I shall argue that although ontology is important, we also have to pay attention to other features of the intellectual landscape, including epistemology and issues to do with judgemental rationalit...

This article provides a critical realist (CR) alternative to the standard approaches to Thematic Analysis (TA) in qualitative research, namely the Braun-Clarke approach (reflexivity while coding themes), the Attride-Sterling approach (clustering basic, global and organizing themes), and Boyatzis' approach (clarifying criteria for assessing the absence/presence of themes in the raw material). In the CR traditions, the experiential themes /inferential themes /dispositional themes and the data/codes/themes distinctions have been proposed recently as the methodological device for answering the question “what is the (...) theme”. The aim of this article is threefold. First, I bring to light the inconsistencies of the non-CR approaches to TA, second, I discuss critically the CR approaches to TA and finally I offer a CR-based approach to TA which builds upon them by introducing specific innovations from social network analysis which make abductive and retroductive reasoning a shareable procedure for answering “what is the theme?”. (shrink)