Critical realism has progressed far since Roy Bhaskar's early writings on the subject in A Realist Theory of Science. One of the most important thinkers to have introduced new ideas into the debate is Margaret Archer. Several books in the mid-1990s represented genuinely original contributions to issues about the nature of social ontology and methodology, including …
Giddens on agents and structures
Anthony Giddens is one of the theorists whose ideas are most often invoked when the idea of social-structural explanation is in play. His 1979 collection of essays, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis, is a classic statement of some of his views. Here is how he frames his core concern …
European philosophy of social science
There is an active and extended group of scholars in Europe with a very focused concentration on the philosophy of the social sciences. A good cross-section of this community gathered in Rotterdam Monday and Tuesday this week for a small conference on social mechanisms at the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (link). These are …
Does “culture” require microfoundations?
I have consistently argued for a philosophy of social science that emphasizes the actor and the availability of microfoundations. I argue for an actor-centered sociology. But I have lately been arguing as well for the idea that it is legitimate for social scientists to treat claims about the causal properties of meso-level social structures as …
Scaling up
City Year is a pretty unusual and impressive social-entrepreneurial organization (link). Founded in 1988 as a platform for providing young Americans an opportunity to provide a year of service in an urban environment, the organization has grown dramatically in the intervening 24 years. Here is the organization's mission statement: City Year’s mission is to build …
Slow institutional change
Institutions are interlocking sets of rules and practices that shape specific sets of actors to behave this way rather than that. The institutions governing public comment on newly proposed regulations provide an interesting case in point. Citizens have interests with respect to new policies, and the rules and formal processes define the means through which …
Does the microfoundations principle imply reductionism?
My philosophy of social science has always and consistently maintained the idea that social facts depend on the activities and beliefs of individuals. There is no social "stuff" that exists independently from individual actors. I have encapsulated that idea in the form of the "microfoundations" principle: any claim about the characteristics or causal powers of …
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Macro causes of European fascism
Michael Mann's book Fascists makes use of causal claims at a range of levels, from the macro to the micro, to explain the emergence of European fascism. Here is a passage that highlights four macro-level causes of fascism: The interwar period in Europe was the setting that threw up most of the self-avowed fascists and saw them …
Social hierarchy and popular culture
There is some interesting work being done on the sociology of taste these days. I'm thinking specifically of a literature that has developed around the idea of "omnivorousness" and social status. Richard Peterson initiated much of this discussion in 1992 with an article in Poetics entitled "Understanding Audience Segmentation: From Elite and Mass to Omnivore and …
Dewey on habits
I've sought here to discover some of the origins of current neo-pragmatist theories of the actor. John Dewey's writings are certainly crucial for that quest. So what did Dewey contribute to a pragmatist understanding of how people act? one place to look for an answer is in a 1922 book, HUMAN NATURE AND CONDUCT: An Introduction …
Understanding Society 