Organizing for Alternative Futures

Abstract

What are the limits of influence for a philosophy of science? The last conference for the International Association for Critical Realism asked the question: ‘How can we organize for an alternative future?’. The implicit assumption within this question is that critical realism, with its specific contribution to the understanding of the ontology of the natural and social world, enables researchers to ask questions not only about what is, but also of what could be. In addition to offering a resolution to the limitations of the philosophy underpinning what might loosely be described as ‘positivist’ and ‘idealist’ traditions, the resolution itself (i.e. a conception of reality that is stratified into the real, actual, and empirical; the proposal that causal powers exist and can endure without acting; resolutions to issues of structure and agency that make space for human reflexivity whilst maintaining the importance of structural powers that shape socioeconomic history) has, within it, the insight that what is in being is neither always necessary, nor impossible to change. This implies that offering a causal explanation of a situation, context, mechanism, organization, policy, market, or economy is more complete if we have also considered the alternatives to the status quo. Indeed, critical realism enables researchers to ask searching questions of what other possible futures or states of affairs might exist. As we write this introduction we are faced with an ever-increasing set of economic, environmental, social, and political challenges that, on the face of it, cannot be met through existing ways of organizing. One of the editors recently attended a seminar on the effect of a two degree rise in global temperature (the minimum hoped for) on sea levels around the world. The ‘new map’ of the coastline was sobering. It predicted that large areas of highly populated coastal land will be engulfed. It is difficult to argue against the view that changing our practices is entirely necessary, and yet the means to achieve this appear to be evading both theoretical and practical consensus. The challenges do not stop here. We are also faced with a growing economic disparity between the richest and poorest people on the planet. A recent report from Oxfam suggested that the wealthiest eighty-five people on the planet now have the equivalent wealth to the