General Editor
Mervyn Hartwig

Review Editor
Jamie Morgan
Send Books to: 34 Long Lane, Heath Charnock
Chorley, Lancs PR6 9EQ, UK

The Journal of Critical Realism (JCR) is the journal of the International Association for Critical Realism (IACR), established in 1997 to foster the discussion, propagation and the development of critical realist approaches to understanding and changing the world. It provides a forum for scholars wishing to promote realist emancipatory philosophy, social theory and science on an interdisciplinary and international basis, and for those who wish to engage with such an approach. Material should, as a rule, be directed at an audience across different disciplines with a shared interest in critical realism rather than a specialist disciplinary audience.

The journal publishes articles, review essays, review symposia, book reviews, debates and postgraduate interventions that relate in some significant way to critical realist approaches to understanding and changing the world.

For more information about IACR please go to International Association for Critical Realism
For more information about the background of the journal please go to JCR

Call for papers

JCR aims to publish scholarly articles on all aspects of critical realism as a multidisciplinary and emancipatory/ transformative movement, and to encourage debate between critical realist and other approaches. We are currently particularly interested in empirically based studies, papers exploring the applicability of critical realism in new areas, and in engagement with critical realism from the direction of mainline realism, social constructionism, hermeneutics, postmodernism, feminist theory, Hegelianism and Marxism.

Call for papers: special issue on causal powers 8(3) 2009

Within critical realism, interest in causal powers dates to the mid-1970s, when Roy Bhaskar defended the concept of ‘causal mechanisms’ in A Realist Theory of Science and Rom Harré and E. H. Madden developed the notion of ‘powerful particulars’ in Causal Powers. Our call for papers marks the excitement of the present moment, however, a moment in which the scientific essentialist critique of Humean and Kantian accounts of causality has begun to take hold more broadly within the discipline of philosophy, and in which the covering law model of social science is no longer taken for granted even by those in the social sciences who do quantitative work.

Journal of Critical Realism is perhaps uniquely situated to publish a set of articles on causality that spans an array of disciplines, as critical realism itself is arguably grounded in both philosophy and radical social science. We invite submissions from all disciplines, at all levels of abstraction. Relatively technical philosophical discussions might address issues such as how, from a powers-based perspective, to define causality; what laws are (or aren’t); the relationship of powers to essential properties, kinds and/or form; and the ontological status of powers. More applied papers might be focused on the implications of a powers-based ontology for empirical research or methodological debates, but authors might apply the concept of causal powers to normative or aesthetic issues as well. Over-arching meta-theoretical reflections might involve thinking about powers in relation to realism, history, dialectics and/or explanation.

Submission deadline: 4 May 2009

Recent Articles

Petter Næss, Unsustainable Growth, Unsustainable Capitalism Vol. 5 (2)

David Wilson and William Dixon, ‘Das Adam Smith Problem’: A Critical Realist Perspective Vol. 5 (2)

Heikki Patomäki, Realist Ontology for Futures StudiesVol. 5 (1)

Hidenori Suzuki, Is There Something Money Can’t Buy? In Defence of the Ontology of a Market Boundary Vol. 4 (2)

Tone Skinningsrud, Realist Social Theorising and the Emergence of State Educational Systems Vol. 4 (2)

Lynn Savery, Women’s Human Rights and Changing State Practices: A Critical Realist Approach Vol. 4 (1)

Bob Jessop, The Gender Selectivities of the State: A Critical Realist Analysis Vol. 3 (2)

Tim Rogers, The Doing of a Depth-Investigation: Implications for the Emancipatory Aims of Critical Naturalism Vol. 3 (2)

Derek P. Brereton, Preface for a Critical Realist Ethnology, Part I: The Schism and a Realist Restorative; Part II: Some Principles Applied Vol. 3 (1) & 3 (2)

Tobin Nellhaus, From embodiment to agency: cognitive science, critical realism, and communication frameworks Vol. 3 (1)

Indexing and Abstracting
The Philosophers Index
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences

Publication: May and November
ISSN: 1476-7430 (print)
ISSN: 1572-5138 (online) Next Issue: 7.1

Editorial Address
Mervyn Hartwig, 37 Stockwell Green, Stockwell, London SW9 9HZ