The Heterogeneous Social

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The Heterogeneous Social

• Daniel Little
• University of Michigan-Dearborn

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Section 1. Challenges facing Chinese social
science research

• A time of paradigm transition
• The challenge of Chinas rapid social change
• An inventory of change
• A new sociology for China
• The need for a post-positivist social science in
  China

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Section 2. Why the philosophy of social science?

• Why do we need a philosophy of social science?
• What are the foundational questions?
• How should we pursue a philosophy of social
  science?

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What is the philosophy of social science?

• Careful, analytical treatment of the most basic
  problems that arise in the study of society and
  social behavior
• Major areas of question include ontology,
  methodology, theory, and explanation
• The social sciences are more difficult than the
  natural sciences

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Some guiding questions for philosophy of social
science

• What is the nature of the social?
• How can we investigate social properties and
  structures?
• What makes a study scientific?
• What is the role of social theory in explaining
  the social world?

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A method for philosophy of science

• Some philosophers approach these questions on the
  basis of purely philosophical assumptions
• A better approach is to engage with working
  social scientists and uncover the conceptual and
  methodological problems they are confronted with.
• Use philosophical skills of reasoning and
  analysis to clarify these issues.
• There is no master theory of science that
  covers all the sciences.

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Section 3. Current discussions of the social
sciences

• Many reflective social scientists have called for
  a rethinking of the foundations of the social
  sciences.
• Philosophers can learn from these debates.

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Comparative historical sociology

• Study large historical structures (Theda Skocpol)
• Small-N research a limited range of carefully
  chosen cases
• Seek out historical causes by comparing similar
  historical processes in different settings
• Historical process is contingent and
  path-dependent
• The study of revolutions, corruption, collective
  action, and social welfare systems

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Social causal mechanisms

• Social change occurs through concrete social
  causal mechanisms (Charles Tilly)
• It is a legitimate social science research goal
  to attempt to uncover the social mechanisms at
  work in particular cases.
• Example the effects of free-rider behavior in
  the provision of collective goods

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Case study methodology

• A research strategy aimed at discovery of causal
  mechanisms through detailed study of individual
  historical cases.
• Process-tracing the attempt to trace the links
  between possible causes and observed outcomes
  (George and Bennett).

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New institutionalism

• New emphasis on the causal role that institutions
  play in social process
• Detailed studies of the particulars of some
  social institutions through which social behavior
  is structured.
• Example rules defining liability for grazing
  animals (Shasta County)
• Example different technology regimes in
  different countries lead to very different
  implementation of technology like railroads

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Social ontology

• New efforts to provide a better framework for
  defining social entities (Andrew Abbott)
• Do social things have fixed, permanent
  properties?
• Or are they malleable and flexible, changing
  substantially over time?
• A social entity is not a fixed thing with
  permanent properties. It is rather a continuing
  swirl of linked social activities.

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The cultural turn

• New recognition of the causal role played by
  cultural differences norms, practices,
  attitudes, beliefs.
• The value of turning to some of the tools of
  ethnography to study subjects not usually
  considered by anthropologists -- e.g. industrial
  change.
• Culture is a feature of all social life, and
  every area of social science research needs the
  theoretical ability to analyze the role of
  culture.

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Quantitative social science

• It is crucial that we understand the
  presuppositions that are made in applying various
  statistical tools to social data.
• The logic of experimentation is difficult or
  impossible to reproduce in the area of social
  research, and quasi-experimentation does not
  serve the same function.
• Conclusions about causation based on discovery of
  correlations must be provided with theories of
  the underlying social causal mechanisms.

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Section 4. A philosophy of social science

• Summary --
• Methodological localism
• Microfoundations thesis
• The importance of causal mechanisms
• The lack of strong social regularities and
  generalizations

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Section 4.1. Methodological localism

• How does the social world work? I offer a social
  ontology I refer to as Methodological Localism.
• The molecule of all social life is the socially
  constructed and socially situated individual, who
  lives and acts within a set of local social
  relationships.
• There are large social structures but these are
  only possible insofar as they are embodied in the
  actions and states of socially constructed
  individuals.

