New Directions in the Philosophy of Social Science

Daniel Little

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781783487394
• eBook ISBN: 9781783487417
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Social Philosophy

Philosophy matters for the social sciences. Our world faces ever more complex and hazardous problems and, social science ontology and methods need to be adequate to the changing nature of the social realm. Imagination and new ways of thinking are crucial to the social sciences.

Based on Daniel Little's popular blog, this book provides an accessible introduction to the latest developments and debates in the philosophy of social science. Each chapter addresses a leading issue in the philosophy of the social sciences today. Little advocates for an 'actor-centred sociology', endorsing the idea of meso-level causation and proposing a solution to the problem of 'mechanisms or powers?'. The book draws significant conclusions from the facts of complexity and heterogeneity in the social world. The book develops a series of arguments that serve to provide a new framework for the philosophy of social science through deep engagement with social scientists and philosophers in the field. Topics covered include:

- the heterogeneity and plasticity of the social world;
- the complexity of social causation;
- the nuts and bolts of causal mechanisms;
- the applicability of the theory of causal powers to the social world;
- the intellectual coherence of the perspective of scientific realism in application to social science.

Chapter 1

A Better Social Ontology

The subject of social ontology has often been treated as an afterthought compared to epistemology and the theory of explanation in the philosophy of social science. But I believe that the social sciences need to be framed out of consideration of a better understanding of the nature of the social—a better social ontology—if we are to be more successful in understanding and explaining the processes of social change the twenty-first century presents. The social world has characteristics that fundamentally distinguish it from the natural world—heterogeneity, plasticity, and contingency, to name several. The social world is not a system of law-governed processes; it is instead a mix of different sorts of institutions, forms of human behavior, natural and environmental constraints, and contingent events. The entities that make up the social world at a given time and place have no particular ontological stability; they do not fall into “natural kinds”; and there is no reason to expect deep similarity across a number of ostensibly similar institutions—states, for example, or labor unions.

A central thrust here is this: it is important for social scientists to avoid the fallacy of “naturalism”—the idea that social science should resemble natural science and the idea that social entities have a similar constitution and ontology to natural entities.

Why are these ontological questions important to the philosophy of social science? And, how could they possibly contribute to better research and theory in the social sciences? One answer is that it is not really possible to investigate any domain without having a good idea of what sorts of things the domain consists of. So, attempting to arrive at perspicuous models of what the social world is made up of is a necessary step on the way to more specific forms of empirical and causal research.

A second answer derives from recognition of the harm that has been done to the cause of knowledge by misconceived ontologies in the history of science. This has been especially true in areas of knowledge adjoining human life and activity—radical behaviorism in psychology, naturalism and positivism in sociology, and what Andrew Abbott calls the “variables paradigm” in quantitative social science (Abbott 1998). Better science will result from a more propitious ontology, because we will not be in the situation of trying to force the social world into the wrong sorts of boxes.

Third, there are good reasons for thinking that reasoning about social ontology is possible. If ontological thinking about the social world were purely apriori, then we might justifiably be skeptical about our capacity to move from philosophy to the world. But we are participants and observers within social reality. We are participants in organizations, we find ourselves in the grips of ideologies and normative systems, and we are both wielders and subjects of power. So, theorizing about social reality of ontology is not wholly apriori; rather, it is more akin to a form of intelligent observation of real social processes in which we participate. Ontological thinking is really a form of empirically informed theorizing, at a fairly abstract level.

What do we see when we look at the social world afresh? Instead of imagining the social world in analogy with the law-governed world of natural phenomena, I suggest an approach to social science theorizing that emphasizes agency, contingency, and plasticity in the makeup of social facts. This perspective recognizes that there is a degree of pattern in social life—but emphasizes that these patterns fall far short of the regularities associated with laws of nature. It emphasizes contingency of social processes and outcomes. It insists upon the importance and legitimacy of eclectic use of social theories: the processes are heterogeneous, and therefore it is appropriate to appeal to different types of social theories as we explain social processes. It emphasizes the importance of path dependence in social outcomes. It suggests that the most justifiable scientific statements in the social sciences have to do with the discovery of concrete social-causal mechanisms through which some types of social outcomes come about.

And, finally, this approach highlights what I call “methodological localism”: the view that the foundation of social processes, structures, and changes is the local, socially located, and socially constructed individual person (Little 2006). The individual is socially constructed, in that her modes of behavior, thought, and reasoning are created through a specific set of prior social interactions. And, her actions are socially situated, in the sense that they are responsive to the institutional setting in which she chooses to act. Purposive individuals, embodied with powers and constraints, pursue their goals in specific institutional settings; and patterns of social outcome often result. Ultimately the social world consists of nothing but compounds, aggregations, assemblages, and complex systems of these forms of socially situated agency.

