CONFLICTING VARIETIES OF REALISM - CAUSAL POWERS AND THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL-STRUCTURE

Proponents of the view that social structures are ontologically distin ct from the people in whose actions they are immanent have assumed tha t structures can stand in causal relations to individual practices. We re causality to be no more than Humean concomitance correlations betwe en structure and practices would be unproblematic. But two prominent a dvocates of the ontological account of structures, Bhaskar and Giddens , have also espoused a powers theory of causality. According to that t heory causation is brought about by the activity of particulars, in th e social psychological case, individuals of some sort. Consistence wou ld demand that structure be those individuals. But neither Giddens nor Bhaskar wish to reify structure to the extent that would fit it for a role as a powerful particular. If only human beings can be powerful p articulars in these contexts, the only way that structures can be real must be as properties of conversational (symbolic) interactions. Huma n action is social just in so far as people direct themselves to engag e well in joint activities with others.