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Battle of the Overpass
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Ontology and methodology

• We need a defensible ontology of the social world
  before we can intelligently choose methods and
  theories.
• The ontology doesnt dictate how we conduct
  research but it places constraints on the nature
  of the theories and methods we use.
• ML does not entail that our methods of research
  need to proceed from the local to the macro.

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Microfoundations for social processes

• An assertion of a structure or process at the
  macro-social level must be supplemented by
• Knowledge about what it is about the local
  circumstances of choice of individuals that leads
  them to act in such a way as to bring about the
  macro-structure
• Knowledge of the aggregative processes that lead
  from individual actions to the macro-event or
  structure
• We must be able to envision the pathways by which
  socially constituted individuals are influenced
  by distant social conditions.

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Four large areas of questions for the social
sciences

• what makes individual agents tick?
• accounts or mechanisms of choice and action at
  the level of the individual performative action,
  rational action, impulse, ...
• how are individuals formed and constituted?
• accounts of social development, acquisition of
  preferences, worldview, moral frameworks.
• How are individuals situated?
• institutions, incentives, constraints
• how are individual agents' actions aggregated to
  meso and macro level?
• social mechanisms aggregating individual actions

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• These areas of research combine to give upward
  and downward social influence. Social
  institutions and facts influence agents and
  agents' actions influence institutions and
  outcomes.

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Advantages of methodological localism

• The approach represents a limited social
  ontology.
• The approach avoids reification the postulation
  of permanent essences corresponding to our
  concepts.
• Localism provides an intellectual foundation for
  almost all forms of social research.

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Section 4.2. Causal mechanisms

• Social explanation depends on the discovery of
  underlying causal mechanisms giving rise to
  outcomes of interest.
• There are many kinds of social causal mechanisms.
  Examnple free-rider behavior
• Explanation does not reduce to the discovery of
  regularities instead, the discovery of causal
  mechanisms explains the regularities.
• Social outcomes are highly contingent and
  path-dependent.

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The nature of social causal mechanisms

• The causal properties of social entities derive
  from the structured circumstances of agency of
  the individuals who make up social entities.
• Agency and structure are fundamental, and
  each underlies and constrains the other.
• Social causes work through the influence of
  patterns of social behavior on individual
  actions, beliefs, values, and choices
  (micro-foundations thesis)
• All macro- causation must be grounded in facts
  about local agents.

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Section 4.3. Generalizations and predictions

• Some social scientists and philosophers believe
  that scientific knowledge is inseparable from the
  discovery of strong general laws.
• The laws of planetary motion govern the motions
  of the planets the laws of gravitation explain
  the laws of planetary motion.
• Naturalism is the view of the social sciences
  that insists on the analogies between the social
  and natural sciences.

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Social contingency

• Naturalism is a bad model for the social
  sciences.
• Social outcomes are the result of individual
  actions and the contingent properties of specific
  social arrangements.
• So we should not expect strong regularities or
  laws of nature in the domain of social
  phenomena.
• We will find weak regularities but these
  derives entirely from the common features of
  agency within structure.

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Prediction?

• Social regularities emerge rather than
  govern.
• Does science support prediction?
• My view is that the social sciences provide only
  very weak grounds for making predictions about
  future social outcomes.
• The regularities that the social sciences
  discover are weak and conditional.
• The entities and structures of the social world
  are plastic and changeable.

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Prediction and explanation

• Both explanation and limited prediction in the
  social sciences depend on our ability to identify
  causal mechanisms within the social process.

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Section 5. Conclusion

• The social sciences need a better social
  ontology.
• The natural sciences do not provide a good
  analogy for the social sciences.

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A post-positivist theory for the social sciences

• Contingency
• Causal mechanisms
• The centrality of socially-constituted local
  actors in all social explanation
• The diversity of the social world
• The multiplicity of the methods of inquiry and
  explanation that the social sciences can employ.

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Wreck at Montparnasse
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END