ABSTRACT
Our concern in this book is twofold. The main concern is to discuss some methodological implications of a critical realist approach to social science. However, this cannot be done without an introduction to the basic ideas in this approach. We therefore devote the first part of the book to introducing some of the most elementary elements of critical realism. But we would like to emphasize that in this book, although we take our point of departure from a specific philosophical perspective, we do not try to either develop or offer new interpretations of this perspective. What we try to do is to address some of its fundamental ontological and epistemological claims, and show how these by necessity have implications for investigating social phenomena.
