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Title: Levels of the


1
Levels of the Social
  • Daniel Little
  • August 2004

2
Structure of the talk
  • Doldrums in social science theory and research
  • The problem of levels and its importance
  • The core questions of levelontology, inquiry,
    explanation
  • My position
  • Microfoundations
  • Causal mechanisms
  • Methodological localism
  • Survey of good current social science research
  • Conclusions

3
Starting points
  • We need new ideas and models for conceptualizing
    social science and the social.
  • Empirical methods and conceptual confusion
  • Bad tropes for the social sciences
  • Naturalismno!
  • Social kinds or essencesno!
  • Strong generalizations across social
    phenomenano!
  • Hyper-quantitative approaches to social
    inquiryno!

4
And yet
  • Social explanation is possible
  • Causal relations obtain within the social world
  • Agents within structures give rise to social
    patterns
  • High-level structures w/signatures and causal
    properties exist

5
Better ideas
  • It is in the context of these critical thoughts
    that the question of level acquires its urgency.
  • Are there better themes, motifs, or metaphors for
    social science, organized social inquiry, or
    social theory and observation?
  • There are. Emphasize
  • Plasticity and variation of the social
  • Emphasis on causal mechanisms within the social
    realm.
  • Dependence of the social on structured human
    agency
  • The fertility of theoretical pluralism/eclecticism

6
A new approach
  • There is a new approach to the "levels" question
    one that eschews high-level structures,
    capitalism-feudalism state high-level causal
    connection--in favor of local social
    relationships, local causal mechanisms, a nexus
    of "agent within a web of social relationships".
    Tilly Lee Pomeranz. Brenner in his own way (not
    "capitalism", but a specific complex of locally
    binding social-property relationships). Sabel on
    contingency of industrial development.

7
Setting up the problem
8
The problem of level
  • It is possible to define the focus of analysis,
    description, and explanation in the social
    sciences at a range of levels.
  • We can characterize the social from the
    concrete level of individuals in specific
    relations to the global structures and
    institutions that constitute the modern world
    system.
  • We can distinguish micro, meso, and macro
    local and global
  • We can assert causal connections from one level
    to another.

9
The problem
  • Do social sciences differ in their selection of
    level?
  • Are there theoretical or methodological
    considerations that suggest one level or another
    is preferable?
  • Are there reasons to choose one level of
    analysis, inquiry, and explanation over another?

10
Dimensions of micro-macro
  • Individual-social
  • local-regional-national-global
  • temporal extent (long, short)
  • proximity to the individual relationships-organiz
    ations-structures
  • more general--more specific

11
An old question
  • This may seem to be a tired question, invoking
    old debates about methodological individualism
    and holism.
  • Id like to frame the issues in ways that open
    new and more fruitful insights.
  • We should seek out a methodology and ontology
    that is well suited to the intellectual challenge
    of the social sciences, given what we know about
    the social realm.
  • This issue is highly important because we often
    make the mistake of reification of social
    phenomena and we go in for a naive naturalism
    that offers bad analogies with the ordering of
    "natural" phenomena.

12
The core questions
  • Ontology are there social entities that do not
    depend on individuals?
  • Explanatory do social explanations need to
    "reduce" to arguments about the actions of
    individuals? Are there any "level" restrictions
    on social explanation?
  • Causal do social entities have causal powers not
    dependent upon the agency of individuals?

13
The core questions
  • Inquiry at what level should (a given style of)
    social inquiry focus its efforts at descriptive
    and explanatory investigation? What is the
    "right" level of social knowledge for given
    fields of social investigation?
  • Description are there "level" requirements or
    constraints on social description? can we give
    good descriptions of high-level social phenomena?
  • Generalization are there higher-level types of
    social entities that recur in different
    historical and social settings?

14
Inter-level positions that can be taken
  • Reductionism
  • Supervenience theory
  • Microfoundations
  • Methodological individualism
  • Holism
  • Structuralism
  • Methdological localism

15
Reductionism
  • Higher-level entities should be reduced to
    ensembles of lower-level entities.
  • We can and should replace higher-level concepts
    with lower-level concepts.
  • Explanation requires that we demonstrate how the
    higher-level outcomes derive from pure
    lower-level processes.

16
Particularism and local knowledge
  • There are no higher-level facts or structures
    there are only individuals in small social
    groups, in direct interaction with each other.

