One of the main discrepancies of sociology as a science is the split between micro and macro approaches to reasearch. From this discrepancy, two opposing approaches to the study of social reality were born, precisely structuralism and theories of action. The idea of my work is to highlight emergentism, as an approach within sociology that unifies the respective two approaches into a coherent approach. The key concept in the emergentist approach is emergence, which is the process of creating and maintaining social structures, causal forces through interaction and the dynamics of relationships. We will highlight the development of the thought of structuralism, as well as the theory of action in order to be able to synthesize them into a common approach. In the following, I will emphasize the roles of the theory of complex systems and critical realism in the formation of the emergentism approach. Using the theory of complex systems, we will highlight the complex nature of social reality, which is formed by individuals, social groups, artifacts and relationships between them. With the intention of explaining the main mechanisms and emergent processes that produce social entities. But in order to operationalize the main components of society, we have to touch on the ontology of social reality. Critical realism is a philosophical approach that allows us to analyze social groups as their own entities, which allows for the conceptualization of causal forces that operate between individuals and society. The approach of emergentism approches society as an emergent reality, a complex system within the approach of critical realism, which tries to conceptualize the main mechanisms and processes that operate between the individual and the group and thus form society itself. The aim of the paper is to emphasize the heuristic power of emergentism when explaining and operationalizing social reality.