Agents, Structures, and Social
Contingency:
New Thinking About the
Foundations of the Social Sciences[OU1]
Daniel Little
University of Michigan-Dearborn
Introduction:
reconsideration of the foundations of social science research
Why the philosophy of social
science?
Current discussions of the
social sciences in the United States
A philosophy for the social sciences
The centrality of causal mechanisms in social explanations
Generalizations and predictions
I begin with a premise: the social sciences in China are in an important
period of transition today. Former
ideas about social science are no longer governing, and new paradigms have not
yet taken full form. This transition is especially important because of the
magnitude and novelty of the social changes that China is experiencing
today. This paper argues for the
timeliness of engagement between innovative Chinese and western sociologists in
an effort to arrive at models of social research and explanation that work well
for contemporary China. It gives
reasons to be doubtful about positivist quantitative methodology as the sole
foundation for social science research.
And it advocates for the importance of post-positivist approaches for
Chinese sociology. The essay has several purposes: to bring the perspective of
the philosophy of social science into engagement with Chinese social scientists;
to review some very interesting current areas of innovation in American social
science research communities; to identify some of the threads that might guide
a “post-positivist” social science paradigm; and to relate these issues to the
current challenges facing Chinese social scientists.
This is a particularly important time for Chinese universities to develop
effective and innovative programs of social science research, if Chinese
scholars and policymakers are to have a reliable basis for understanding and
managing the changes China is currently undergoing. China is today undergoing processes of social change that
are both momentous and globally unprecedented. The processes themselves are complex and large; the causal
connections between one set of changes and another set of consequences are
obscure; and the social, political, and human effects of these changes are
large and unpredictable. And these
processes are not adequately understood.
We do not have comprehensive social theories for which China’s
experience is the special case—whether “modernization theory,” “world
systems theory,” “social functionalism,” “rational choice theory,” or “theory
of exploitation.” In fact, it is a
radical misunderstanding of the nature of the social, to imagine that there
might be such comprehensive theories.
Rather, China’s social development is a contingent, multi-threaded
social fabric. We should expect
unpredictable twists and turns, the forming and dissolving of institutions and
social compromises; regional and sectoral differences in social processes; the
changing policies of the state and the party; the strategic behavior of various
social groups; and myriad other contingent and variegated forms of social
processes.[1]
There
is a tempting response to this sociological challenge. It is to turn to the methods of
positivist quantitative social science.
These approaches have much prestige in the West, and gain the greatest share
of research funding, and they were important influences in the generation of
Chinese sociology of the 1920s and 1930s.
The positivist approach recommends, in its simplest formulation, that
social scientists should observe, measure, and count social variables across
populations, and use the tools of quantitative statistical methodology to
discover correlations and associations among social variables. If causation is
to be attributed within the social world, according to this positivist
approach, it depends on the evidence of regression coefficients for a group of
independent variables as explanatory of the behavior of the dependent variable,
or correlations among variables, or other forms of evidence of regular
association among a group of variables.
(Andrew Abbott refers to this as the “variables paradigm”; (Abbott 1999).)
As is well known, there are persistent debates among American social
scientists over the divide of quantitative versus comparative and qualitative
research. But the high-prestige
end of these debates is the more positivistic quantitative approach. In raising concerns about this
approach, my reasoning is not that quantitative social science is always
flawed. On the contrary, the
social sciences need powerful quantitative tools at their disposal. But we should not imagine that these
tools are appropriate to every research question in the social sciences; and in
fact, there are other approaches that permit substantially greater insight into
the causal and cultural processes that are at work. The nature of the social gives us good reason to believe
that we need a plurality of methods and theories in order to understand social
processes. A social science
research community will be most successful when it has a wide variety of
methods and theories at its disposal, and is thereby able to match its inquiry
and explanatory strategies to the particular features of the domain of
phenomena to be understood.
My
discipline is the philosophy of social science, a sub-field within analytic
philosophy. Most broadly, the goal
of this discipline is to provide a careful, analytical treatment of the most
basic problems that arise in the scientific study of society and social
behavior: for example, ontology, methodology, theory, and explanation. I
believe that the intellectual challenges posed by the social sciences are, if
anything, more difficult and obscure than those in other areas of the
sciences. What do we mean by a
“social” “science”? What is the
nature of the social? How can we investigate its properties and
structures? What is involved in a scientific
study of the social? What is the role and scope of social
theory in investigating and explaining the social world? How are social science hypotheses
justified, confirmed, or tested?
What, after all, is a good social explanation?
Some
philosophers have approached this family of questions on the basis of abstract
philosophical theory, much as logical positivism derived from the tenets of
British empiricism. I take a
different view. I believe that
philosophy of social science will only make genuine progress when it arrives at
its formulation of the issues and approaches in deep engagement with working
social scientists. I
believe that we cannot pose these questions in the abstract; it is necessary to
develop our questions and answers in close partnership between practitioners
and philosophers. In other words,
we need to probe in depth, the ontologies, research methodologies, puzzles,
debates, and theories of sociology, political science, economics, anthropology,
the area studies—and then arrive at some more informed ideas about what
is involved in studying and explaining aspects of the social world. What
are the real and practical issues of methodology that social scientists are
facing? How can the tools of
philosophical analysis shed new light on these issues? And to what extent can we determine the
underlying and often erroneous assumptions about “science” that motivate some
social science doctrines (e.g. logical positivism or behaviorism)? There is no master theory of science
that can simply be “applied” to the social sciences. Instead, it is necessary for the philosopher to bring some
general ideas about reasoning, rigor, and rationality into engagement with
concrete problems of social science problem formation and research, and to
construct new representations of the forms of knowledge that can emerge from
social science research and theory.