17
Holism
  • There are social facts that govern individuals.
  • The norms of protestantism govern the behavior of
    calvinist entrepreneurs (Weber) and protestant
    suicides (Durkheim)
  • There are emergent properties or irreducible
    causal powers among social phenomena.

18
Structuralism
  • Structures (states, markets, kinship systems)
    exercise causal roles independent of individuals
  • "large structures like the state or the market
    exert autonomous social / causal influence."
  • Structures are scientifically analogous to
    cognitive computational systems concerning the
    latterwe dont need to know the specific
    neuroanatomy in order to have a scientifically
    defensible theory of pattern recognition.

19
Supervenience theory
  • Higher-level entities and properties depend
    upon the properties of entities at lower levels.
  • No difference in higher level property or entity
    without a difference in lower-level properties.
  • The causal properties of the higher-level entity
    depend on the causal agency of the compounds of
    lower-level entities upon which it supervenes.
  • Does the effect the beauty of the painting has
    on us really reduce to the physical properties of
    the paint?

20
Chief arguments against holistic and
structuralist approaches
  • The reification argument
  • The action at a distance argument
  • The non-availability of high-level regularities
    argument
  • absence of direct causal powers not mediated by
    individual agents
  • ontological issues social kinds, lack of fixed
    recurring properties social plasticity

21
Problems with macro-social entities
  • complexity
  • multiple causal processes at work simultaneously
  • heterogeneity of phenomena--norms, institutions,
    rules, practices, ...
  • ontological issues social kinds, lack of fixed
    recurring properties
  • absence of direct causal powers not mediated by
    individual agents

22
Levels of inquiry and description local
  • There is legitimate social science interest in
    local, particular, ideographic description of
    practices, events, and outcomes.
  • Highly local studies local histories, local
    ethnographies, local sociological studies
  • Studies at this level focus on events,
    institutions, practices, and persons that are
    concretely described in situ.

23
Levels of inquiry local
  • But these sorts of studies commonly refer to
    trends, processes, structures, institutions, and
    forms of collective behavior that extend far
    beyond the local the Great Depression, the
    state, commodity markets, the influence of
    television, the influence of fundamentalism
    (Marcus and Fischer 1978 77 ff.)

24
Why choose the local?
  • Some good reasons, and some bad
  • the view that knowledge at this level is more
    concretely rooted in experience epistemically
    superior.
  • doubt about the availability of patterns that
    persist from local to regional.
  • view that variation rather than continuity is the
    rule for social phenomena.

25
Why choose the local?
  • Much of this comes down to a view about what we
    can know, or can know best the local, the
    direct, the unmediated. So there is an
    underlying positivism to the insistence on the
    local.
  • Another strong impulse towards the local comes
    from a perception that variation and novelty are
    more significant than continuity, similarity, and
    generality in social phenomena.

26
Legitimacy of the macro
  • There are supra-local entities and causes
  • For example systems of norms, social and
    political structures, institutions and
    organizations.
  • We can fruitfully study these through empirical
    research, and we can construct legitimate social
    explanations based on what we find.
  • But it is mandatory that we be able to provide
    micro-foundations for entities and causes at
    the macro-level.

27
A different take on the social
  • The socially situated individual
  • Social facts that influence individuals
  • Networks and other persons
  • Institutions
  • Norms
  • Worldviews and paradigms folk knowledge
  • Local and global institutions
  • Government and legal systems
  • Markets and economic institutions
  • News, media, and information sources

28
Levels of structures and entities
  • Ontology social entities at higher levels
  • E.g. state, trading regime, system of religious
    values, property regime
  • How are higher-level structures and entities
    embodied?
  • How do they exercise causal influence?
  • How do they affect individual behavior?
  • How do they influence other high-level structures
    and entities?

29
My thesis about social entities
  • Social entities supervene upon individuals they
    have no independent existence.
  • But social structures possess multiple
    functional realizability
  • It is a legitimate social question to ask which
    realization is actually in place?
  • Social entities convey causal properties through
    their effects, direct and indirect, on
    individuals and agency.
  • We need to exercise great caution in postulating
    high-level abstract structures that recur across
    instancesstate, mode of production, protestant
    ethic, Islam.

30
My thesis about social entities
  • Nonetheless social entities persist beyond the
    particular individuals who make them up at a
    given time, because of identifiable processes of
    social reproduction.
  • Social structures, institutions, and practices
    have a surprising degree of stability and
    stickiness over generations How so?
  • Social institutions, structures, and practices
    morph over time in response to opportunism and
    power.