New Metaphors for the Social

We need new metaphors in terms of which to think of the social world. The social world is not like the natural world. Nature is composed of things, forces, and geometries that have strong determining regularities whose interactions can be formulated with mathematical precision. There are problems of indeterminacy in physics, of course; but fundamentally we can rely on the material properties of steel, the magnetic properties of the sun, or the curvature of space-time to continue to work as expected. Nature constitutes a system of interactions. And, this is because, fundamentally, nature consists of atoms and forces—just as some of the pre-Socratic philosophers thought 2,500 years ago. (Some will object that this characterization overlooks quantum mechanics and the peculiar characteristics of the subatomic world. That is true, of course; but it is not relevant to our concerns about the nature of the social world. The social world is not affected by quantum physics, contrary to Alexander Wendt’s arguments (Wendt 2015).)

The social world is different. It is not a system, but rather a patchwork, a mixture, an ensemble, a Rube Goldberg machine, a collage, or a jumble. Its properties arise from the activities, thoughts, motivations, emotions, and interactions of socially situated persons. Outcomes are influenced by a hodgepodge of obstacles and gradients that crop up more or less randomly—leading to substantial surprises relative to how we might have expected things to work out. Agents are not fully predictable or comprehensible; and their actions and interactions are indeterminate as well. We discover that people usually compare costs and benefits when they make choices, and we invent rational choice theory and microeconomics. But these are simply abstract models of one aspect of human behavior and choice, and it is rare indeed to find large social processes that are governed exclusively by this aspect of agency. We see large, somewhat stable social structures that persist over time—patterns of habitation and social exchange (cities), patterns of racial or ethnic discrimination, and rising and falling rates of violent crime—and we believe there are large social causes and influences that help to explain these dynamic configurations. But we should never imagine that social outcomes and patterns are the manifestation of an underlying abstract social order, analogous to laws of nature. Social causes are heterogeneous, probabilistic, agent driven, exception laden, and interconnected—with the result that we cannot hope to have a full model of the workings of a social system. We should not reify social entities and structures.

The heterogeneity and contingency associated with the social world suggested by this set of ideas do not imply that social scientific research, knowledge, and explanation are unattainable. This new perspective implies, rather, that we need to understand the limits on representation, abstraction, and prediction that are implied by the fundamental nature of social things. Our knowledge of any particular snapshot of social reality is inherently partial and incomplete.

The Flea Market Analogy

Consider a provocative alternative metaphor for the social world: a large urban flea market. The wares on sale on a particular Saturday are simply the sum of the accidents of circumstance that led a collection of sellers to converge on that particular day. There are some interesting patterns that emerge over time—in the spring, one finds more used lawnmowers, and in times of dearth, one finds more family treasures. These regularities require explanation. But they do not derive from some governing “law of flea markets” that might be discovered. Instead, the flea market and the larger society are, alike, simply the aggregate result of large numbers of actions, motives, circumstances, and structures that turn kaleidoscopically and produce patterned but non-lawlike outcomes.

Is the flea market a helpful analogy for understanding the social? Does it serve to provide a different mental model in terms of which to consider the nature of social phenomena? What it has going for it is heterogeneity and contingency and an evident share of agent dependency. The people who show up on a given Saturday are a contingent and largely disorganized mix of humanity. And, the products that wind up on the jumble tables too are highly disorderly and random. Each has its own unique story for how it got there. There is no overall guiding design.

But there is also a degree of order underlying the apparent chaos of the jumble tables. All is not random in a flea market. The participants, for example: there are regular vendors, street people, police officers, health inspectors, jugglers, and pickpockets—as well as regular shoppers, tourists, school children, and occasional shoppers looking for a used toaster or a single kitchen chair. In most cases, there are reasons they are there—and the reasons are socially interesting. Moreover, the ethnographer of the flea market is likely enough to spot some seasonal or social patterns in the products and people present in a certain month or time of year. So, we can discern a blend of stochastic events and order. But the order that can be discerned is the result of a large number of overlapping, independent conditions and processes, not the manifestation of a few simple forces or a guiding system of laws.

