Overview

The main argument of this chapter emphasizes the need to progress from measuring and specifying recovery capital to explaining more completely how it operates as a medium of exchange, building on the valuable body of work that has already moved in this direction.

The first section of the chapter will argue that it is difficult to analyse and address the acknowledged gaps in the science of recovery capital (Best and Hennessy, 2022) without considering the historical arc of its development against a longstanding and continuing ideological conflict, which has itself transformed into a new shape over the past 30 years. It will then move to considering how the understanding of components of recovery capital have changed over time and the implications of this for research.

I will then suggest that one significant way of moving forward is to adopt a critical realist approach. Realism, including critical realism, holds that the world has an existence independent of our knowledge of it, and that it is possible to develop scientific knowledge about unobservable structures and mechanisms that cause events in the world. In particular, critical realism enables the scientific study of emerging social structures and their mutually transformative relationship with human agency. This opens the possibility of explaining more fully how the landscape of recovery is created and sustained or hindered.