’s daily movements and habits. Thirdly, he used retroduction:2 this involves: • searching beyond evidence for the unseen cause only
the most deprived areas.2 How can critical realism (CR) add to the present extensive health and illness research about them? This chapter summarises a range of useful CR concepts linked to transformative change over time. Research reports tend to be static, presenting data about a brief period in the lives of the people concerned. Even longitudinal research tends to collect moments or episodes at intervals during participants’ lifetimes like a series of photos. And although multivariate analysis links earlier events to later ones (such as early years
’s difficulties (which will be discussed later in this chapter), when trying to change theories that had lasted for millennia, relate to critical realism (CR). Partly because CR challenges very long- held theories, it can be emotionally as well as intellectually challenging. It is not easy for researchers to revise their central beliefs and review how they could have analysed their previous projects differently. There is great interest in CR among students and younger researchers, who have much to gain and less to lose by studying CR. Yet their ‘demand’ for CR teaching
2020 pandemic: In the UK, numbers of working families in poverty are at an all time high. They rely on benefits from a state system that is driving many more of them into debt and to use food banks, and some to starvation and suicide.4 This chapter is about how critical realism (CR) addresses values in health research and helps to extend moral analyses. Health research that describes, measures and provides much vital information is necessary but not sufficient. Research is also needed to explain driving moral forces and how adverse forces might be changed