Both accident and order are characteristic of important segments of the larger social world as well. The helter-skelter of the flea market is in fact highly analogous to many aspects of social phenomena—army recruitment, patterns of crime, mortgage defaults, and urban development. But it is also true that there are other social phenomena that are not so accidental. So, the jumble sale is perhaps less good as an analogy for highly organized and managed social processes—a tight administrative hierarchy, an orchestrated campaign event, or a coordinated attack in battle.

This addresses the “accidental conjunction” part of the analogy. What about the “composite order” part of the analogy? This element too works pretty well for many examples of social phenomena. When students of the professions discover that there are interesting patterns of recruitment into accountancy or the officer corps, or discover that there are similarities in the organizations of pharmacists and psychotherapists—they also recognize that these patterns result from complex, intertwined patterns of strategic positioning, organizational learning, and economic circumstances (Abbott 1988). In other words, the patterns and regularities are themselves the result of multiple social mechanisms, motives, and processes. And, these processes are in no way analogous to laws of nature.

So, all considered, the analogy of the flea market works pretty well as a mental model for many aspects of what we should expect of social phenomena: a degree of accident and conjunction, a degree of emerging pattern and order that results from many independent but converging social processes, and an inescapable dimension of agent dependency that refutes any hope of discovering an underlying, law-governed system.

Heterogeneity of the Social

Let us now focus more closely on several important ontological features of the social world. I maintain that heterogeneity is a very basic characteristic of the domain of the social. And, I think this makes a big difference for how we should attempt to study the social world “scientifically.” In what respects are social phenomena heterogeneous? And, why is this important?

Let’s start with some semantics. A heterogeneous group of things is the contrary of a homogeneous group, and we can define homogeneity as “a group of fundamentally similar units or samples.” A homogeneous body may consist of a group of units with identical properties, or it may be a smooth mixture of different things, consisting of a similar composition at many levels of scale. A fruitcake is nonhomogeneous, in that distinct volumes may include just cake or a mix of cake and dried cherries, or cake and the occasional walnut. The properties of fruitcake depend on which sample we encounter. A well-mixed volume of oil and vinegar, by contrast, is homogeneous in a specific sense: the properties of each sample volume are the same as any other. The basic claim about the heterogeneity of the social comes down to this: at many levels of scale we continue to find a diversity of social things and processes at work. Society is more similar to fruitcake than cheesecake.

Heterogeneity makes a difference for social science methodology because one of the central goals of positivist science is to discover strong regularities among classes of phenomena, and regularities appear to presuppose homogeneity of the things over which the regularities are thought to obtain. So, to observe that social phenomena are deeply heterogeneous at many levels of scale is to cast fundamental doubt on the goal of discovering strong social regularities. The fact of heterogeneity refutes crude positivism as a guide to social research.

Consider some of the forms of heterogeneity that the social world illustrates.

First is the heterogeneity that can be discovered within social categories of things—cities, religions, electoral democracies, and social movements. Think of the diversity within Islam documented so well by Clifford Geertz (Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia; Geertz 1968); the diversity at multiple levels that exists among great cities like Beijing, New York, Geneva, and Rio (institutions, demography, ethnic groups, economic characteristics, administrative roles, economic functions); the institutional variety that exists in the electoral democracies of India, France, and Argentina; or the wild diversity across the social movements of the right, from Franco to Le Pen to Trump.

Second is the heterogeneity of social causes and influences. Social events are commonly the result of a variety of different kinds of causes that come together in highly contingent conjunctions. A revolution may be caused by a protracted drought, a harsh system of land tenure, a new ideology of peasant solidarity, a communications system that conveys messages to the rural poor, and an unexpected disagreement among the rulers—all coming together at a moment in time. And, this range of causal factors, in turn, shows up in the background of a very heterogeneous set of effects. A transportation network, for example, may play a causal role in the occurrence of an epidemic, the spread of radical ideas, and a long, slow process of urban settlement. The causes of an event are a mixed group of dissimilar influences with different dynamics and temporalities, and the effects of a given causal factor are also a mixed and dissimilar group. This feature of social causation leads us to describe social and historical causation as “conjunctural” (Steinmetz 1998, 2004; Little 2000).

Third is the heterogeneity that can be discovered across and within social groups. It is not the case that all Kansans think alike (Frank 2005)—and this is true for whatever descriptors we might choose in order to achieve greater homogeneity (evangelical Kansans, urban evangelical Kansans, . . .). There ...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half Title
• 1 A Better Social Ontology
• 2 Actor-centered Sociology
• 3 Social Things
• 4 Reduction and Emergence
• 5 Generativity and Complexity
• 6 Social Causation
• 7 Social Realism
• Conclusion
• References
• Index
• About the Author