31
Levels of explanation
  • Are there theoretically justifiable constraints
    on inter-level explanation?
  • Are the best explanations those that explain
    higher-level phenomena in terms of lower-level
    causes?

32
What is the levels of explanation problem?
  • Here we raise the question of causal primacy or
    causal adequacy what is the level of social
    activity at which we can confidently say
    circumstances and processes at this level cause
    or influence outcomes at other levels?
  • A benign reductionism is relevant here it is
    maintained that phenomena at higher levels need
    to be explained on the basis of facts at lower
    levels. Reductionism, methodological
    individualism, methodological localism, and
    supervenience are all pertinent in this context.

33
What is the levels of explanation problem?
  • It is a demand for
  • A thesis about causal ordering of phenomena in
    the social and behavioral world
  • A thesis about causal closure what things
    influence other things
  • A thesis about ontology and the reality of items
    identified at various levels

34
Microfoundations model
  • a specific thesis within the philosophy of social
    science
  • Claims about macro-level phenomena require
    hypotheses about the underlying local
    circumstances of purposive agents whose choices
    bring about the macro-outcome.
  • Agents within structures structures embodied in
    the states of individuals
  • Pure structural causation and functional
    arguments are precluded.
  • Methodological localism -- Identify the
    mechanisms at the local level!

35
Aggregative explanations
  • An aggregative explanation is one that provides
    an account of a social mechanism that conveys
    multiple individual patterns of activity and
    demonstrates the collective or macro-level
    consequence of these actions.
  • Example Mancur Olson, failures of collective
    action
  • Prisoners dilemma arguments

36
Causal realism
  • My general thesis Social explanation requires
    discovery of the underlying causal mechanisms
    that give rise to outcomes of interest.
  • Social mechanisms concrete social processes
  • Social explanation does not take the form of
    inductive discovery of laws
  • It also casts some doubt on the most general
    theories it looks instead for specific causal
    variation.
  • Variety, contingency, alternative pathways

37
The social mechanisms approach
  • This approach is relevant because mechanisms
    generally shed light on the local circumstances
    of individual agency, giving rise to higher-level
    processes and outcomes.
  • Hedström, Peter, and Richard Swedberg. 1998.
    Social Mechanisms An Analytical Approach to
    Social Theory, Studies in Rationality and Social
    Change. Cambridge, U.K. New York Cambridge
    University Press.
  • McAdam, Doug, Sidney G. Tarrow, and Charles
    Tilly. 2001. Dynamics of Contention, Cambridge
    Studies in Contentious Politics. New York
    Cambridge University Press.

38
Is there such a thing as macro-macro causation?
  • Yesbut only as mediated through
    micro-foundations. State institutions affect
    economic variables such as levels of
    investment, levels of unemployment, or infant
    mortality rates.
  • But only by changing the opportunities,
    incentives, powers, and constraints that confront
    agents.

39
A positive view
40
Three 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 individual agents' actions aggregated to
    meso and macro level?
  • theories of institutions markets and social
    mechanisms aggregating individual actions

41
Three large questions
  • These three areas of research combine to give
    upward and downward social influence. Social
    institutions and facts influence agents and
    agents' actions influence institutions and
    outcomes. This has some resonance with the
    "macro-micro-macro" analysis described in Coleman.

42
The ontology of methodological localism
  • The view Ive come to
  • METHODOLOGICAL LOCALISM
  • Socially situated individuals in local contexts
    constitute the molecule of social phenomena.
  • This level of description has greater realism
    than EITHER description at the global level and
    the a-social individual level.

43
Methodological localism
  • This is not an individualist position.
  • It invokes the social in the definition of the
    position of the individual.
  • It refers freely to norms, networks,
    institutions, belief frameworks, and other
    supra-individual constructs.
  • But it is a local social the socially
    constructed individual who is agent/actor.
  • Actors acquire their social properties as a
    result of a history of interactions with local
    institutions, organizations, networks, and other
    actors.

44
Social facts for the socially situated individual
  • The social-constructed-ness of the individual
    is itself the result of the actions of other
    socially situated individuals.
  • Norms are conveyed to the individual through
    specific local institutions and practices and
    embodied in the practical cognitive psychology
    of the individual.
  • Shaping institutions includeschools, religious
    gatherings, media social practices of
    accomplished adults.

