© Society for Human Ecology Realism without Reductionism: Toward an Ecologically Embedded Sociology

Building off of the path-breaking works of Roy Bhaskar —and in particular his philosophical position of critical re-alism—this paper works toward a realignment of sociology with the life and ecological sciences. Sociology has been cautious of looking too far into the realm of the biophysical for causal potentials out of fear that such analyses might mark the beginning of a slippery slope toward biological re-ductionism. Yet, as this paper argues, such fears of reduc-tionism are conceptually misguided. Critical realism argues that reality is stratified, rooted, and emergent. Consequent-ly, to bracket social life from those levels “beneath ” it—or, in some cases, to write out nature entirely (e.g., discursive the-ory and “strong ” social constructionism)—is to approach the study of those phenomena with a degree of institutionalized blindness. Instead, this paper argues that sociology must open its doors to all causal potentials, regardless of where this search may lead