The
aspiration represented by the philosophy of social science is an important one. Good work in this area can contribute
to better social science frameworks and theories. It can contribute to more effective research methodologies. And it can help formulate a more
adequate background “metaphysics” on the basis of which social scientists can
approach their research.
The
past several years have witnessed a surge of path-breaking discussions of the
nature and direction of the social sciences among a wide range of innovative
social scientists and historians. A range of authoritative voices have called
for fundamental rethinking of the foundations of the social
sciences—beginning with Alvin Gouldner’s important work, The Coming
Crisis of Western Sociology (Gouldner 1970), but gaining new impetus in
the 1990s with the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social
Sciences (Gulbenkian Commission
on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. 1996), (Wallerstein 1999), (Turner and Risjord
2006),
and a variety of reports to the U.S. Social Science Research Council. Debates within the social sciences in
the United States are taking up this challenge. Particularly important are contributions by (Adams, Clemens, and
Orloff 2005),
(Steinmetz 2005), (Sewell 2005), (McDonald 1996), (Mahoney and
Rueschemeyer 2003),
(Ortner 1999), (Lieberson 1987), and (Abbott 1999, 2001). Each of these works (including especially the extensive
introductions provided in Adams et al and Steinmetz) provides an analysis of
the new currents that are emerging in social science research. Steinmetz and Adams, Clemens, and
Orloff organize their volumes around two large meta-constructs within the
social sciences, and the need to go beyond these formulations: positivism and
modernity. Steinmetz and the
contributors to The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences track the role that positivist theories about social
science knowledge have had in the development of the social science
disciplines, and the epistemic and ontological limitations of positivism as a
guide to social science theorizing.
In Remaking Modernity
Adams et al identify the concept of “modernity” as problematic but salvageable;
more interesting, in their assessment, is the proliferation of insights and
perspectives that have emerged in the social and human sciences in the past
twenty years and that offer a new perspective on the concept of modernity.
A
series of important methodological and substantive insights have emerged from
these discussions. Several topics
have particular importance for us as we consider what the sociology of the next
twenty years ought to look like. I
will very briefly refer to several of these areas of discussion and
methodology. First, there has been
lively discussion of the importance and promise of the intellectual framework
of comparative historical sociology.[2] The core of the approach is a concern
for large historical structures embodied in different social settings, and a
conviction that we can discover historical causes by comparing in detail the
unfolding of some important historical processes in different social settings. The approach insists that “history
matters”—that we need to consider the historical context and contingent
pathways from which a given complex of social structures emerged. And the approach postulates that we can
discover concrete the social causal mechanisms that combine to produce
macro-outcomes through careful study of a small set of detailed historical
cases. The most studied topic
within comparative historical sociology is that of revolution; what historical
circumstances combine to make successful revolution more likely (Skocpol 1979), (Goldstone 1991)? But the approach has been also used fruitfully to study such
mid-level topics as official corruption, union organization, and public welfare
systems.
A
second important development in contemporary sociology is a focus on concrete causal
social mechanisms. Charles Tilly’s recent work illustrates
this approach. His current work
takes up once again the topic of social contention (Tilly 2003), (McAdam, Tarrow, and
Tilly 2001). Now, rather than turning to large sociological theories
to explain social outcomes, Tilly has come to emphasize social variability,
path-dependence, and a methodology emphasizing the discovery of specific social
mechanisms that combine in novel ways in different historical
circumstances. In The Politics
of Collective Violence he puts his approach
this way: “We are looking for explanations of variability: not general laws or
total explanations of violent events, but accounts of what causes major
variations among times, places, and social circumstances in the character of
collective violence. We search for
robust mechanisms and processes that cause change and variation. Mechanisms are causes on the small
scale: similar events that produce essentially the same immediate effects
across a wide range of circumstances” ((Tilly 2003) : 20). What is most important about this
approach is Tilly's abandonment of the ideal of discovering regular historical
patterns—“food crisis in the presence of local social organization leads
to social contention”—in favor of specific historical trajectories in specific
settings.
Related to both
these threads of discussion is an approach that attempts to discover causal
relationships through the study of a single important historical case (case
study methodology). If we believe that there are effective
social causal mechanisms that occur in multiple settings (causal realism), then
it is credible that we can examine single instances, and the events and
conditions that led up to them, in order to discern some of the causal
mechanisms that were instrumental in bringing the event about. An important current body of
methodology and theory in the social sciences provides support for the
case-study method, including especially (George and Bennett
2005)
and (Goertz and Starr 2003). Analysis of the causes involved in a single outcome is
referred to as “process-tracing.”
George and Bennett describe process-tracing as a method “which attempts
to trace the links between possible causes and observed outcomes. In process-tracing, the researcher
examines histories, archival documents, interview transcripts, and other
sources to see whether the causal process a theory hypothesizes or implies in a
case is in fact evident in the sequence” ((George and Bennett
2005)
: 6)). A variety of scholars have
argued, then, that it is possible to provide evidence in favor of or contrary
to singular causal claims, and that this approach can provide substantial and
systematic insight into important social transitions.
