The social sciences often fail to examine in any systematic way the nature of their subject matter. Demonstrating that this is a central explanation of the widely acknowledged failings of the social sciences, not least of modern economics, this book sets about rectifying matters.

Tony Lawson is Professor of Economics and Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is also a co-Editor of the Cambridge Journal of Economics and co-Founder of the Cambridge Realist Workshop and the Cambridge Social Ontology Group.

Preface and acknowledgements. Part 1: Setting the context. 1. Why social ontology?. Part 2: A general conception. 2. Ontology and the study of social reality: emergence, organisation, community, power, social relations, corporations, artefacts and money. Part 3: Topics in scientific ontology. 3. The nature of the firm and peculiarities of the corporation. 4. The modern corporation: the site of a mechanism (of global social change) that is out-of-control?. 5. A theory of money. 6. The positioning and credit theories of money compared. Part 4: The nature and dynamics of processes of emergence, reproduction and transformation. 7. Emergence, morphogenesis, causal reduction and downward causation. 8. Collective practices and norms. Part 5: Consequences for projects of human emancipation. 9. Possibilities for emancipatory social change. Index