ABSTRACT
The underlying problem of both social psychology – and sociology – is this: could social structures be causally efficacious? A positive answer to this question is taken by Roy Bhaskar (1989) to be perfectly uncontroversial. Consequently, if one wants to change the social order, in particular the micro-social order, one should change whatever causes that order to be what it is. The difficulty for me is to get some clear idea of what macro-social structures might be that they could have causal powers. Only particulars can have such powers. Is it obvious that the referents of social structure expressions are particulars of the right sort? Not to me. The critical realist crowd is inclined to say ‘yes’ to the big ontological question – could social structures be causally efficacious? But that is because they are not clear about what these causally efficacious Platonic beings might actually be!