The historical
turn in sociology has given a major impetus to scholarly study of specific institutions
as a primary causal mechanism of social processes ((Brinton and Nee 1998), (Knight 1992), (North 1990)). The new institutionalism has made the point very convincingly that the specific rules that
constitute a given institution make a substantial difference to the behavior of
persons subject to the institution—and this has major social
consequences. So detailed
sociological study of the specific institutions surrounding a given kind of
social behavior can provide the basis for a compelling causal explanation of a
large resulting social outcome.
And differences among roughly similar institutions can likewise explain
substantial differences in the social outcomes observed in the different
settings. For example, different
systems for collecting and verifying taxes have very different collection rates
and very different patterns of evasion and. Historical sociologists have pushed
this insight deeper, by examining specific institutions in detail (corruption (Klitgaard 1988), training regimes (Thelen 2004), technology regimes (Dobbin 1994), conscription regimes (Levi 1988)); examining the social
factors that sustain them over time; and examining the factors that lead to the
creation and development of new institutions. Once we abandon the reifying assumption that institutions
are stable, coherent entities, we are obliged to consider the ways in which
institutions maintain some degree of stability over time, and the ways in which
specific institutions change over time.
We should look at institutions as a dynamic fabric of overlapping
behaviors, cognitive frameworks, and networks of actors, rather than as an
abiding and unchanging structure (Abbott 1999).
There has been valuable
discussion of the nature of social entities in the recent sociology literature. Andrew Abbott is one of the most innovative and fruitful
sociologists working in the United States today. His primary field of research is on the sociology of the professions:
medicine, psychiatry, university professoriate, law, etc. (Abbott 1988, 2001). Beyond his empirical studies, he has made a very important
contribution through his formulation of the ontological questions that
sociologists need to raise—but seldom do: what is a social structure or
entity? How do actors create, embody, and change the social world around them?
His ontological insights are most clearly expressed in Department and
Discipline, a micro-study of the “Chicago
school of sociology.” He analyzes
the historical twists and turns of this “school”—the founders, the
theories, the department politics, the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Association. But more profoundly, he draws sharp
attention to the fluidity and permutability of this social “entity” (Abbott 1999) : 223). A social entity is not a fixed thing
with stable properties. It is
rather a continuing swirl of linked social activities and practices, themselves
linked to other “separate” social traditions. And particularly important, he endorses a social localism—that
all social facts are carried by socially constructed individuals in action. For
these reasons, Abbott is deeply critical of the prevailing positivist paradigm
for sociology—which he refers to as the “variables paradigm”—according
to which the task is to discover social variables and assess relationships
among them ((Abbott 1999) : 222).
Another important
theme in recent debates is the importance of the cultural turn in social research. Social scientists and historians have come to recognize the
irreducibly “cultural” nature of social behavior (Sewell 2005), (Darnton 1984), (McDonald 1996). Human beings construct their worlds and their actions around
a set of understandings, values, and identities that are variable from place to
place, and that make a difference in large social outcomes. It is always important for social
researchers to be aware of the constitutive role that cultural formations play
within social processes, and sometimes exploration of this role is crucial to
an adequate understanding and explanation of a social pattern. The “cultural
turn” in the social sciences has come to highlight that culture is a feature of
all social life, and that every area of social science research needs to have
some theoretical and methodological ability to analyze the role of culture in a
given domain. This entails that
there is an important place for qualitative research in all areas of social
investigation, complementary to other methods of research and analysis.
I turn, finally,
to some new critical thinking about traditional quantitative sociological
research. Stanley Lieberson is a gifted
and prolific sociologist, skilled in standard methods of quantitative
sociology. He has written
extensively on the sociology of race and urban life in the United States (Lieberson 1963, 1980;
Lieberson and Waters 1988). But he takes on distinctly non-standard
sociological questions as well: can we give causal explanations of the success
rates of professional sports teams (Lieberson 1997)? Are there regularities in the “tastes” that a population
exhibits (manifested, perhaps, in changing frequencies of first names over
time) (Lieberson 2000)? Can we offer causal hypotheses about these sociological
changes, and can we rigorously evaluate these hypotheses? Lieberson's work is important because
he asks novel questions, and because he casts doubt on the methodological
common sense of sociology as a discipline. His book, Making it Count and numerous methodological articles (Lieberson and Lynn
2002),
provide sharp and sustained critique of standard assumptions involved in
quantitative sociology. He writes
that it is necessary to come to “a different way of thinking about the rigorous
study of society implied by the phrase ‘science of society’” ((Lieberson 1987) : 3-4). His central
criticisms of standard assumptions about quantitative methods in sociology are,
first, that standard quantitative models assume that sociology is an
experimental science, whereas it is almost always impossible to perform
experiments on sociological topics; that sociology has not clearly specified
the types of causal questions that are accessible to sociological research;
that quantitative sociologists usually misunderstand the logic of selectivity
and control variables; and that sociologists have not given enough attention to
the assumptions they make about sociological causation. Lieberson does not reject quantitative
reasoning. Rather, he insists upon
clearer thinking about causes and mechanisms, and he rigorously criticizes
sloppy thinking about quantitative methods. His approach demands that the researcher give careful
attention to the possible social mechanisms that may be involved in the
sociological outcomes of interest, and then to design a study that permits
elucidation and evaluation of those causal hypotheses.
