Against Wrong Turns and Dead Ends: Ensuring That the Ontological Turn Is Indeed a Turn to the Real

A plethora of new ontological frameworks have burst onto the scene over the last few years, many claiming to seal the various ruptures that have challenged the internal coherence of sociology since its inception as a scientific discipline. Some of these approaches do indeed seem to transcend the subject/object, micro/macro dualities that have haunted our science since its beginning, yet there is little consensus between these perspectives regarding the nature of reality. Although they claim to indicate solutions to the dichotomies inherent to current sociological practices, they rarely agree on the nature of alternative ontological and epistemological frameworks. Some champion the object, others the subject, while yet others claim the discovery of a monistic ontology that does away with the subject/object distinction once and for all! This is an indication that, for all their innovation, the schools of thought comprising the ontological turn have not managed to transcend the problems that plague the conventional sociological paradigms. Why? Because, like those before them, they have unconsciously fractured the holon of manifest reality, and taken their favoured part to represent the whole. In this way either agency, structure or meaning, all of which are integral facets of social reality, become conflated with reality itself, which results in many enlightening, but ultimately partial truths. While the ontological turn is a sorely needed development, it is up to us to make sure that it is an integral movement, aimed not merely at generating another limiting dogma or nurturing new cults of personality, but at fundamentally rethinking our existence as social beings and the ways in which we understand this existence. This paper attempts to explore the nature of manifest reality with the aim of excavating a sound ontic and epistemic foundation upon which truly integral ontological and epistemological frameworks may be constructed.