Part of the dispute betwixt analytical sociology too critical realists comes downwards to a complicated interplay betwixt ontology too metho...
Part of the dispute betwixt analytical sociology too critical realists comes downwards to a complicated interplay betwixt ontology too methodology. Both groups take away maintain rigid (and conflicting) ideas almost social ontology, too both recollect that these ideas are of import to the bear of social-science research. Analytical sociologists tend towards an enlightened version of methodological individualism: social entities derive from the actions too nature of the individuals who constitute them. Critical realists tend toward about version or about other of emergentism: social entities possess properties that are emergent alongside honour to the private activities that constitute them.
Both groups tend to blueprint social scientific discipline methodologies to fit to the ontological theories that they advance. So they tacitly concord almost what I regard as a questionable premise -- that ontology dictates methodology.
I desire to debate for a greater score of independence betwixt ontology too methodology than either grouping would belike hold upward willing to countenance. With the analytical sociologists I believe that social facts depend on the availability of microfoundations at the flat of ensembles of individuals. This is an ontological fact. But alongside the critical realists I believe that it is solely appropriate for social scientists to examine the causal too structural properties of social entities without beingness forced to endeavor to render the microfoundations of these properties. This is an observation almost the locus too nature of explanation. There are stable structural too causal properties at the social level, too it is solely legitimate to investigate these properties inwards amount empirical detail. Sociologists, organizational theorists, too institutional researchers should hold upward encouraged to investigate inwards item the workings, arrangements, too causal properties of the regimes that they study. And this is just the sort of investigation that holds together researchers as various as Michael Mann, Kathleen Thelen, Charles Perrow, Howard Kimmeldorf, too Frank Dobbin. (Use the search box to observe discussions of their piece of occupation inwards before posts.)
What this implies is that sociologists tin sack legitimately pursue meso- too macro-level inquiries into the nature of the social entities that most involvement them. Organizational theory is an especially expert example. We tin sack approach the report of organizations from a publish of points of view. But i perfectly legitimate approach is to endeavor to discovery about of the dynamic too causal properties of organizations alongside specified features. This takes the score of trying to discovery what propensities a given organizational score has when embedded into a given institutional or social context. And this is a score of causal enquiry that is analogous to metallurgy or materials science: what are the properties of conductivity, thermal expansion, ductility, etc., of metals or ceramics of a given structural composition?
This agency inwards plough that the ontology of individualism does non imply really much almost methodology too research strategies. Ontology is non irrelevant to methodology; but it provides just weak constraints on the nature of the methodologies social scientists may select inwards their pursuit of amend agreement of the social world.
Can nosotros tell to a greater extent than almost how ontological confidence almost the nature of social entities is consistent alongside methodological pluralism? One business office of the respond derives from the thought of the relative autonomy of various levels of the natural too social world. This is the declaration that Jerry Fodor set forrard alongside honour to the "special sciences" similar psychology. Fodor argued persuasively that psychologists are entitled to investigate psychological properties without beingness obliged to trim down these properties to facts almost the key nervous system. The rationality of scientific discipline does non forcefulness us to hold upward reductionist. Instead, it is legitimate to examine the properties of the system-level structures of a domain without attempting to tell how these properties derive from to a greater extent than fundamental features of the stuff. And this has as compelling implications for sociology as it does for other special sciences.
The lawsuit of this laid upward of considerations is of import for the bear of social science. The ontological truism that social phenomena are constituted past times individual-level activities does not imply that social scientific discipline methodology must croak on along the lines of reductionism or aggregative explanation (vertical explanations, reproducing the struts of Coleman's boat). We tin sack hold upward individualist inwards ontology too macro-ist inwards our methodology.
The constraint of the ontological truism of microfoundationalism has actually just 2 pregnant implications:
- We involve to hold upward confident inwards full general damage that in that place are microfoundations for a social belongings or power, fifty-fifty though nosotros make non involve to reproduce those micro foundations.
- In special cases nosotros may observe that a reductionist or aggregativist strategy leads to a peculiarly straightforward explanation of a social-level fact (along the lines of Thomas Schelling's many examples).
But to a greater extent than frequently than non speaking, all of this suggests that nosotros should hold upward methodological pluralists inwards the social sciences -- brand run of the research strategies that look most promising for agreement a specific make of phenomena without a lot of draw of piece of occupation organisation for how the method aligns alongside our most refined ontological thinking.
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