The

Heterogeneous
Social

Daniel Little
University of Michigan-Dearborn
Section 1. Challenges facing
Chinese social science research
 A time of paradigm transition
 The challenge of China’s rapid social
change
 An inventory of change
 A new sociology for China
 The need for a post-positivist social
science in China

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Section 2. Why the “philosophy
of social science”?
 Why do we need a philosophy of social
science?
 What are the foundational questions?
 How should we pursue a philosophy of
social science?

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What is the philosophy of social
science?
 Careful, analytical treatment of the most
basic problems that arise in the study of
society and social behavior
 Major areas of question include ontology,
methodology, theory, and explanation
 The social sciences are more difficult than
the natural sciences

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Some guiding questions for
philosophy of social science
 What is the nature of the “social”?
 How can we investigate social properties
and structures?
 What makes a study “scientific”?
 What is the role of social theory in
explaining the social world?

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A method for philosophy of
science
 Some philosophers approach these questions on
the basis of purely philosophical assumptions
 A better approach is to engage with working social
scientists and uncover the conceptual and
methodological problems they are confronted
with.
 Use philosophical skills of reasoning and analysis
to clarify these issues.
 There is no “master theory” of science that covers
all the sciences.

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Section 3. Current discussions of
the social sciences
 Many reflective social scientists have called
for a rethinking of the foundations of the
social sciences.
 Philosophers can learn from these debates.

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Comparative historical sociology
 Study large historical structures (Theda Skocpol)
 Small-N research: a limited range of carefully
chosen cases
 Seek out historical causes by comparing similar
historical processes in different settings
 Historical process is contingent and path-
dependent
 The study of revolutions, corruption, collective
action, and social welfare systems

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Social causal mechanisms
 Social change occurs through concrete
social causal mechanisms (Charles Tilly)
 It is a legitimate social science research
goal to attempt to uncover the social
mechanisms at work in particular cases.
 Example: the effects of free-rider behavior
in the provision of collective goods

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Case study methodology
 A research strategy aimed at discovery of
causal mechanisms through detailed study
of individual historical cases.
 Process-tracing: “the attempt to trace the
links between possible causes and observed
outcomes” (George and Bennett).

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New institutionalism
 New emphasis on the causal role that
institutions play in social process
 Detailed studies of the particulars of some
social institutions through which social
behavior is structured.
 Example: rules defining liability for grazing
animals (Shasta County)
 Example: different technology regimes in
different countries lead to very different
implementation of technology like railroads
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Social ontology
 New efforts to provide a better framework
for defining social entities (Andrew Abbott)
 Do social things have fixed, permanent
properties?
 Or are they malleable and flexible, changing
substantially over time?
 “A social entity is not a fixed thing with
permanent properties.… It is rather a
continuing swirl of linked social activities.”
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The cultural turn
 New recognition of the causal role played by
cultural differences: norms, practices, attitudes,
beliefs.
 The value of turning to some of the tools of
ethnography to study subjects not usually
considered by anthropologists -- e.g. industrial
change.
 “Culture is a feature of all social life, and every
area of social science research needs the
theoretical ability to analyze the role of culture.”

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Quantitative social science
 It is crucial that we understand the presuppositions
that are made in applying various statistical tools
to social data.
 The logic of experimentation is difficult or
impossible to reproduce in the area of social
research, and “quasi-experimentation” does not
serve the same function.
 Conclusions about causation based on discovery
of correlations must be provided with theories of
the underlying social causal mechanisms.

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Section 4. A philosophy of
social science
 Summary --
 Methodological localism
 Microfoundations thesis
 The importance of causal mechanisms
 The lack of strong social regularities and
generalizations

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Section 4.1. Methodological
localism
 How does the social world work? I offer a
social ontology I refer to as “Methodological
Localism”.
 The “molecule” of all social life is the socially
constructed and socially situated individual,
who lives and acts within a set of local social
relationships.
 There are large social structures; but these are
only possible insofar as they are embodied in
the actions and states of socially constructed
individuals.

