Beyond the Crisis: What Critical Realism asks us to see

That question was at the heart of the 2026 Annual Conference of the International Association for Critical Realism (IACR), hosted by the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague from 30 July to 1 August 2026. 

Under the theme, Varieties of Realism, Varieties of Critical Realism?, scholars across philosophy, political economy, climate research and other fields explored what critical realism can contribute to understanding some of society’s most persistent problems. 

'We meet at a time when our world is marked by a multiplicity of complex, omnipresent, cumulative and overlapping crises,’ said conference organizer and IACR President Karim Knio, Associate Professor at ISS. 

The challenge, he argues, is not simply to describe these crises, but to understand what produces and sustains them.

Look beneath the surface 

Critical realism starts with a simple idea: what we can see is only part of reality. We can observe an unemployment statistic, a flood, a war or a political decision. Explaining why it happened means looking deeper at institutions, power relations, economic structures and social practices that may be less visible. 

In an earlier ISS interview, Knio argued that understanding causality requires researchers to ‘go beyond the actuality of events’ and investigate the layers behind them. Responding to an immediate crisis matters, but so does understanding why it keeps happening. 

That idea ran through IACR 2026: addressing consequences is not enough. We also need to understand their causes.

What produces vulnerability? 

Dr Amber Fletcher's keynote on climate change put this into practice. Fletcher, whoe researches climate disasters and inequality in rural and Indigenous communities at the University of Regina, challenged conventional ideas of climate ‘vulnerability’. 

Rather than only asking who is most exposed to floods, wildfires or other hazards, she asks what makes some groups more vulnerable in the first place. That changes the policy question too. Instead of only asking how can communities adapt, we can ask what needs to change so that the same groups are not repeatedly placed at greater risk? 

Varieties of realism 

The conference also turned the lens on critical realism itself. As the philosophy has spread across disciplines, it has developed in different directions. 

Stephen Mumford, Professor of Metaphysics at Durham University, explored questions of causation and causal powers. Andrew Brown, Professor of Economics and Political Economy at the University of Leeds, brought critical realism into conversation with Spinoza and political economy. 

Their different approaches captured the conference’s central question: Can different forms of critical realism strengthen our ability to understand problems that do not fit neatly within disciplinary boundaries? 

Beyond the visible 

Critical Realism does not offer ready-made solutions to social problems. What it offers is a way to ask better questions: Are we responding only to what we can see, or also confronting the conditions producing it? 

For Knio, this means balancing research that responds to crises now with research into why the same problems and inequalities keep returning.