ABSTRACT
The revival of a powers-based perspective on causation, and so on the nature of the objects of science, however, allows the question of whether society or social reality can be studied scientifically to be addressed anew. Where causal properties emerge, they must be the properties of something, an emergent entity or some such. In the literature on the topic, an emergent entity is generally held to be composed out of elements which lie at a different level of reality to itself, but which, in a given context, have become organised as components of the emergent entity or causal totality. Along with the emergence of an entity or whole and its "global" powers of efficient causation, emerges the entity's organising structure. Though the entity as a whole and its structure appear on the scene simultaneously, they are not identical, the emergent structure clearly being a property of the emergent whole.
