Can Ontology Lead to New Perspectives in Social Research?

The objective of this paper is not to give a detailed discussion on complicated and sophisticated concepts such as epistemology and ontology but to throw light on the role of ontology in research activity. In order to achieve this objective two approaches will be taken as points of reference: the perspective of critical realism, a philosophical approach to the social and natural world, and in particular Bhaskar’s work (1998), and the perspective of ‘social constructionism’ (Crotty, 1998) and in particular the work of Berger and Luckmann (1966)