ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines a realist, generative approach to causality based on causal powers or capacities that runs counter to the regularity or succession theory of causality associated with empiricism. With the help of Mario Bunge's CESM model of social systems, it argues, in accordance with non-Bhaskarian realists such as Rom Harr and Charles Varela, that social structures do not pass for powerful particulars and are thus not endowed with causal powers. In Bunge's composition-environment-structure-mechanism (CESM) model of society, therefore, "social structure" stands for the set of relations among the members of a given social system and among these and items in the system's environment, while the total social structure of a society is defined as "the union of its biological, economic, political, and cultural structures". In Bunge's CESM model of society, therefore, "social structure" stands for the set of relations among the members of a given social system and among these and items in the system's environment.