45
More social facts
  • Institutions are embodied in local individuals
    who are differentially subject to conformity to
    institutional expectations.
  • Formal and informal norms and mechanisms of
    enforcement
  • The material aspects of institutionstrain
    tracks, banks, information networks, tax records

46
Methodological localism and microfoundations
  • Socially situated individualsindividuals with
    social properties and existing in social
    relations and social institutionsare the
    molecule of social phenomena.
  • Asserting facts about higher-level processes
    requires that we give an account of the
    microfoundations through which these processes
    come about.
  • I.e. the circumstances of socially situated
    individuals who then behave so as to bring about
    the observed outcome.

47
Aspects of methodological localism
  • Structures are plastic over time and space.
  • Individuals are interchangeable multiple
    realizability.
  • Macro entities exercise causal properties through
    the individuals who constitute them at a given
    time. This is a "social" fact, in that
    individuals are constrained by the (supervening)
    institutions within which they exist.
  • The complexity and looseness of the relation
    between levels that we find in human affairs.

48
Why localism?
  • The key to the looseness is human ability to
    create/imagine new forms of social interaction
    to innovate socially and collectively to defect
    from social expectations. As a result we get
    differential degrees of fit between individual
    action and "structures," "institutions," and
    "norms" we get a regular propensity to
    "morphing" of higher level structures. Agents
    create institutions they support institutions
    they conform their behavior to the incentives and
    inhibitions created by institutions they defy or
    quietly defect from norms they act
    opportunistically or on principle ...

49
Why localism?
  • So the hard question is not "Do institutions and
    structures exercise autonomous and
    supra-individual causal primacy?", since we know
    that they do not. Instead, the question, is, "To
    what extent and through what sorts of mechanisms
    do structures and institutions exert causal
    influence on individuals and other structures?"
  • We work on the basis of a thesis of
    supervenience "causal connection between A and B
    supervenes upon activities engaged by p1, ..., pn
    involved in A and leading to B"

50
Examples from good social science
  • Elvin, High-Level Equilibrium Trap

51
Goal of exploration of examples
  • Test methodological localism as an ontology and
    explanatory paradigm
  • Identify possible exceptions areas of social
    science research that deviate from ML
  • Consider whether there are other issues of
    level that arise in these examples
  • The general finding these many examples
    illustrate research at a range of levels but
    they almost always fit well into the large
    research question of identifying features of the
    socially situated actor and aggregate
    consequences of this setting.
  • So the maxim seek out causal mechanisms that
    work through socially situated agents is one
    that corresponds well to a range of levels of
    social science

52
The New Institutionalism in Sociology
  • Institutions as systems of incentives and
    constraints
  • Formal and informal constraints
  • Social networks at the bottom
  • Norms that induce and enforce the institutional
    requirements
  • Shasta County cattle trespass (Elickson)
  • Labor cooperation in Taiwanese farming
    (Pasternak)
  • Brinton, Mary C., and Victor Nee, eds. 1998. New
    Institutionalism in Sociology. New York Russell
    Sage Foundation.

53
Large political structures
  • Levi, Margaret. 1988. Of Rule and Revenue.
    Berkeley University of California.
  • Tilly, Charles. 1984. Big Structures, Large
    Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York Russell
    Sage Foundation.
  • How do states exercise influence throughout
    society?
  • What are the institutional embodiments at lower
    levels that secure the impact of law, taxation,
    conscription, contract enforcement,

54
Comparative historical social science
  • Identify levels of institutions that permit
    comparison across historical casesEngland and
    France, western Europe and China, England and
    Yangzi Delta
  • Dont reify institutions such as the state
    rather, bring the level of analysis down to
    specific institutional mechanisms of the
    transmission of power, decision-making, and
    knowledge-creation.
  • Wong, R. Bin. 1997. China Transformed Historical
    Change and the Limits of European Experience.
    Ithaca, New York Cornell University Press.

55
Political science theory
  • Rational choice theory
  • Highly consistent with the perspective of
    methodological localism
  • Less attentive to the workings of culture and
    institutions than desirable.
  • Bates, Robert H. 1981. Markets and States in
    Tropical Africa The Political Basis of
    Agricultural Policies, California Series on
    Social Choice and Political Economy. Berkeley
    University of California Press.
  • Popkin, Samuel L. 1979. The Rational Peasant
    The Political Economy of Rural Society in
    Vietnam. Berkeley University of California Press.