This
brief review of some important recent work within the social sciences on
foundational issues is relevant in several ways. First, these authors provide substantive and innovative
insights into some very important foundational issues, about the nature of the
social and some good ways of investigating and explaining the social. Second,
this review demonstrated very clearly the value of interaction between
philosophers and social scientists. All these thinkers are engaging in clear,
rigorous, and intelligent interrogation of foundational issues of ontology and
epistemology of social science. They are doing the philosophy of social
science, whether they call it that or not. And therefore it is highly
productive, on both sides of the equation, for working sociologists and
philosophers to interact in a sustained way on these important foundational
issues. Better social science and better philosophy will be the result.
Several
specific insights about the social sciences emerge from these debates. There is the “historic turn” in the
social sciences: the recognition that the history of social processes and
institutions is deeply significant for understanding their current functioning.
What are the contingent pathways that have brought a given phenomenon to its
current configuration? How does this history inform and condition the current
workings? There is the “cultural turn” in history and several areas of the
social sciences: the idea that social phenomena is always invested with
meaning, and it is important for social scientists to consider some of the
methods through which it is possible to investigate and explore these cultural
meanings. Individuals act in the
context of their own understandings of the social world and their position
within it; and this requires analysis of culture. There is a surging interest in identifying social causal
mechanisms as a basis for explanation of social outcomes and processes: the
idea that social outcomes have come to be as the result of specific social
mechanisms that can be uncovered through case studies, comparative analysis,
and the resort to various areas of social theory (rational choice theory, new
institutionalism, learning theory).
There is strengthening focus on institutions—how they constrain
social processes, and how they emerge and change over time. And there is renewed attention to the
role of comparison within the social sciences—comparative historical
analysis.
At
a more abstract level, we can identify a set of ontological insights that are
emerging within these debates: doubt about the availability of strong universal
laws among social phenomena; attention to the multiple pathways and structural
alternatives that exist in large-scale historical development; awareness of the
deep heterogeneity of social processes and influences—in time and place;
attention to the substantial degree of contingency that exists in historical
change; attention to the plasticity of social organizations and institutions;
and attempts at bridging between micro- and macro-level social processes. Almost all of these points amount to a
fundamental challenge to positivist social science. The skepticism that is now well established about social
regularities is a deep blow to the positivist program. The emphasis on causal mechanisms
suggests a post-positivist, realist approach to scientific explanation. The point about heterogeneity of social
processes suggests the importance of theoretical pluralism rather than unified
grand theories of social phenomena.
In
the remainder of this essay I offer some main components of my own philosophy
of social science, because I believe these ideas can help to organize our
thinking about the social world and the strategies we use to investigate social
phenomena. These observations are
organized within a perspective I label “methodological localism,” according to
which all social facts, social structures, and social causes must be understood
to possess their characteristics in virtue of the “socially situated
individuals” who make them up. I
argue that social conjectures need to be supported by analysis of the
“microfoundations” of the social structures and processes that are
postulated. I argue that social
explanation depends on identifying the concrete social causal mechanisms that bring
about social outcomes and types of outcomes. I argue that we should think of the social world as a fabric
built up out of a myriad of overlapping “local social environments.” And I argue against the idea of there
being strong “social laws” that could be discovered, in analogy with laws of
nature. These views support the
perspective on the social world that emphasizes contingency of social outcomes,
plasticity of social structures, and variability of social behavior.
I offer a social ontology that I refer to as methodological localism (ML) (Little 2006). This ontological theory of social entities affirms that
there are large social structures and facts that influence social outcomes, but
it insists that these structures are only possible insofar as they are embodied
in the actions and states of socially constructed individuals. The “molecule” of all social life is
the socially constructed and socially situated individual, who lives, acts, and
develops within a set of local social relationships, institutions, norms, and
rules. With individualism, this
position embraces the point that individuals are the bearers of social
structures and causes. There is no
such thing as an autonomous social force; rather, all social properties and
effects are conveyed through the individuals who constitute a population at a
time. Against individualism,
however, methodological localism affirms the “social-ness” of social
actors. Methodological localism
denies the possibility or desirability of characterizing the individual
pre-socially. Instead, the
individual is understood as a socially constituted actor, affected by large
current social facts such as value systems, social structures, extended social
networks, and the like. In other
words, ML denies the possibility of reductionism from the level of the social
to the level of a population of non-social individuals. Rather, the individual is constituted
by locally embodied social facts, and the social facts are in turn constituted
by the current characteristics of the persons who make them up.
Furthermore, ML affirms the existence of social constructs beyond the
purview of the individual actor or group.
Political institutions exist—and they are embodied in the actions
and states of officials, citizens, criminals, and opportunistic others. These institutions have real effects on
individual behavior and on social processes and outcomes—always mediated
through the structured circumstances of agency of the myriad participants in
these institutions and the affected society. This perspective emphasizes the contingency of social
processes, the mutability of social structures over space and time, and the
variability of human social systems (norms, urban arrangements, social
practices, …).
