last updated: July 2026

Douglas Porpora is a Professor of Sociology in the Department of communication at Drexel University, Philadelphia (PA, USA). He has written extensively on social theory and metatheory.

His empirical work concerns how Americans debate macro-moral issues. Among his books are Landscapes of the Soul: The Loss of Moral Meaning in American Life (Oxford 2002); Post-Ethical Society: The Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, and the Moral Failure of the Secular (University of Chicago 2013); and Reconstructing Sociology: The Critical Realist Approach (Cambridge 2015).

Selected Publications

Books

Porpora, D.V. (2025). The Question of Emergence: Sociology vs. Physics (1st ed.). Routledge.

Porpora, D. V. (2015). Reconstructing Sociology: The Critical Realist approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [see also the review by Margaret Archer: Archer, M. S. (2016). Review of D. V. Porpora’s book Reconstructing sociology: The critical realist approach. Journal of Critical Realism, 15(4), 425–431.]

Articles

In reverse chronological order

Porpora, D. V. (2026) “Global Problems and Disciplinary Standards: How American Sociology Decides What Not to Study” Forthcoming in Global Discourse.

Porpora, D. V. (2026) “Structural Approaches.” Forthcoming in Stephanie Collins, Brian Epstein, Sally Haslanger, and Hans Bernhard Schmid (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Social Ontology.New York: Oxford,

Porpora, D. V. (2026). Closed Atonement and Open Forgiveness: Reconciliation and the Meaning of Jesus’ Death. Religions, 17(7), 772.

Porpora, D. V. (2026). Margaret Archer’s contribution to social science. Journal of Critical Realism, 1–11.

Al-Amoudi, I., & Porpora, D. (2026). Introduction to the special issue commemorating the work of Margaret Archer. Journal of Critical Realism, 1–2.

Porpora, D. V. (2024). Do realists predict?. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 54(3), 255–268.

Porpora, D. V. (2024). Realism and complexity. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 54(1), 121–133.

Porpora, D. V. (2022). The metaphysical issues in the social sciences and how social scientists debate them. Synthese, 200, 501.

Kutzik, D. M., & Porpora, D. V. (2021). Critical Realism and the varieties of materialism. Science & Society, 85(1), 13–37.

Richmond, J. C., & Porpora, D. V. (2019). Entertainment politics as a modernist project in a Baudrillard world. Communication Theory, 29(4), 421–440.

Porpora, D. V. (2017). Dehumanization in theory: Anti-humanism, non-humanism, post-humanism, and trans-humanism. Journal of Critical Realism, 16(4), 353–367.

Porpora, D. V. (2017). Tony Lawson from a sociological point of view. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 41(5), 1525–1537.

Porpora, D. V. (2016). Response to Tony Lawson: Sociology versus Economics and Philosophy. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 46(4), 420–425

Porpora, D. V. (2016). The recent methods debate in American Sociology and how Critical Realism fits into it. Journal of Critical Realism, 15(4), 342–351.

Porpora, D. V. (2016). The meaning of culture and the culture of empiricism in American Sociology. The American Sociologist, 47, 430–441.

Porpora, D. V. (2013). How many thoughts are there? Or why we likely have no Tegmark duplicates 10^{10^115} meters away. Philosophical Studies, 163(1), 133–149.