ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we fill the gap between the vast literature on the philosophical cornerstones of critical realism and studies reporting the findings of critical realist analyses. We shed light on what is often not explicitly discussed in theoretical and empirical publications, namely: the process of translating metatheoretical principles into practical conduct during hands-on research. This chapter specifically focuses on the conduct of abstraction through abductive, retroductive, and retrodictive reasoning. We imagine abstraction as a gathering of three characters – the detective, physicist, and historian – which explains the different roles a researcher takes on throughout this complicated process. We situate these characters in the model of explanatory research based on critical realism of Danermark, Ekström, and Karlsson (2019) and reconceptualise the six stages according to our own experience with abstractive reasoning. Our foremost ambition is not only to illustrate the dynamic relation between the detective, physicist, and historian but also to show how abstraction can be translated into clear-cut questions to ask yourself during the analysis of empirical data. To put flesh on the bones of the philosophical and methodological debates, we draw examples from our own evaluations of social work programmes in Belgium and Sweden to illustrate our arguments.
