By a practice I mean such things as agricultural techniques, craft technologies, and customs of ordinary life -- how to greet a neighbor, how to discipline one's children, how to decorate the home for a holiday. A practice is a combination of concrete knowledge, a string of practical techniques, and a set of attitudes and …
Are social facts reducible to something?
What is the relationship between facts about society and facts about individuals? Reducibility means that the statements of one scientific discipline should be logically deducible from the truths of some other "more fundamental" discipline. It is sometimes maintained that the truths of chemistry ought in principle be derivable from those of quantum mechanics. A field …
Methodological localism
How do social causes work? Some social theorists have treated social constructs as unified macro-entities with their own causal powers. Structuralist theories maintain things like "capitalism causes people to value consuming more than family time" or "democracy causes social cohesion." Likewise, some theorists have held that moral systems and cultures cause distinctive patterns of behavior--"Confucian …
Understanding Society 