Critical realism is an epistemological and theoretical approach to physical and social sciences created by British philosopher of science Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014) and later adopted by British sociologist Margaret Archer and American anthropologist David Graeber. Bhaskar contended that the success of laboratory experiments in physical sciences is due to the creation of artificially closed systems that can be freely manipulated and where causal and deterministic relationships could be explored and isolated. Bhaskar argues that closed systems of this type are rare outside the laboratory and that kind of experimentation would not be applicable to social sciences. Critical idealism, in that sense, positions itself between idealism, on one side, and materialist empiricism, on the other side.

Bhaskar states that society consists of an enduring set of structures that are positioned in complex stratified relations. Those structures and their relations are not constant, as they are continually changing, either by being reproduced or inadvertently or consciously changed. social structures are real and possess causal power, but those powers practically and conceptually function differently than in natural sciences. The structure has power because they create relational authority and rules that guide the actions of individuals, and that action creates further consequences and outcomes. In that sense, the actions of individuals are influenced by relational authority and rules that structures create, but those actions are also personalized by individual goals, and also depersonalized because they create indiscriminate effects for individuals. That is why both structures and actions of an individual can not be only reduced to actors' perception or experience of events or interactions.

Margaret Archer also sees critical realism as the best solution to the problem of the relationship between actors and structures in sociological theory. According to Archer, the actors can be both individuals and large organizations, such as trade unions. On the other hand, structures can be found not only at the macro level but also at the micro level of study. It uses the term "culture" to denote intangible phenomena and ideas, which stand in opposition to the structure of material phenomena and interests. She makes the distinction between the processes of "morphogenesis" which refers to complex and interdependent changes in the system, and on the other hand, the process of "morphostasis" which is characterized by the absence of change. Morphogenesis refers to the properties of systems that arise as a consequence of actions and interactions and the influence that existing structures have on actions and interactions. She believes that there are an infinite number of potential structural changes, as well as changes in actions and interactions. Archer rejects Giddens' theory of structuration and the view that structures and actors should be studied as dualities.

Authors: Archer, Margaret. Bhaskar, Roy; Graeber, David.

Books:

Archer. Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory (1988);

     -     Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (1995);

     -     Critical Realism: Essential Reading (1998);

     -     Rational Choice Theory: Resisting Colonisation (2000);

     -     Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation (2003);

     -     Transcendence: Critical Realism and God (2004);

     -     Making our Way Through the World (2007);

     -     The Reflexive Imperative (2012);

     -     Social Morphogenesis (2013);

     -     Late Modernity: Trajectories Towards Morphogenic Society (2014);

     -     The Relational Subject (2015); 

     -     Generative Mechanisms Transforming the Social Order (2015); 

     -     Morphogenesis and the Crisis of Normativity (2016); 

     -     Morphogenesis and Human Flourishing (2017);

Bhaskar, R. Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (1993);

     -     A Realist Theory of Science (1976);

The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences (1979);

Brown, A., Fleetwood, S., & Roberts, J. Critical Realism and Marxism (2002);

Callinicos, A. Making History: Agency, Structure and Change in Social Theory (2004);

Carter, B. & New, C. (eds.). Making Realism Work (2005);

Groff, R. Critical Realism: Post Positivism and the Possibility of Knowledge (2004).