This approach highlights the important point that all social facts,
social structures, and social causal properties depend ultimately on facts
about individuals within socially defined circumstances. Social ascriptions require microfoundations at the level of individuals in
concrete social relationships.
According to this way of understanding the nature of social ontology, an
assertion of a structure or process at the macro-social level (causal,
functional, structural) must be supplemented by two things:
knowledge about what it is about the local circumstances of the typical
individual that leads him to act in such a way as to bring about this
relationship; and knowledge of the aggregative processes that lead from
individual actions of that sort to an explanatory social relationship of this
sort.[3] So if we are interested in analysis of
the causal properties of states and governments, we need to arrive at an analysis
of the institutions and constrained patterns of individual behavior through
which the state’s characteristics are effected. We need to raise questions such as these: How do states
exercise influence throughout society?
What are the institutional embodiments at lower levels that secure the
impact of law, taxation, conscription, contract enforcement, and other central
elements of state behavior?[4] And if we are interested in analyzing
the causal role that systems of norms play in social behavior, we need to
discover some of the specific institutional practices through which individuals
come to embrace a given set of norms.[5]
The microfoundations perspective requires that we attempt to discover the
pathways by which socially constituted individuals are influenced by distant
social circumstances, and how their actions in turn affect distant social
outcomes. There is no action at a
distance in social life; instead, individuals have the values that they have,
the styles of reasoning, the funds of factual and causal beliefs, etc., as a
result of the structured experiences of development that they have undergone as
children and adults. On this
perspective, large social facts and structures do indeed exist; but their
causal properties are entirely defined by the current states of psychology,
norm, and action of the individuals who currently exist. Systems of norms and bodies of
knowledge exist—but only insofar as individuals (and material traces)
embody and transmit them. So when
we assert that a given social structure causes a given outcome, we need to be
able to specify the local pathways through which individual actors embody this
causal process. That is, we need
to be able to provide an account of the causal mechanisms that convey social
effects.
It is evident that methodological localism implies a fairly limited
social ontology. What exists is
the socially constructed individual, within a congeries of concrete social
relations and institutions. The
socially constructed individual possesses beliefs, norms, opportunities,
powers, and capacities. These
features are socially constructed in a perfectly ordinary sense: the individual
has acquired his or her beliefs, norms, powers, and desires through social
contact with other individuals and institutions, and the powers and constraints
that define the domain of choice for the individual are largely constituted by
social institutions (property systems, legal systems, educational systems,
organizations, and the like).[6] Inevitably, social organizations at any
level are constituted by the individuals who participate in them and whose
behavior and ideas are influenced by them; sub-systems and organizations
through which the actions of the organization are implemented; and the material
traces through which the policies, memories, and acts of decision are imposed
on the environment: buildings, archives, roads, etc. All features of the organization are embodied in the actors
and institutional arrangements that carry the organization at a given
time. At each point we are invited
to ask the question: what are the social mechanisms through which this
institution or organization exerts influence on other organizations and on
agents’ behavior?
Methodological
localism has numerous intellectual advantages. It avoids the reification of the social that is
characteristic of holism and structuralism, it abjures social “action at a
distance,” and it establishes the intellectual basis for understanding the
non-availability of strong laws of nature among social phenomena. It is possible to offer numerous
examples of social research underway today that illustrate the perspective of
methodological localism; in fact, almost all rigorous social theorizing and
research can be accommodated to the assumptions of methodological localism.[7]
A second major
component of a philosophy of social science has to do with the most fundamental
assumptions we make about the nature of explanation. I maintain that social explanation requires discovery of the
underlying causal mechanisms that give rise to outcomes of interest.[8] On this perspective, explanation of a
phenomenon or regularity involves identifying the causal processes and causal
relations that underlie this phenomenon or regularity, and causal mechanisms
are heterogeneous.[9] Social mechanisms are concrete social
processes in which a set of social conditions, constraints, or circumstances
combine to bring about a given outcome.[10] On this approach, social explanation
does not take the form of inductive discovery of laws; rather, the
generalizations that are discovered in the course of social science research
are subordinate to the more fundamental search for causal mechanisms and
pathways in individual outcomes and sets of outcomes.[11] This approach casts doubt on the search
for generalizable theories across numerous societies. It looks instead for specific causal influence and
variation. The approach emphasizes
variety, contingency, and the availability of alternative pathways leading to
an outcome, rather than expecting to find a small number of common patterns of
development or change.[12] The contingency of particular pathways
derives from several factors, including the local circumstances of individual
agency and the across-case variation in the specifics of institutional
arrangements—giving rise to significant variation in higher-level
processes and outcomes.[13]
This approach
places central focus on the idea of a causal mechanism. To identify a causal relation between
two kinds of events or conditions, we need to identify the typical causal
mechanisms through which the first kind brings about the second
kind. What, though, is the nature
of the social linkages that constitute causal mechanisms among social phenomena?
I argued above for a microfoundational
approach to social causation: the causal properties of
social entities derive from the structured circumstances of agency of the individuals who make up social
entities—institutions, organizations, states, economies, and the
like. So this approach advances a
general ontological stance and research strategy: the causal mechanisms that
create causal relations among social phenomena are compounded from the
structured circumstances of choice and behavior of socially constructed and
socially situated agents.
