Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book consists Ordinary Language Philosophy (OLP), explicating its relation to sociological forms of enquiry and defending it against standard objections. It continues the attack on ontology and its constitutive procedures by scrutinising one of the latest versions of Critical Realism, the one propounded by Dave Elder-Vass who promises to place the social sciences on a sound ontological footing. Social theory is primarily assuming a theoretical attitude towards language and only derivatively vindicating any proposition about social phenomena. Ontological questions have proliferated in social thought in the past decades mainly as a way of recasting traditional sociological questions. The book deals with a currently fashionable source of confusion, namely ontology. It concludes by offering ways of moving beyond the problem of structure and agency' and the conceptual confusion it gives rise to.