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).