The general answers I propose as a theory of social
causation flow from the assumption that the “molecule” of social causation is
the deliberative agency of the socially situated agent—what is referred
to here as “methodological localism”.
This perspective affirms that there is such a thing as social
causation. Social structures and
institutions have causal properties and effects that play an important role
within historical change (the social causation thesis). They exercise their causal powers
through their influence on individual actions, beliefs, values, and choices
(the microfoundations thesis).
Structures are themselves constituted by individuals, so social
causation and agency represent an ongoing iterative process (the
agency-structure thesis). There
are no causal powers at work within the domain of the social that do not
proceed through structured individual agency. And hypotheses concerning social
and historical causation can be rigorously formulated, criticized, and defended
using a variety of tools: case-study methodology, comparative study,
statistical study, and application of social theory. (See (Little 1998) for further exposition of these ideas.)
Is
there such a thing as “macro-macro” causation—that is, causal relations
between higher-level social structures?
Yes—but only as mediated through “micro-foundations” at the level
of structured human agency. State
institutions affect economic variables such as “levels of investment,” “levels
of unemployment,” or “infant mortality rates”. But large institutions only wield causal powers by changing
the opportunities, incentives, powers, and constraints that confront
agents. So the hard question is not: “Do institutions and structures exercise
autonomous and supra-individual causal primacy?”, since we know that they do
not. Instead, the question is, “To
what extent and through what sorts of mechanisms do structures and institutions
exert causal influence on individuals and other structures?”
On this approach,
the causal capacities of social entities are to be explained in terms of the
structuring of preferences, worldviews, information, incentives, and
opportunities for agents. The
causal powers or capacities of a social entity inhere in its power to affect
individuals’ behavior through incentives, preference-formation,
belief-acquisition, or powers and opportunities. The micro-mechanism that conveys cause to effect is supplied by an account of the actions of agents
with specific goals, beliefs, and powers, within a specified set of
institutions, rules, and normative constraints.
A final large issue for the philosophy of social science is the question
of the availability of general laws that might be said to govern social
processes and outcomes. Is the
social world law-governed? Are
there social laws, analogous to laws of nature, that give rise to social
phenomena? And is it a central
task of the social sciences to discover law-like regularities among social
phenomena? Some social scientists
believe that the scientific credentials of their disciplines rise or fall on
the strength of the law-like generalizations and regularities that they are
able to identify.[14] The task of social science research is
to discover the laws that govern social processes. I disagree with this view. The general view I defend is that there are regularities to
be found within the social sciences, at a variety of levels of social
description; that these regularities derive from features of individual agency
in the context of specific social arrangements; and that discovery of such
regularities is one important goal of social science research. But I also maintain that these
regularities are substantially weaker than those that obtain among natural
phenomena. Moreover, I maintain
that these regularities have a much more limited role within good social
explanations than they are often thought to do. The upshot of these arguments is that we should have little
confidence in the projectability of social regularities as a basis for
prediction, and must therefore pay more attention to the specifics of the
social and individual-level mechanisms that produce the regularities as well as
the exceptions.
Much
of the impulse toward emphasizing the explanatory importance of regularities in
the social sciences derives from an unhelpful analogy with the natural
sciences. The successes of the
natural sciences have given natural scientists confidence that natural systems
operate in accordance with a strict set of laws, that these laws may be given
precise mathematical formulation, that they derive from the underlying real
properties of constituent physical entities, and, finally, that these facts
entail that the future behavior of physical systems is in principle (though
perhaps not in practice) predictable.
And this conception of the nature of physical systems in turn gave rise
to a paradigm of scientific explanation: to explain a phenomenon is to derive
the explanandum from a set of general laws and a description of the initial
conditions of the system.
Prediction and explanation go hand in hand, and both depend on the
availability of empirically supportable general laws.[15] However, I do not believe that this is
a good way of understanding social phenomena.
So
I argue for a position that is neither positivist nor anti-positivist; instead,
call it post-positivist. Against the
main line of positivist philosophy of science, I dispute the idea that law-like
generalizations are fundamental to successful scientific explanation. But against current anti-positivist
criticisms among some social scientists, I argue for causal realism in social
explanation: causal explanation is at the core of much social research, and
causal hypotheses depend on appropriate standards of empirical confirmation for
their acceptability. Finally,
successful causal analysis permits us to arrive at statements of social
regularities--this time, however, based on an understanding of the underlying
processes that give rise to them.
And this understanding permits us to assess the limits and conditions of
the regularities we affirm, and the likelihood of failure of these regularities
in various social circumstances.
We
need always to keep in mind that social phenomena are the consequence of
intentional human actions (sometimes in vast numbers). Some social regularities are the
intended consequence of individual action--e.g. the revenue-maximizing property
of typical states follows from the interest that government officials have in
maximizing the power and income of the state. Others are the unintended consequence of purposive
individual action--e.g. the falling rate of profit is the unintended
consequence of profit-maximizing strategies by large numbers of individual
capitalists (according to Marx).
But in either case the regularity is strictly derivative from the
constitution and powers of the individuals whose actions give rise to the social
phenomenon in question.
This
leads to a fairly clear conclusion.
Social regularities emerge rather than govern. The governing regularities are regularities of individual
agency: the principles of rational choice theory or the findings of social
psychology. Social regularities
are strictly consequent, not governing.
