The Philosopher's Corner: Questioning the Third Way Rhetoric of Critical Realism
Lanamäki, Arto (2024-10-22)
ACM
22.10.2024
Arto Lanamäki. 2024. The Philosopher's Corner: Questioning the Third Way Rhetoric of Critical Realism. SIGMIS Database 55, 4 (November 2024), 117–127. https://doi.org/10.1145/3701613.3701619
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© 2024 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in Data base for advances in information systems, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3701613.3701619.
https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
© 2024 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in Data base for advances in information systems, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3701613.3701619.
https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-202410316546
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-202410316546
Tiivistelmä
Abstract
Roy Bhaskar's critical realism (CR) has become a popular metatheoretical foundation in information systems (IS) research. CR is often framed as a "third way" or a "middle ground" between positivism and interpretivism. In this essay, I deconstruct this third way rhetoric of the CR discourse into four argumentative steps: 1) IS research must be based on a metatheoretical foundation; 2) positivism and interpretivism are the only two choices for such foundation, but both are unsatisfactory; 3) critical realism solves this tension as a middle ground between the two alternatives; and 4) critical realism is superior to its alternatives and thus the only sensible choice. I problematize each of these steps. The contribution of this essay is to illuminate the seductiveness of the "third way" framing: it hides more than it reveals.
Roy Bhaskar's critical realism (CR) has become a popular metatheoretical foundation in information systems (IS) research. CR is often framed as a "third way" or a "middle ground" between positivism and interpretivism. In this essay, I deconstruct this third way rhetoric of the CR discourse into four argumentative steps: 1) IS research must be based on a metatheoretical foundation; 2) positivism and interpretivism are the only two choices for such foundation, but both are unsatisfactory; 3) critical realism solves this tension as a middle ground between the two alternatives; and 4) critical realism is superior to its alternatives and thus the only sensible choice. I problematize each of these steps. The contribution of this essay is to illuminate the seductiveness of the "third way" framing: it hides more than it reveals.
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