p.10 Positivism holds the view that the scientific study of society, in method and procedure, should resemble as closely as possible the scientific study of natural phenomena

p.12-13 For the realist a true explanation must go beyond the establishment of observed empirical regularities and posit causal or generative mechanisms which underlie these regularities... and actually produce them... Since such causal mechanisms, as it were, underlie and produce observable regularities as effects of their operation, the possibility arises of these mechanisms being unobserved.

p.13 in the realist scheme of things there is a realism of 'theoretical' entities whose meaning for the analyst cannot be simply given in terms of observations. Now whilst such theoretical entities may be unobservable, they are no less real than observable ones and thus 'theory' for the realist becomes a means of describing the relations between the unobservable causal mechanisms (or structures) and their effects in social life.

p.13 theoretical and substantive knowledge is limited by what we can glean through our senses. Thus, seemingly the positing of the existence of theoretical entities also decrees that the realm of the theory be broadened out beyond the given sensorily apprehended world.

p.14 models which represent real things or processes... stand for the causal mechanisms which produce or generate the non-random pattern that has been observed.

p.14 attention is focused on isolating and describing the real causal mechanisms at work in producing the world of events and on 'reconstructively explaining past events in terms of the conjunctional operation of particular mechanisms' (Pateman 1987, p. 8).

[JLJ - The actual Pateman text uses the word 'conjunctural' - this is perhaps a minor quotation error]

p.14-15 [Manicas and Secord, 1983, p. 403] the future is not determined precisely because the complexly related structures and systems of the world are constantly being reconfigured [in contingent ways].

p.15 Realism views both the world and science (and hence social science) as stratified; different sciences focus on different aspects of the world. Thus, 'the social sciences focus on the structures produced by human agency, studying how these relate to each other and to enduring practices' whilst 'social psychological science focuses on individuals in their interaction with one another and with social institutions and how this activity relates to the larger social structures' (Manicas and Secord 1983, p. 408).

p.23 Stated briefly and directly, I feel that realists in general have been unable to sustain a notion of macro structure as possessing properties which can be understood to be relatively independent of the agents whose behavior is subject to their influence. Realists fall into two camps on this. There are those, such as Harre (1979, 1981), who dismiss the idea of macro structures as merely rhetorical devices which appear in agents accounts but have no existential or real status beyond these accounts.

p.23 To argue for a relative independence [JLJ - of social structure] is simply to argue that macro structures have properties which enable them to constrain, as well as facilitate, human action from 'outside' as well as from within. Constraints and facilities do not simply exist in the minds of human actors; they are most crucially, socially generated and socially located resources which are drawn into agents' activities from external cultural 'funds'.

[JLJ - Survival and social function require that we manufacture what we cannot directly see, we kind of hallucinate in response to the real, in order to manage our predicament. What is truly real is the nature of our predicament and the resources we have or can manufacture  - everything else is kind of irrelevant unless it is for entertainment, or we can creatively adapt it to our purposes.]

p.55 Another, although related strand in realist writing has proposed that the concept of truth should be replaced by the concept of practical adequacy (A. Sayer 1984; D. Sayer 1979; Bhaskar 1979).

[JLJ - One can pursue truth, one can declare that one has obtained it, one can present evidence, arguments or proofs for and refute evidence against, but all one has in the end is a truth claim that perhaps can be used to guide action.]

p.56 The problem with practical adequacy as a primitive concept is that it has no boundaries and a weak discriminatory propensity. Thus, many things can be admitted as valid or adequate knowledge simply because they 'work' in particular contexts.

[JLJ - Ok, so if you are playing a game and you discover a concept that 'works' in practice, this is somehow a problem?]

p.66 particular phenomena of the social world are understood to bear necessary and/or contingent relations with one another. It is this presupposition which confers on social science the possibility of a depth dimension to analysis. For if it is the case that certain phenomenon do bear these kinds of reciprocally influential relationships then it seems plausible that explanation of such phenomena may be couched in terms of the dynamics and mechanisms of these relationships, rather than simply in terms of the description and classification of the phenomena themselves.

