Abstract

The problem of linking 'explanation' and 'understanding' remains unresolved - as Weber left it. This paper challenges the view that their reconciliation is impossible, as some theorists have maintained. Their case is that the entities involved - subjective meanings and objective relationships - are too ontologically different to be combined. From the stratified ontology of Social Realism, which acknowledges that different properties and powers pertain to different components and levels of social reality, this is no barrier in principle to their combination. However, in practice Realists have not given an adequate account of how 'subjectivity' and 'objectivity' are linked, which also weakens Realism's solution to the 'problem of structure and agency'. This paper offers a refinement: the human power of reflexivity is viewed as mediating between our subjective concerns and our objective social contexts. Reflexive deliberations account for what agents actually do - and they do not all do the same thing - under very similar social circumstances. The introduction of reflexivity enables the objective and the subjective to be combined into a single account of socially structured and structuring action.