A guide to critical realism and an assessment of its virtues in comparison with other leading traditions in social science. Andrew Sayer, a social theorist and a founder of "realism" in the social sciences, criticizes reductionism and determinism in "modernist" social science and rejects the postmodern for its overexaggeration of the permeable character of boundaries in social explanation. He provides a guide to the key features of critical realism and criticizes postmodernism, anti-essentialism and constructionism. Finally, the book provides an assessment of the ethical turn in social theory, and its implications.