The nature of social reality : issues in Social Ontology / Tony Lawson.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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