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Battle of the Overpass

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Ontology and methodology
 We need a defensible ontology of the social
world before we can intelligently choose
methods and theories.
 The ontology doesn’t dictate how we
conduct research; but it places constraints
on the nature of the theories and methods
we use.
 ML does not entail that our methods of
research need to proceed from the local to
the macro.
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Microfoundations for social
processes
 An assertion of a structure or process at the
macro-social level must be supplemented by
 Knowledge about what it is about the local
circumstances of choice of individuals that leads
them to act in such a way as to bring about the
macro-structure;
 Knowledge of the aggregative processes that lead
from individual actions to the macro-event or
structure
 We must be able to envision the pathways by
which socially constituted individuals are
influenced by distant social conditions.

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Four large areas of questions
for the social sciences
 what makes individual agents tick?
 accounts or mechanisms of choice and action at the level of the
individual; performative action, rational action, impulse, ...
 how are individuals formed and constituted?
 accounts of social development, acquisition of preferences,
worldview, moral frameworks.
 How are individuals situated?
 institutions, incentives, constraints
 how are individual agents' actions aggregated to meso
and macro level?
 social mechanisms aggregating individual actions

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…
 These areas of research combine to give
upward and downward social influence. Social
institutions and facts influence agents; and
agents' actions influence institutions and
outcomes.

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Advantages of methodological
localism
 The approach represents a limited social
ontology.
 The approach avoids reification: the
postulation of permanent “essences”
corresponding to our concepts.
 Localism provides an intellectual
foundation for almost all forms of social
research.

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Section 4.2. Causal mechanisms
 Social explanation depends on the discovery of
underlying causal mechanisms giving rise to
outcomes of interest.
 There are many kinds of social causal
mechanisms. Examnple: free-rider behavior
 Explanation does not reduce to the discovery of
regularities; instead, the discovery of causal
mechanisms explains the regularities.
 Social outcomes are highly contingent and
path-dependent.

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The nature of social causal
mechanisms
 The causal properties of social entities derive
from the structured circumstances of agency of
the individuals who make up social entities.
 “Agency” and “structure” are fundamental,
and each underlies and constrains the other.
 Social causes work through the influence of
patterns of social behavior on individual
actions, beliefs, values, and choices (micro-
foundations thesis)
 All “macro-” causation must be grounded in
facts about local agents.

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Section 4.3. Generalizations
and predictions
 Some social scientists and philosophers believe
that scientific knowledge is inseparable from
the discovery of strong general laws.
 The laws of planetary motion govern the
motions of the planets; the laws of gravitation
explain the laws of planetary motion.
 “Naturalism” is the view of the social sciences
that insists on the analogies between the social
and natural sciences.

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Social contingency
 Naturalism is a bad model for the social
sciences.
 Social outcomes are the result of individual
actions and the contingent properties of specific
social arrangements.
 So we should not expect strong regularities or
“laws of nature” in the domain of social
phenomena.
 We will find “weak” regularities; but these
derives entirely from the common features of
agency within structure.

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Prediction?
 Social regularities “emerge” rather than
“govern”.
 Does science support prediction?
 My view is that the social sciences provide only
very weak grounds for making predictions
about future social outcomes.
 The regularities that the social sciences
discover are weak and conditional.
 The entities and structures of the social world
are plastic and changeable.
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Prediction and explanation
 Both explanation and limited prediction
in the social sciences depend on our
ability to identify causal mechanisms
within the social process.

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Section 5. Conclusion
 The social sciences need a better social
ontology.
 The natural sciences do not provide a
good analogy for the social sciences.

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A “post-positivist” theory for
the social sciences
 Contingency
 Causal mechanisms
 The centrality of socially-constituted
local actors in all social explanation
 The diversity of the social world
 The multiplicity of the methods of
inquiry and explanation that the social
sciences can employ.

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Wreck at Montparnasse

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END

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