Social mechanisms: bridging critical realist and pragmatist approaches

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I discuss critical realists’ and contemporary sociological pragmatists’ approaches to conceptualizing social mechanisms, which, on my reading, each involve some ambiguities or confusions. I sketch some corrections and clarifications that bring into view ways pragmatism and critical realism might inform each other in a constructive fashion on the question of what social mechanisms are. Finally, I suggest a concept of social mechanisms that is compatible with both critical realist and pragmatist insights, as a starting point from which to launch further conversation.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical realism
• social mechanisms
• pragmatism
• potentiality
• emergence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s) .

Notes

1 Peirce writes: ‘The doctrine of Aristotle is distinguished from substantially all modern philosophy by its recognition of at least two grades of being. That is, besides actual reactive existence, Aristotle recognizes a germinal being, an esse in potentia or I like to call it an esse in futuro’ (EP 2:180).

2 Mead (1934, 198) writes: ‘Practically, of course, the novel is constantly happening and the recognition of this gets its expression in more general terms in the concept of emergence. Emergence involves a reorganization, but the reorganization brings in something that was not there before. The first time oxygen and hydrogen come together, water appears. Now water is a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, but water was not there before in the separate elements.’

3 Smith (2010, 61) defines a person as ‘a conscious, reflexive, embodied, self-transcending center of subjective experience, durable identity, moral commitment, and social communication who – as the efficient cause of his or her own responsible actions and interactions – exercises complex capacities for agency and intersubjectivity in order to develop and sustain his or her own incommunicable self in loving relationship with other personal selves and with the nonpersonal world.’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bridget Ritz

Bridget Ritz is a sociologist with the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. Her work seeks to bridge theoretical insights from pragmatism, critical realism, and cultural sociology.