ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relevance of social ontology containing institutional facts as autonomous entities influencing the performative process. It analyses the existence of social entities, taking the form of conventions, irreducible to individual agents as well as imposing themselves on them. The chapter explores the origins of the concept of the emergent effect–that is, the irreducibility of macro entities to elements of a system, an idea that was originally proposed by Tony Lawson. The economics follows the sociological approach, which is at the heart of recurrent criticisms of performativist theory. The chapter argues that the social sciences possess additional arguments in favour of an ontological view of institutional facts as emerging effects. Indeed, if the biological level of emergence refers to the material reduction evoked by Jaegwon Kim, the social world is not without its own peculiarities. The chapter also argues that the problem of reductionism concerns both the theorist of the social world and the social world itself.