They obtain because of the lower-level regularities; they have no
independent force (unlike a common interpretation of the force of the laws of
gravitation). Descriptive
regularities among social phenomena can be discovered. But these are distinctly phenomenal
laws rather than governing regularities; they have little explanatory import;
and they are not particularly reliable as a basis for prediction. Better on both counts is a theory of
the underlying causal mechanisms that produce them. These theories in turn need to be supported
empirically. We can be most
confident in statements of lawlike regularities when we have an account of the
mechanisms that underlie them.
I
believe that the social sciences need to be framed out of consideration of a
better understanding of the nature of the social—a better social
ontology. The social world is not a system of
law-governed processes; it is instead a mix of different sorts of institutions,
forms of human behavior, natural and environmental constraints, and contingent
events. The entities that make up
the social world at a given time and place have no particular ontological
stability; they do not fall into “natural kinds”; and there is no reason to
expect deep similarity across a number of ostensibly similar institutions
– states, for example, or labor unions. So the rule for the social world is—heterogeneity,
contingency, and plasticity. And
the metaphysics associated with our thinking about the natural world—laws
of nature; common, unchanging structures; and predictable processes of
change—do not provide appropriate metaphors for our understandings and
expectations of the social world; nor do they suggest the right kinds of social
science theories and constructs.
Instead
of naturalism, I advocate for an approach to social science theorizing that
could be described as post-positivist. It recognizes that there is a degree of
pattern in social life—but emphasizes that these patterns fall far short
of the regularities associated with laws of nature. It emphasizes contingency of social processes and
outcomes. It insists upon
the importance and legitimacy of eclectic use of social theory: the processes
are heterogeneous, and therefore it is appropriate to appeal to different types
of social theories as we explain social processes. It emphasizes the importance of path-dependence in social
outcomes. It suggests that the
most valid scientific statements in the social sciences have to do with the
discovery of concrete social-causal mechanisms, through which some types of
social outcomes come about. And
finally, it highlights what I call “methodological localism”: the insight that
the foundation of social action and outcome is the local, socially-located and
socially constructed individual person.
The individual is socially constructed, in that her modes of behavior,
thought, and reasoning are created through a specific set of prior social
interactions. And her actions are socially
situated, in the
sense that they are responsive to the institutional setting in which she
chooses to act. Purposive
individuals, embodied with powers and constraints, pursue their goals in
specific institutional settings; and regularities of social outcome often
result.
My
most central conclusion, however, is metaphysical. We ought not think of the social world as a system of phenomena in which we can expect to find a
strong underlying order. Instead,
social phenomena are highly diverse, subject to many different and
cross-cutting forms of causation.
So the result is that the very strongest regularities that will be ever
be discerned will remain the exception-laden phenomenal regularities described
here and the highly qualified predictions of regularities that derive from
institutional-logic analyses.
There is no more fundamental description of the social world in which
strong governing regularities drive events and processes.
It
is highly relevant that the examples discussed above of innovative work on the
most foundational questions in the social sciences today are very consistent
with the broad thrust of this philosophy of social science. The emphasis on discovering concrete
social causal mechanisms; the insistence on the contingency and variability of social
outcomes; the recognition of the centrality of socially situated actors as the
substance of social relationships; the recognition of the pliability and
plasticity of important social institutions and structures—all of these
provide intellectual support for the main thrusts of the philosophy of social
science offered here.
These
points are highly relevant to my main theme here today: the shaping of the next
generation of Chinese social science.
If Chinese social scientists are captivated by the scientific prestige
of positivism and quantitative social science, they will be led to social
science research that looks quite different from what would result from a view
that emphasizes contingency and causal mechanisms. And if there are strong, engaging examples of other ways of
conducting social research that can come into broad exposure in Chinese social
science—then there is a greater likelihood for the emergence of a
genuinely innovative and imaginative approach to the problem of social knowledge
for China.
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[1] It is worth observing that China’s social changes are as deep, rapid, and perplexing as those associated with the process of industrialization in nineteenth-century England—and consider how profoundly the experience of Manchester and Birmingham stimulated new sociological thinking in the hands of Engels, Tocqueville, Marx, and the other founders of modern western sociology.
[2] Extensive, insightful discussion of the methods and problems of CHS are found in (Mahoney and Rueschemeyer 2003), (McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996), and (Adams, Clemens, and Orloff 2005).
[3] We may refer to explanations of this type as “aggregative explanations.” An aggregative explanation is one that provides an account of a social mechanism that conveys multiple individual patterns of activity and demonstrates the collective or macro-level consequence of these actions.
Thomas Schelling’s Micromotives and Macrobehavior (Schelling 1978) provides a developed treatment and numerous examples
of this model of social explanation.
[4] An excellent recent example of historical analysis of
Chinese local politics illustrates the value of this microfoundational
approach: “But the villages were not totally out of the government’s reach; nor
was the subcounty administration necessarily chaotic, inefficient, and open to
malfeasance. In fact, during most
of the imperial times, the state was able to extract enough taxes to meet its
normal needs and maintain social order in most of the country. What made this possible was a wide
variety of informal institutions in local communities that grew out of the
interaction between government demands and local initiatives to carry out
day-to-day governmental functions” ((Li 2005) : 1).
