Nature Of Social Reality

The detailed definition of research question and its terms. Now, in this subchapter the fundamental assumptions will be presented concerning the nature of the social reality, scientific production of knowledge and the limits of scientific knowledge. I distinguish between ontological and epistemological fundamental assumptions. As ontology s primarily concerned with the nature of what exists. With the ontological assumptions are meant the research’s concept what constitutes the social reality and what constitutive parts of this social reality should be subject of research and inquiry (Brühl 2015: 30-31). And with the epistemological assumptions I will discuss what human knowledge or how to get to that knowledge (Ernst 2007). The fundamental

To these actions of social actors lies down specific beliefs that are a specific outlook how the social reality is and, more important, how it should look like. Through these belief and actions based on these beliefs the construct social reality. With other words, the social reality is constructed by the interaction between more social actors i.e. their beliefs, their actions and the consequence on each other. Actors or other parts of social reality are not puppets that are coordinated by some puppet master they as Garfinkel argued that social actors „… members are capable of rationally understanding and accounting for their own actions in society” (Hutchby and Wooffitt 2004: 30). These actions are mirrored through practical action and the goal why this particular has been conducted and through language with whom they describe themselves and how others describe them and their

I see collective actors and their actions and the consequences that they cause as the result of the mentioned social process and interactions: „So actors from this perspective are more like contested zones of ongoing debate than like physical objects. Instead of possessing a constitutive essence, actors-whether states or individuals- should be regarded as the product of ongoing constitutive practices” (Jackson 2004: 285). Through the analysis of their actions (in the thesis the engagement of diaspora) and their consequences on social reality (in the thesis the impact on escalation and de-escalation events in conflicts in the homeland) some characteristics of the collective social actor (in the thesis – Croat and Irish diaspora) are assessed. But the crucial part is that they are not assessed on impressions and adjectives such as “angry”, “motivated” or “peaceful” but in the practical engagement and the interpreted consequences on social reality. Thus the collective actions are visible for the researcher through language that was used to describe their actions, themselves and the consequences. This signs and symbols is the empirical data that enables the researcher to gain knowledge on their role and influence on the construction of the social reality, but still it is not only conditioned