Hi Michael
Your question on CR and RE (not for the first time) caused a little flurry of RAMESES correspondence. Epistemology and ontology are indeed important but I always offer a note of caution to PhD students. Your task, which you will no doubt find somewhere in the regulations, is to produce an ‘original contribution to knowledge’.  I doubt that you will achieve this by chasing epistemological hares or splitting ontological hairs. The best way to approach the task is to produce a damn good piece of empirical research on your very own topic.
Alas, there is an expectation, often fostered by over-zealous supervisors, that the PhD thesis will contain a chapter (usually chapter 2) in which you slay all philosophical opposition as a way of defending the empirical work that comes later. The poor student then discovers that philosophy is a country for grumpy old men and gruff old women. Debate follows debate and becomes an end in itself. This is exactly the state of play with realism, which by my reckoning has generated at least a dozen different variants.
I used to tell my poor students that their meta-physical reflections should take the form of saying that your work 'calls upon' A’s notion of B, C’s notion of D, etc. You should not expect that A, B, C, D, will provide you a rule-book for conducting inquiry. The key task is to demonstrate how you have applied the ideas, rather than using them as some kind of infallible, protective shield.
Sermon over
Good luck
RAY
P.S. Speaking of grumpy old men, I’ve received a couple of e-mails asking ‘what is this Porter/Pawson debate?’ Here it is:
http://evi.sagepub.com/content/21/1/65.full.pdf
http://evi.sagepub.com/content/22/1/49
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nup.12100/pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nup.12118/pdf


________________________________________
From: Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Michael John Fanner <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 01 April 2016 15:25
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Critical Realism and RAMESES Publication Standards

Hi all,

I am a MPhil/PhD student and I am currently conducting a realist review of the literature of my subject (child protection and gender).

I am very passionate about this systematic approach to reviewing the literature, but some of the concepts are constantly inter-changed within articles and amongst them. I have noticed, within the literature, there are often unclear distinctions made between concepts i.e. critical realist methodology versus realist methodology, realist evaluation versus realist synthesis/review. Does anyone know of a source that clearly observes these differences? The RAMESES publication standard only mentions realism and no other branch of it, i.e. subtle or critical. Is this intentional or purposeful?

Two questions:

1) In relation to my point about, is it possible to integrate critical realist methodology (e.g. Edgley et al 2016. Critical Realist Review: exploring the real, beyond the empirical. Journal of Further and Higher Education. 40. 3. 316-330) with the RAMESES publication standards - or - will this deviate too much from the publication standards?

2) I am unsure how I should discuss the differences between a realist review/synthesis (following RAMESES publication standards) and critical realism or whether there are just similar differences or no differences at all?

Sorry for my ignorance if this has been discussed before or I haven't found the sources that explain this!

Thanks in anticipation.

Best wishes,

Michael

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