McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly direct our attention to the level of the concrete social mechanisms that recur in many instances of social contention (Dynamics of Contention). They specifically refer to escalation, radicalization, brokerage, and repression as examples of social mechanisms that produce the same effects in the same circumstances, and that concatenate into historical processes …
Is network analysis inconsistent with agent-centered explanation?
Quite a few researchers who study dynamic social processes are making use of some of the tools of network analysis. And it is sometimes maintained that this approach is inconsistent with an agent-centered approach to social processes. Some of these researchers take the view that "it's not what is in the heads of various actors, …
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A non-naturalistic approach to social science
The most basic error that is conveyed by the naturalist framework into the premises of sociology—the folk epistemology—that was shared by Durkheim, Mill, and Comte, is the assumption that all phenomena are subject to laws; that the relevant laws are abstract and obscure; and that there is an orderly relationship between gross phenomena and a …
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Social properties: Persistence, change, and stochastic social processes
How can we explain social change and social persistence?Society is a complex, compositional entity. Both persistence and change require explanation in such entities. Because there is a third alternative condition of such an entity: chaos, randomness, and Brownian motion of individuals in interaction with each other. Succinctly -- the current state of the ensemble is …
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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 