  That is, social science is thus free to go beyond the description and classification of the phenomena of social reality and to posit explanatory accounts of how they have come into existence, what sort of effects they produce in related phenomena, and why concatenations or configurations of phenomena exhibit the specific patterns they do exhibit.

p.67 The realist alternative [JLJ - to the positivist version of causal 'explanation'] or 'generative theory' suggests that cause and effect are not discrete phenomena; they are internally related in the sense that causes are seen to be mechanisms which possess the power to produce effects when stimulated. This idea does not deny that empirical regularities occur in the world, but does deny that the laws expressing constant conjunctions are sufficient to explain these regularities. Rather, attention is focussed on the reasons for the existence of the regularity itself and this is explained in terms of 'natural necessity'. In this formulation

A thing comes to do something by virtue of its having a certain constitution or structure... The rock 'causes' the glass to break, but the molecular structure is actually the mechanism whereby the outcome is achieved. Discovering this mechanism... explains the breaking of glass. (Wilson 1982, pp. 251-2)

p.92 In the preliminary section of this chapter I began by endorsing the realist model of causation as a superior account to the positivist notion of constant conjunctions of events. Thus, the realist search for generative (causal) mechanisms which have intrinsic powers to produce specific effects when activated or stimulated is a search for genuinely explanatory mechanisms rather than descriptions of (nonetheless existent) regularities in successions of pairs of events.

p.93 In this model causal mechanisms possess powers in the latent sense that while they always possess these powers, they are only activated under specific circumstances.

p.103 I have spoken of 'generative loci' in preference to 'mechanisms' in this respect to emphasise their location within an encompassing network.

p.104 The whole point of a network conception is that the concatenations of generative loci [JLJ - from p.103, mechanisms located within an encompassing network] produce emergent generative powers that cannot be understood as an isolated linear sequence of causal effects; they have to be understood as complex interrelations with diffuse reciprocal influences. Also, the relative strengths of influence of specific generative loci have to be understood in terms of the operation of the composite relations of the network and not simply in terms of intrinsic powers which can be defined outside the context of specific networks.

[JLJ - Computer chess will forever remain trapped in yesterday's ideas, until it realizes these simple concepts and uses them to move forward into the 21st century and beyond. Essentially, you can't predict the future in complex situations due to emergent properties of the interactions within the network. In a game like chess, where each player has a finite number of moves, we can use sustainability heuristics to make reasonably safe judgements in these situations, only rarely being surprised by 'perfect storm' -type situations where the consequences of the consequences are unfavorable as well as unpredictable.]

p.115 the individual is seen as the locus of powers to produce behaviour on the basis of meanings and the interpretation of cultural rules which may be more or less explicit.

p.116 Thus 'power' as a structural resource has no existential status unless it figures in the consciousness of particular actors and thereby influences their behaviour (Benson 1974).

p.116 Any realism must recognise that the activity of individuals is variably related to these structural features, both in terms of the degree to which the activity itself is constrained and facilitated by these features, and by the degree to which this activity makes a difference to, or is transformative of, these features (Bourdieu 1977; Layder 1981; Giddens 1984).

[JLJ - We have to take into account the constraints and enablements on activity (the effects of structure) as well as how these structural artifacts are transformed over time.]

p.117 Realism must incorporate the idea that individuals are more or less autonomous according to the social circumstances which engender and define levels of autonomy in the first place. These subjective and interpretive moments of social reality have to be understood in the context of social organisational conditions wherein the power to make a difference is reciprocally related to these features of social reality.

p.122 Giddens defines social relations as both concrete relations between situated actors... and absent or potential relations between actors projected into time-space

p.122-123 social relations... are... themselves the concrete (or potential) relationships between actual actors... the social conditions under which the concrete relations and time-space paths of actors are constituted in the first place. Here, 'social relation' refers to the preconstituted social constraints and facilities that institutional features represent precisely because they have been stretched in time and space through a historical process of social reproduction. This sense of  'social relation' ...posits unobservable structural machanisms... which underlie and produce these observable relationships or action pathways of societal members.

p.124 the situation of co-presence is being influenced and conditioned by the seemingly more remote relations... From the viewpoint of this specific encounter, social relations in the latter sense are stretched both forwards and backwards in time and space. It is because relations of co-presence themselves always reach forward into a future of extended space-time that this anticipated future is conditioned by a horizon of authoritative relations

p.134 Thus this conception of structure is two-sided, providing both constraints and enablements with respect to social activity... the objectivist notion of constraint insists that constraints exist in a double sense. First, as external and independently constituted 'obstacles' to the achievement of socially defined statuses. Second, constraints exist in terms of the subjective orientations of individuals toward these objective constraints, and nearly always allow some element of choice.

[JLJ - A constraint acts both as a barrier to a piece movement in a game, and as an orientation of a player to the constraint itself.]

p.150-151 Many structural concepts are technical in nature... Typically, such concepts refer to social organisational forms which provide both constraints and facilities in relation to social activity. Usually these concepts have a discursive background in so far as they are associated with clusterings of related concepts which focus upon a similar formal or substantive area of inquiry.

p.162 once in existence and institutionalised, over time such structures although themselves in process, attain a pre-established, though not alien facticity to the people subject to them, and in fact constrain and facilitate their actions and behaviour.

p.182 The whole thrust of my work has been to uproot the dogmatic assertions of closed-minded defenders of 'orthodoxy' whatever its forms.

[JLJ - ...mine as well.]