1.1 Introduction
The contemporary meaning of the term âanalytical sociologyâ started to circulate informally through European academic space in the mid-1990s (see Manzo, 2010: 138). Still absent from the seminal collection of essays by Hedström and Swedberg (1998a) on social mechanisms, the expression âanalytical sociologyâ officially entered the sociological vocabulary with Hedström's Dissecting the Social (Hedström, 2005) to denote the sociological perspective that seeks systematically to formulate and empirically test micro-founded, mechanism-based explanations of complex macro-level patterns and dynamics.
Despite the considerable efforts at theoretical clarification made by Hedström (2005), and despite the conceptual richness of the essays subsequently collected by Hedström and Bearman (2009a) and by Demeulenaere (2011a), doubts have been raised concerning the need for analytical sociology and its originality. Qualitative-oriented symbolic interactionists (see Sawyer, 2007; 2011), pragmatists (see Abbott, 2007a; Gross, 2009), cultural sociologists (Lizardo, 2012; Santoro, 2012), rational-choice theorists (Opp, 2007; 2013a), as well as philosophers of social sciences like Bunge (2007) or Little (2012a), have all criticized analytical sociology's understanding of mechanism-based thinking as based on narrow and unoriginal theoretical foundations.
This is an interesting puzzle for (historically oriented) sociologists of knowledge. Indeed, when one considers the arguments brought against analytical sociology (see, in particular, Lizardo, 2012), it seems as if some authoritative scholars have artfully constructed an unoriginal sociological approach with an uncanny ability to mobilize a large stock of institutional and cognitive resources and to attract a considerable amount of attention, including that of scholars who feel it necessary to attack this new intellectual construct and denounce its emptiness, thereby opening the eyes of its blind followers.
At first glance, this puzzle can be resolved by positing that both the construction of analytical sociology and the critical reactions against it simply result from a struggle for academic identity in which false problems and transitory novelties arise because actors intentionally emphasize minor points while ignoring the fundamental ones. I prefer to take seriously, and believe in the intellectual honesty of, both the advocates and critics of analytical sociology. It well may be that the diversity and complexity of the cognitive content of analytical sociology explain both the attention received by the approach and the objections brought against it.
First, there are diverse understandings as to the purpose of analytical sociology. Some maintain that the task of analytical sociology is to clarify what a good sociological explanation is in general, thus endorsing a strong normative stance which ultimately decrees what is scientific and what is not (see Demeulenaere, 2011b: 1). This position (with reason) irritates some observers (see Little, 2012a, and, partly, Gross, 2013). Others reject this imperialistic attitude and claim that analytical sociology âonly provides a âsyntaxâ for explanation: that is to say, a set of rules on how hypotheses about mechanisms underlying the regularities of social life can be theoretically designed and empirically testedâ (see Manzo, 2010: 162; see also Hedström and Ylikoski, this volume) without implying that those who do not conform with this âsyntaxâ are ipso facto mistaken. Even more liberally, others claim that analytical sociology is only one of the possible ways to conduct âgoodâ sociology, thus implying that the quest for mechanism-based explanations is not necessarily to be considered the priority (see Bearman, 2012).
Analytical sociology is also diverse with respect to some fundamental theoretical and methodological choices. Not all advocates of analytical sociology make the same assessment of the role that rational choice theory should play in model building (see Hedström and Ylikoski, this volume; Manzo, 2013b). From a methodological point of view, some of them distrust quantification and formalization (see Boudon, 2012; Elster, 2007; 2009a), whereas others consider the formal modeling of a mechanism to be a crucial research step (see Hedström and Bearman, 2009b; Hedström, 2005: Ch. 6; Manzo, 2012a).
This diversity has an advantage. Different scholars with different theoretical and methodological orientations can become interested and involved in analytical sociology. This is the success part of the story. The advantage comes with a cost, however. The heterogeneity of analytical sociology dilutes and obscures the perception of its originality. This facilitates the task of skeptical observers.
The complexity of the cognitive content of analytical sociology is likely to generate a similar twofold effect on its reception. From its very beginning, in fact, this intellectual movement has relied on a multi-dimensional combination of conceptual, epistemological, ontological, and methodological elements (see Manzo, 2010). As the topics covered by Hedström's Dissecting the Social show, analytical sociology requires us to reflect at the same time on the principles of scientific explanation, the meaning of methodological individualism, the content of the theory of action, the role of social networks, the problem of the microâmacro transition, and the advantages and shortcomings of statistical methods and formal modeling for the empirical testing of sociological theories.
These are difficult questions that bear upon some of the most fundamental aspects of social inquiry. They have long occupied philosophers of social sciences and social scientists. It is therefore not surprising that a large number of scholars have become interested in analytical sociology. This approach is seen by many as a new intellectual space in which old questions can be again addressed and hopefully developed further. At the same time, given the fundamental importance of these questions, the answers proposed by analytical sociology are likely to provoke controversies. This explains the (strong) critical reactions against the approach: in particular against some of its crucial assertions on methodological individualism and rational-choice theory (see Little, 2012a; Opp, 2013a).
The complexity of the analytical sociology research program also helps explain the criticism that it lacks originality. For assessment of analytical sociology's novelty requires the effort to consider the entire set of questions addressed and the coherence of the entire set of replies provided. What matters is the overall picture. Many of the theoretical and methodological proposals of analytical sociology have deep roots in sociology, and several areas of contemporary sociology also focus on some of them. However, the originality of analytical sociology stems from its integration of these elements into a unitary ...
