Margaret Archer investigated the human person, and her relational constitution, like no other scholar before. This contribution briefly traces the development of Archerian theory on the person from her first to her last works. I distinguish two phases, theoretical and temporal. In the first phase, Archer investigates the physical human person, from birth to full social development. In the second phase, she expands the concept of 'person' to include artificial entities, such as AI robots, adhering to Lynne Rudder Baker's vision, according to which every entity that can act in the first person, whatever its body, is a person. I raise some reservations about this turn, considering that a relational perspective on the human person requires not only the perspective of the first person but also of the second person. In the ensuing assessment of her work I argue that the theory should be made more relational.
This article addresses the contribution of Margaret Archer's morphogenetic/morphostatic (M/M) approach to the study of macro-social change. Its goal is to highlight the added value it can bring to macro-sociology, as well as to indicate a few possible lines for future theoretical and empirical developments. The main argument is that the morphogenetic approach must be characterized as a multi-level explanatory framework, this being one of its most significant contributions to macro-sociological studies. The paper first offers a selective account of the main tenets of the M/M explanatory programme that provide useful analytical tools for macro-sociological analysis, arguing that they hit some blind spots in contemporary mainstream macro-sociology. Then a schematic overview is presented of some historical-empirical applications, which can serve as an example of the effectiveness of the M/M frame. The final section indicates some possible future lines of research, as further developments of Archer's seminal contribution.
This paper explores Margaret Archer's enduring influence on business and management studies (BMS) while offering a methodological blueprint for other applied social sciences. Through a systematic bibliographic analysis of 241 articles, it shows how Archer's realist social theory - especially the morphogenetic approach, critical realism, and concepts of reflexivity and relationality - has shaped sub-fields including organization studies and information systems. While 40% of citations reference Archer generically as a critical realist pioneer, 60% engage with her original contributions. Citation patterns reveal early adoption in organization studies and heterodox economics, later expanding to public management, ICT, and entrepreneurship. Beyond BMS, the paper contributes a replicable method for tracing theoretical diffusion across disciplines, offering insights for sociology, education, and international relations. It calls for deeper engagement with Archer's later works on morphogenic and post-human societies to address contemporary challenges such as technological change and dehumanization.
In this article, I discuss Archer's morphostatic/morphogenetic approach (M/M) and the concept of time. I argue that M/M is a methodology of temporality; of phase, order and sequence. As such, it is deployed to incorporate time into accounts of and research on society, but is not itself an explicit theory of time. This notwithstanding, M/M is, however, a variant on analytical or logical time that is intended to work in the service of real historical time. Having made this point, I then discuss various elements of a critical realist theory of time and the issue of real historical time.
In this article, I aim to make a theoretical and conceptual contribution to greening international relations theory by rethinking the relationship between nature, society, and the international through a critical realist approach. I conceptualize the international as a distinctive socio-material form of being that emerges from the historically constituted mutual conditioning between natural processes and social relations of production, which cannot, however, be reduced either to natural processes or to soc ial relations of production taken in isolation. Bringing critical realism into dialogue with historical materialism, I draw on metabolic rift theory as an analytical framework that reveals the historically specific social origins of ecological destruction. I do so in three interconnected ways: (1) defining the international in terms of socio-ecological diversity, (2) uncovering the socio-ecological origins of the international, and (3) clarifying how historically specific intersocietal relations generate ecological destruction and condition the possibilities for transformative praxis.
This essay examines Joseph A. Schumpeter's Business Cycles to present its theoretical consistency through the lens of critical realism. The essay demonstrates that the ontological presuppositions of Business Cycles share significant characteristics with those of critical realism, such as open-system thinking and stratified ontology. Additionally, the essay explores Schumpeter's idea of science and its relationship with critical realism, highlighting his retroductive reasoning in Business Cycles and arguing that his approach is best understood as methodological pluralism. Finally, the essay concludes that Business Cycles is consistent with critical realism and suggests future research directions.
This paper compares conceptualizations of knowledge by critical and social realism on the one hand and the social realist school in the sociology of education on the other. Although both schools appeal to ontological realism and judgmental rationality to address a common concern - epistemic relativism - their understandings of these concepts are not well-aligned. Our concern in this paper is that this issue has been misunderstood in problematic ways in research in the field of higher education. First, we provide some evidence to illustrate this concern. Second, we outline how key scholars in both schools have conceptualized knowledge. Third, we highlight their differences around the usage of ontological realism and judgmental rationality. Fourth, we discuss what is at stake for educational research and practice. Finally, we urge caution by researchers when claiming that the social realist school's approach is philosophically supported by Bhaskar's critical realism and Archer's social realism.
Since its emergence in the 1980s, organisational culture (OC) has been explored through various perspectives, each offering distinct insights into meanings shaping organisational life. Yet structural conditions influencing the formation and transformation of shared meanings have received limited attention. This paper addresses this gap by developing a critical realist (CR) approach to OC analysis. Through a metatheoretical review, it demonstrates that existing OC research lacks ontological clarity, limiting its explanatory power. Building on Archer's morphogenesis and incorporating insights from Elder-Vass and others, the paper proposes a stratified culture ontology that introduces cultural configuration (CC) as a mediating layer between cultural systems and socio-cultural interaction. Methodological implications for CR-informed OC studies are outlined, just as the relationship between OC and emancipation is discussed, highlighting both enabling and constraining dynamics. It concludes that CR can enhance understanding of organisational cultural change and offers promising avenues for future research.
In this article, I address the need to cultivate alternative public transport narratives by examining how public transport emerges as public space at the intersection of geography, literary studies, and critical realist philosophy of science. I contend that a critical realist return to literary analysis offers a lens for exploring how public transport is represented as a public space, attentive to the contexts in which human agency and intentionality are formed. Through a close reading of two post-1980s short stories, I aim to expose how literary works not only function as unofficial archives of urban experience but also contribute to the conditions of possibility for human agency.
This article presents an approach to documentary collage film as a practice-based form of critical realist inquiry. It argues that the complexity of reality is best understood through a dialectic between empirical evidence and creative mediation, positioned as a 'middle path' between positivism and interpretivism. Photographic archive film provides the factual material, the intervention of collage is the site of mediation. Using material from the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales, the project investigates the identity of the 'Welsh Wales' region as a laminated social structure. The research is undertaken through visual forms of abduction, abstraction, and retroduction, developing a critical realist approach to the semiotics of documentary film. The collage functions as visual sociology, integrating empirical observation, causal inference and creative construction. The work contributes to the development of visual research informed by critical realism, offering a model for the wider application of collage-based methods in interdisciplinary contexts.
