Margaret Archer, the founder of social realism asserts that rather than producing the society, individuals/agents transform or reproduce the society; yet always on the basis of something that was already there, albeit the result of the ‘activities of the long dead’ as Archer put it forth.

As Archer herself notes social realist theory is useful for understanding the ways that the causal power of social forms is mediated through social agency. The process of mediation between structure and agency entails the following 3 stages:

- Structural and cultural properties objectively shape the situations that agents confront involuntarily
- Agents’ own concerns are subjectively defined in relation to nature, practice and society.
- Courses of action are produced through the reflexive deliberations of agent who subjectively determine their practical projects in relation to their objective circumstances.

Structural emergent properties shape one’s situations such that they have the capacity to operate as constraints or enablements. We, in virtue of their reflexivity, can deliberate about the circumstances in relation to our own concerns. It is through this examination of the objective circumstances in which we are placed and which are not of our choosing that we prepare for the next stage. The influences of constraints or enablement will be only tendential because of the human reflexive abilities to withstand them or circumstantially to circumvent them. We can also act strategically to discover ways round or to define the second best outcome. It all depends on how creatively we can evade the constraints imposed by the objective reality in which we find ourselves.

Based on this framework, we all have the powers to monitor our own life and to mediate structural and cultural properties of the society. We make our choices based on structural conditions and conduct endless assessments of whether the price to be paid is worth paying.

Archer’s social realist theory provides us with a means to show how we are able to find ways to evade, endorse, repudiate or contravene enablements or constraints on our actions. We might be influences, yet not determined, by the barriers we face. This concept of reflexivity shaped by the interplay between the social situation and personal goals present two type of personalities in general:

- the autonomous reflexives who sustain internal conversations leading directly to action
- the fractual reflexives whose internal conversation may lead to disorientation rather than purposeful action, with life chances being determined largely by their involuntary social positioning.

Rather than remaining victims of circumstances we might want to try to circumvent the constraints.