56
Anthropology and ethnography
  • Inquiry should be focused at the local level
    expect the ideographic don't expect regularities
    or similarities across cases.
  • Don't look for causal explanations look to
    provide meaningful interpretation of the actions
    and relationships that are discovered.
  • Supra-individual organizations are still pretty
    close to the ground, and readily understood as
    composed of individuals (with the caveat that
    specific individuals are replaceable without
    changing the organization)

57
Anthropology and ethnography
  • Ethnographic description of practices and
    worldviews
  • Local knowledge
  • Generalizing knowledge?
  • Geertz, Clifford. 1968. Islam Observed Religious
    Development in Morocco and Indonesia, The Terry
    Lectures, V. 37. New Haven, Yale University
    Press.
  • . 1983. Local Knowledge Further Essays in
    Interpretive Anthropology. New York Basic Books.
  • Turner, Victor Witter. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and
    Metaphors Symbolic Action in Human Society,
    Symbol, Myth, and Ritual. Ithaca N.Y. Cornell
    University Press.
  • Sahlins, Marshall David. 1976. Culture and
    Practical Reason. Chicago University of Chicago
    Press.

58
Ethnography
  • Connections between the local and the global
    political economy
  • How are extra-local economic and political forces
    conveyed and expressed in the local social
    practices?
  • Marcus, George E., and Michael M. J. Fischer.
    1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique An
    Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences.
    Chicago University of Chicago Press.
  • Comaroff, Jean. 1985. Body of Power, Spirit of
    Resistance The Culture and History of a South
    African People. Chicago University of Chicago
    Press.
  • Ortner, Sherry B., ed. 1999. The Fate of
    "Culture" Geertz and Beyond. Berkeley,
    California University of California Press.

59
the three questions for anthropology
  • inquiry should be focused at the local level
    expect the ideographic don't expect regularities
    or similarities across cases
  • don't look for causal explanations look to
    provide meaningful interpretation of the actions
    and relationships that are discovered
  • supra-individual organizations are still pretty
    close to the ground, and readily understood as
    composed of individuals (with the caveat that
    specific individuals are replaceable without
    changing the organization)

60
Sociology
  • Social movements
  • Race and identity. Critique of essentialism
    provides impetus for discovering the
    micro-mechanisms of identity formation and
    reproduction.
  • Example Lieberson on names. Identifies social
    mechanisms at the level of individual choice that
    blindly produce regular high-level outcomes.
  • Lieberson, Stanley. 2000. Matter of Taste How
    Names, Fashions, and Culture Change. New Haven,
    CT Yale University Press.
  • Eckstein, Susan, ed. 1989. Power and Popular
    Protest Latin American Social Movements.
    Berkeley University of California Press.

61
Example Social capital
  • Does this concept disaggregate into the strands
    of local interaction required by methodological
    localism?
  • It does. It is a measure, for local society, of
    the density of a certain kind of institution,
    organization, and network.
  • It is a measure at the level of the individual of
    the density of relationships he/she bears to
    organizations and institutions representing
    social capital.
  • Examples James Coleman (1988) Putnam, Bowling
    Alone, Lin, Social Capital

62
Example Modern World System
  • This construct looks global and non-local.
  • To an extent this is how Wallerstein has deployed
    the concept.
  • Nonetheless, it has a fairly straightforward
    avenue of connection to the local, in most cases.
  • When it does notit falls prey to the
    reification complaint.
  • Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern
    World-System I. Capitalist Agriculture and the
    Origins of the European World-Economy in the
    Sixteenth Century. New York.

63
The causal role of identities
  • To avoid simple formulations like peasants
    support the monarchy, Hindus hate Muslims,
    workers are proto-revolutionary
  • class consciousness, norms and values
  • What are the causal foundations are that
    reproduce and sustain this cluster of items?
  • What are some of the normative/coercive elements
    that gain consent around the behaviors associated
    with the identity?
  • relationship between the individual and a social
    network of interaction among people bearing this
    identity

64
The causal processes that constitute identities
  • Here concrete, careful, and surprising social
    science and historical investigation is called
    for
  • social theories of social development
  • evaluation of identity-shaping institutions
    family, church/mosque/temple
  • during childhood development through which the
    person absorbs values, cognitive frameworks,
    worldviews, and dispositions

65
Wrap-up My claims
  • Good social science is already consistent with
    methodological localism.
  • Researchers and theorists in each of the areas of
    the social sciences are generally providing
    insight into one or another of the nexuses
    presented by the socially-situated individual.
  • When theories deviate from this conception, they
    are typically falling into fallacious thinking
    functionalism, teleological thinking, blind
    structuralism, action at a distance

66
End (Battle of the Overpass)
67
End (Wreck at Montparnasse)
68
End (Central Places)
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