ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the basic assumptions of a critical realist approach to social scientific inquiry. It elucidates the critical realism within the various versions of realisms and explores the main features of the approach namely, the relations between the transitive and intransitive realm, the realist notions of social reality and its characteristics, social causality, complexity, and the centrality of the phenomenon of emergence. Critical realism emerged as a reaction to the positivist-empiricist dominance the social sciences without falling to the form of 'exaggerated reaction' of relativist approaches. Qualitative research methods, theoretical and epistemological influences lead to the adoption of a highly idiosyncratic and descriptive style of social research which is unable to contribute to answering causal questions or explaining anything in depth. The investigation of phenomena of social emergence and complexity faces certain difficulties due to the open character of the social world, which precludes experimenting in the ways adopted in various fields of natural sciences.
