The Chinese communist party became a peasant revolutionary party after the spectacular destruction of the urban basis of the movement by Chiang Kai-shek in Shanghai in 1927. But who and what was a peasant, and how did this group become a revolutionary group? In one sense the answer is obvious. China's population consisted of a …
Social causal explanations
To explain an outcome is to demonstrate what conditions combined to bring it about -- what caused the outcome in the circumstances, or caused it to be more likely to occur. The most fundamental aspect of an explanation is a hypothesis about what caused the circumstance we want to explain. So social explanation requires that …
What is "understanding social life"?
There have been two very different approaches to social explanation since the nineteenth century, and they differ most basically over a distinction between "explanation" and "understanding" or "cause" and "meaning". This distinction divides over two ways of understanding a "why" question when it comes to social events. "Why did it happen?" may mean "What caused …
What is to explain about violent crime?
Every city has a crime rate -- the incidence of murders, assaults, car thefts, or burglaries per 100,000 residents. And there are very significant differences across cities and countries with respect to the incidence of violent crime. In particular, some cities in the world experience extremely high levels in the incidence of violent crimes (for …
What kind of social knowledge does a football coach have?
I am struck by the difference between the football game that I watch, as a not-very-involved fan, and the one that the experienced coach or sportswriter sees. For me the game is a series of fast-moving passes, tackles, runs, interceptions, touchdowns, and athletic movements. But it doesn't make a lot of sense as a whole …
Continue reading "What kind of social knowledge does a football coach have?"
Empirical constraints on sociological theories
What makes sociology "scientific"? An important component of a reply is that assertions, hypotheses, and theories are subject to the test of empirical evidence. Hypotheses need to be evaluated in terms of observations of how the real world behaves. We should evaluate our assertions in terms of their fit with the empirical facts. This is …
Continue reading "Empirical constraints on sociological theories"
Area studies and social science knowledge
How do the social sciences complement the study of particular regions and cultures? How do the researches and theories of political science, sociology, or anthropology extend our understanding of China or Mexico? There is one answer to this question that can be disposed of fairly quickly: many sociologists, economists, or political scientists are also specialists …
Continue reading "Area studies and social science knowledge"
Explaining large social formations: fascism
In a previous post I discussed the problem of explaining fascism. Let's return to this issue as a topic for historical and social inquiry. There are clearly a number of different explanatory questions we might have in mind: why did fascist movements emerge and gain popular support in the first three decades of the twentieth …
Continue reading "Explaining large social formations: fascism"
What is a "moral intuition"?
We have all had this experience: we hear of a complicated social or personal event, and we think inwardly, "that's wrong!" A co-worker tells us an embarrassing private story about another co-worker; we hear on the news that the number of children in poverty has increased; we read about a mining company that has dumped …
Aggregating social trends
Would we say that discerning and aggregating social trends is an important kind of social knowledge? What about explaining social trends? What is a social trend, anyway? Suppose people notice that crimes are getting less frequent but more violent; or that Thai restaurants are replacing Chinese restaurants at the bottom end in Chicago; or that …
Understanding Society 