if we had started with different philosophical frameworks and different metaphors, we would have arrived at different sociologies

TO BE NOTED: From Understanding Society:

"Philosophical frameworks in the social sciences

It is fairly evident that there were substantive ontological assumptions about how the social world worked that guided the founders of sociology: individuals create social outcomes (Mill), norms and values have a superordinate role in social action (Durkheim), the problem of social order is the fundamental problem for sociology (Durkheim), crises are common within capitalism (Marx), social events are meaningful and historically particular (Dilthey), modern society is marked by impersonal social institutions (Tönnies) .... Assumptions at this level guided the thinking of specific theorists as they developed conceptual schemes in terms of which to understand the social world and advanced theories about how the social world worked.

We should therefore not imagine that the social sciences developed as an abstract, logical solution to a simple problem, as perhaps naive empiricism might have suggested: identify the domain of social phenomena that constitute the declared subject matter of a given discipline of social science; examine and classify the phenomena so as to discover whatever regularities are to be found among them; formulate theoretical hypotheses about the laws that govern these phenomena; and explain the patterns and events that are discovered as the consequences of these hypothetical laws. Instead, each of the founders of the social sciences came to his or her studies with fairly specific pre-scientific ideas about what the domain of the social world was and how it should be explained. These ideas are both ontological and methodological; and all of them are contestable. Perhaps we might describe this framework as a “folk philosophy of knowledge” that is to some extent unexamined but that guides the pursuit of knowledge, the form that it takes, and the ways in which it is evaluated.

German intellectual historian Fritz Ringer tries to locate Max Weber's intellectual origins within what he calls an "intellectual field" -- as he puts it, "a constellation of positions that are meaningful only in relation to one another, a constellation further characterized by differences of power or authority, by the opposition between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and by the role of the cultural preconscious, of tacit 'doxa' that are transmitted by inherited practices, institutions, and social relations"; Max Weber's Methodology: The Unification of the Cultural and Social Sciences, p. 5. I think that Ringer is raising a question quite similar to mine here: what are the substantive reference points and conceptual presuppositions that the theorist brings to his theory and inquiry as he sets out. And this question is particularly crucial at the beginning; later theorists are in turn formed by their readings and reactions to the theories and systems of the prior generation.

Naturalism and positivism -- the idea that the social sciences ought to resemble the natural sciences, and the idea that the goal of science is the discovery of empirically supported lawlike generalizations -- constituted a powerful folk philosophy of science that was shared by Durkheim, Mill, and Comte. Given the power of the natural sciences in the nineteenth century, naturalism is unsurprising—even though it is profoundly misleading when applied to the social world. (See an earlier posting on non-naturalistic models of social science for more on the shortcomings of naturalism as a framework for social inquiry.)

But naturalism and positivism were not the only substantive philosophical frameworks that influenced the first generation of the social sciences. The hermeneutic tradition was a strikingly different starting point for the rigorous investigation and explanation of social realities. The hermeneutic tradition derived from literary and biblical interpretation; it looked at history and human affairs as a body of meaningful signs that required interpretation. And it emphasized the singular over the general, the historically particular over the law-like generalization. Dilthey's hermeneutic philosophy offered a non-positivist, non-causalist starting point for the "human sciences". The intellectual tradition that Dilthey absorbed and re-deployed as a basis for the human sciences was philosophically rigorous and committed to careful argumentation and interpretation. But it differed profoundly from the epistemology of empiricism and positivism.

The key point here should not be lost. It is that the various efforts to forge a scientific theory of society are partly empirical and theoretical; but they are also partly metaphysical and epistemic, grounded in pre-scientific assumptions about the nature of the social world and the nature of empirical study of society that are only partially expressed and are inherently debatable. Metaphors, pictures, hunches, and the thinker's own experiences play a deeply important role in the development of sociological frameworks. This is why it is appropriate to refer to the "sociological imagination." There are other starting points; and if we had started with different philosophical frameworks and different metaphors, we would have arrived at different sociologies. So engaging with the philosophy of social science is a fruitful way of trying to rethink the presuppositions of existing approaches to a "science of society".

A prior posting on philosophy and the social sciences addresses this issue as well. Here is a posting on the roots of the philosophy of social science and a posting on continental philosophy of social science that are relevant as well.

