The Nature of Social Reality : Issues in Social Ontology (Paperback)

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