[5] “Explanations of social norms must do more than merely
acknowledge the constraining effects of normative rules on social action. Such explanations must address the
process that culminates in the establishment of one of these rules as the
common norm in a community. One of
the keys to the establishment of a new norm is the ability of those who seek to
change norms to enforce compliance with the new norm” ((Knight and Ensminger 1998) : 105).
[6] (Hacking 1999) offers a critique of misuses of the concept of social
construction. This use is not
vulnerable to his criticisms, however.
[7] Examples of theories and analyses contained in current
comparative and historical social science research may be found in (McDonald 1996) and (Mahoney and Rueschemeyer 2003). Many of
these examples illustrate the fecundity of the approach to social analysis that
emphasizes the “socially constructed individual within a concrete set of social
relations” as the molecule of social action. See also (Sewell 2005) for a treatment of historical change that is
compatible with this approach.
[8] (Little 1991, 1998).
Important recent exponents of the centrality of causal mechanisms in social
explanation include (Hedström and Swedberg 1998), (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001), and (George and Bennett 2005). George and
Bennett offer careful analytical treatment of how the causal mechanisms
approach can be developed into specific research strategies in the social and
historical sciences. Volume 34,
numbers 2 and 3 of Philosophy of the Social Sciences (2004) contains a handful of articles devoted to the
logic of social causal mechanisms, focused on the writings of Mario Bunge. (Steel 2004) provides a philosophically rigorous assessment of
several features of the mechanisms approach and directs particular attention to
the claim that discovery of mechanisms is necessary for successful causal
explanation. One specific
interpretation of the idea of a social mechanism is formulated by Tyler Cowen:
“I interpret social mechanisms … as rational-choice accounts of how a specified
combination of preferences and constraints can give rise to more complex social
outcomes” ((Cowen 1998) : 125).
The account offered here is not limited to rational choice mechanisms,
however.
[9] Other philosophers of science have argued for a
similar position in the past decade.
See particularly Salmon (1984) and Cartwright (1983, 1989).
[10] The recent literature on causal mechanisms provides a
number of related definitions: “We define causal mechanisms as ultimately
unobservable physical, social, or psychological processes through which agents
with causal capacities operate, but only in specific contexts or conditions, to
transfer energy, information, or matter to other entities” (George and Bennett 2005).
“Mechanisms are a delimited class of events that alter relations among
specified stets of elements in identical or closely similar ways over a variety
of situations” ((McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001) : 24).
“Mechanisms … are analytical constructs that provide hypothetical links
between observable events” ((Hedström and Swedberg 1998) : 13).
[11] Authors who have urged the centrality of causal
mechanisms or powers for social explanation include (Sørensen 2001), (Harré and Secord 1972), (Varela and Harre 1996), (Cartwright 1983), (Cartwright 1989), (Salmon 1984), and (Dessler 1991). In their
important volume devoted to this topic, Hedström and Swedberg write, “The main
message of this book is that the advancement of social theory calls for an
analytical approach that systematically seeks to explicate the social
mechanisms that generate and explain observed associations between events” ((Hedström and Swedberg 1998) : 1).
Jack Goldstone expresses this method in his analysis of the explanation
of revolutions: “In making my argument … that population growth in agrarian
bureaucracies led to revolution, I did not proceed by showing that in a large
sample of such states there was a statistically significant relationship
between population growth and revolution…. Rather, I sought to trace out and document the links in the
causal chain connecting population growth to revolutionary conflict” (Goldstone 2003) : 48).
[12] An important expression of this approach to social and
historical explanation is offered by Charles Tilly: “Analysts of large-scale
political processes frequently invoke invariant models that feature
self-contained and self-motivating social units. Few actual political processes conform to such models. Revolutions provide an important
example of such reasoning and of its pitfalls. Better models rest on plausible ontologies, specify fields of
variation for the phenomena in question, reconstruct causal sequences, and
concentrate explanation on links within those sequences” (Tilly 1995) : 1594).
[13] McAdam et al describe their approach to the study of
social contention in these terms: “We employ mechanisms and processes as our
workhorses of explanation, episodes as our workhorses of description. We therefore make a bet on how the
social world works: that big structures and sequences never repeat themselves,
but result from differing combinations and sequences of mechanisms with very
general scope. Even within a
single episode, we will find multiform, changing, and self-constructing actors,
identities, forms of action and interaction” ((McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001) : 30).
[14] Social scientists who have taken this view include
Huntington (1968); Adelman and Morris (1967); King et al; and Zuckerman
(1991). Philosophers supporting
the idea that lawlike generalizations must undergird social explanations
include Hempel (1942), Thomas
(1979), M. Salmon (1989), Kincaid (1990), and McIntyre (1991).
[15] Note, however, the powerful arguments against this
general view put forward by Nancy Cartwright in How the Laws of Physics Lie (1983).
[OU1]Abstract. This lecture provides an introduction to some of the central findings in current discussions of the social sciences in the US: the importance of identifying causal mechanisms among social phenomena, the weakness of our ability to arrive at confident predictions in the social sciences, the weakness of generalizations and laws within the realm of social phenomena, the relevance of the tools of ethnography for social science investigation, and the value of the tools of comparative historical social science as a method of inquiry.