Posted by Daniel Little at 9:56 PM

the view that the foundation of social action and outcome is the local, socially-located and socially constructed individual person

I can't write philosophy as it is written today. I could in college and graduate school, but not well. I write like Wittgenstein and Austin spoke. To me, that is how philosophy should be written. Otherwise, it should be written like Plato or Kierkegaard, in a narrative fashion. However, I do respect philosophers who can clearly articulate their points, and this post does so on Understanding Society:

"A better social ontology

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. The social world is not a system of law-governed processes( I AGREE ); 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( I AGREE ). (W. V. O. Quine’s metaphor of the bushes shaped to look like elephants comes to mind here; Word and Object.)

So the rule for the social world is – heterogeneity, contingency, and plasticity. And the metaphysics associated with classical thinking about the natural world( A MECHANISTIC APPROACH ) – laws of nature, common, unchanging structures, and predictable processes of change( EVEN HERE, THIS MODEL IS OF LIMITED USE ) – do not provide appropriate metaphors for our understandings and expectations of the social world. Nor do they suggest the right kinds of social science theories and constructs.( I AGREE )

Instead of naturalism, I suggest an approach to social science theorizing that emphasizes agency, contingency, and plasticity in the makeup of social facts( I CALL MY APPROACH A HUMAN AGENCY APPROACH ). It 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( I AGREE ). 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( I AGREE ). It emphasizes the importance of path-dependence in social outcomes. It suggests that the most valid 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 action and outcome is the local, socially-located and socially constructed individual person( I AGREE COMPLETELY ). 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( ABSOLUTELY ), 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 regularities of social outcome often result.( I AGREE )

How does this perspective fit with current work in the social sciences? There are several current fields of social research that are particularly well suited to this approach. One is the field of comparative historical sociology, in its use of fairly detailed studies of similar cases in order to identify common causal mechanisms. Kathleen Thelen’s astute studies of different institutions of skill formation in Germany, UK, US, and Japan are an excellent case in point; she asks the twin questions, what causal processes give stability to a set of institutions? And what causal processes lead to a process of transformation in those institutions? The research methods of comparative historical sociology, then, are particularly well suited to the ontology of contingency, plasticity, and causal mechanisms (How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan).

Ethnography gives us a different angle on this same ontology. Ethnographers can give us insight into culturally specific mentalities—the “socially constructed individuals”. And they can give concrete analysis of the institutions that both shape individuals and are in turn shaped by them. More generally, qualitative research methods can offer a basis for discovery of some of the features of agency, mentality, and culture within the context of which important social processes take place. A good current example is Leslie Salzinger's Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico's Global Factories, a study of the social construction of femininity in the factories of the maquiladoras. C. K. Lee's sociology of Chinese factory protests is also a model of a study that combines qualitative and quantitative methods; Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt.

The new institutionalism is a third theoretical perspective on social analysis and explanation. This approach postulates the causal reality of institutions; it highlights the point that differences across institutions lead to substantial differences in behavior; and it provides a basis for explanations of various social outcomes. The rules of liability governing the predations of cattle in East Africa or Shasta County, California, create very different patterns of behavior in cattle owners and other land owners in the various settings. (Mary Brinton and Victor Nee, The New Institutionalism in Sociology; Jean Ensminger, Making a Market: The Institutional Transformation of an African Society.) It is characteristic of the new institutionalism that researchers in this tradition generally avoid reifying large social institutions and look instead at the more proximate and variable institutions within which people live and act.( ALL THESE SOUND INTERESTING )

What kind of social science research and theory corresponds to these assumptions about social ontology? Here are some chief features--

• They make use of eclectic multiple theories and don't expect a unified social theory that explains everything ( GOOD )
  
• They are modest in their expectations about social generalizations ( GOOD )
  
• They look for causal mechanisms as a basis for social explanation ( OK )
  
• They anticipate heterogeneity and plasticity of social entities ( GOOD )
  
• They are prepared to use eclectic methodologies -- quantitative, comparative, case-study, ethnographic -- to discover the mechanisms and mentalities that underlie social change (GOOD )
  

We need a better sociology for the twenty-first century. If social scientists continue to be captivated by the scientific prestige of positivism and quantitative social science to the exclusion of other perspectives, they will be led to social science research that looks quite different from what would result from a view that emphasizes contingency and causal mechanisms. And if there are strong, engaging, and empirically rigorous examples of other ways of conducting social research that can come into broad exposure in the social sciences—then there is a greater probability of emergence of a genuinely innovative and imaginative approach to the problem of social knowledge.( THIS SEEMS CORRECT )

Posted by Daniel Little at 9:50 PM