This chapter aims to reveal the ontological, epistemological and methodological bases of the relational paradigm in sociology, which has been elaborated from the point of view of critical realism since 1991 (Teoria relazionale della società, Milan). This paradigm has been reworked through numerous theoretical and empirical researches, notably in the book Relational Sociology: A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences (Routledge 2011) and more recently in the vision provided by Transcending Modernity with Relational Thinking (Routledge 2021). The chapter compares the author’s relational sociology, which sees the social relationship as an emerging phenomenon endowed with a structure, and the other processual-transactional sociologies, whose basic tenet is social relations’ fluid, relativistic, contingent, trans-actional character. According to critical realism, we must distinguish between different orders of reality: the interactional and the relational orders, the latter emerging from the former through processual and structural configurations. To see all this, it is necessary to adopt a relational gaze, i.e. a cognitive gaze that neither subjectifies nor objectifies the knowledge of social facts but considers them within a supra-functional and morphogenetic framework. This paradigm is not only cognitive but also susceptible to generating research aimed at social intervention in social work and social policies. In this case, the paradigm analyses reality and offers solutions to wicked social problems by adopting a relational observation-diagnosis-guide system (ODG relational systems). The paradigm considers the present revolution of complex thought connected to quantum physics, which, transported to the social level, means the birth of a relational society.