Critical realism – In recent years critical realism
has gained considerable popularity as a
framework for enquiry in human geography
(Pratt 1995; Sayer 1992, 2000; Yeung 1997). The
philosophy of realism expounds a layered ontology
consisting of three overlapping realms
or ‘domains’ (Bhaskar 1978). These are: the
domain of the empirical (comprising human
experiences); the domain of the actual (consisting
of events); and the domain of the real
(containing the hidden ‘structures’ and ‘causal
mechanisms’ that produce empirical events).
The distinctive feature of realist ontology is,
therefore, its recognition of intransitivity: the
idea that objects, causal mechanisms and events
may exist and operate independently of human
observation, experience and modes of reasoning
(Bhaskar 1978). This notion of a partially
obscured reality contrasts sharply with the
positivist theory of reality (that has informed
traditional approaches to understanding the
competitive performance of rural SMEs), which
conflates the real, the actual and the empirical:
effectively reducing ideas of ‘being’ to our
‘knowledge of being’ via – what Bhaskar termed
– its ‘epistemic fallacy’.