The social world starts with social individuals. So how do we get more complex social outcomes out of the actions and thoughts of independent individuals? How do the actions and thoughts of individuals aggregate into larger social happenings? How did the various religious, political, and relational attitudes of rural Kenyans aggregate to widespread ethnic violence …
Social networks as aggregators
We think of social phenomena as "relational" in some important respect. Individuals contribute to social outcomes through structured and dynamic relationships with other individuals. So outcomes are not just heaps of aggregated individual behavior; rather, they are the filigreed result of interlinked, coordinated, competitive and sometimes unintended actions of people who have intentional and structural …
Mechanisms of contention reconsidered
Social contention theorists Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly created a great deal of interest in the "mechanisms" approach to social explanation with the publication of their Dynamics of Contention in 2001. The book advocated for several important new angles of approach to the problem of analyzing and explaining social contention: to disaggregate the object of …
What exists in the social realm?
What sorts of social things exist? Does the "proletariat" exist as a social entity? There are certainly workers; but is there a "working class"? What is needed in order to attribute existence to a social agglomeration? We might want to say that things exist when they have enough persistence over time to admit of re-identification …
Methodological localism
I offer a social ontology that I refer to as methodological localism (ML). This theory of social entities affirms that there are large social structures and facts that influence social outcomes. But it insists that these structures are only possible insofar as they are embodied in the actions and states of socially constructed individuals. The …
Theories of the Chinese Revolution
Let us consider a question fundamental to twentieth century world history: why did the Chinese Communist Revolution succeed? Was it the result of a few large social forces and structures? Or was this a case of many small causes operating at a local level, aggregating to a world-historical outcome? (See an earlier posting on "small …
Great structures?
The scholars of the Annales school of French history characteristically placed their analysis of historical change within the context of the large structures -- economic, social, or demographic -- within which ordinary people live out their lives. They postulate that the broad and enduring social relations that exist in a society -- for example, property …
A range of causal questions
In considering important issues in the philosophy of the special sciences, I think it is always helpful to consider a variety of the kinds of intellectual challenges that arise in the area. This gives the philosopher something to work with -- not simply an apriori specification of an issue, but a nuanced set of examples. …
Mental life
We are all persons with thoughts, desires, emotions, memories, and awareness. In some sense we have first-hand knowledge of all this -- we are the ones who experience the situation of going through a difficult job interview, of feeling angry at an aggressive driver, of trying to decide what to do in a moment of …
Composition of the social
Our social ontology needs to reflect the insight that complex social happenings are almost invariably composed of multiple causal processes rather than existing as unitary systems. The phenomena of a great social whole -- a city over a fifty-year span, a period of sustained social upheaval or revolution (Iran in the 1970s-1980s), an international trading …
Understanding Society 