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Social science has taken a noticeable turn, with new energy infusing the study of social mechanisms and causal processes that unite the classic micro-macro divide. The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology, edited by Peter Hedström and Peter Bearman, is an impressive effort to guide the research agendas sure to follow. The volume is a comprehensive intellectual treat and an indispensible tool for sociologists seeking to master the analytic turn. (Professor Robert J. Sampson, Harvard University )
A fundamental reformulation of sociology, with profound implications across the social sciences. (Joshua M. Epstein, The Brookings Institution, author of Generative Social Science )
This formidable volume puts on display an impressive array of leading scholars, each grappling with key substantive and methodological topics in contemporary sociology. The chapters provide both a masterful summary of existing research and a valuable roadmap for future investigation. (Donald Green, A. Whitney Griswold Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University )
A fundamental reformulation of sociology, with profound implications across the social sciences. (Joshua M. Epstein, The Brookings Institution, author of Generative Social Science )
This formidable volume puts on display an impressive array of leading scholars, each grappling with key substantive and methodological topics in contemporary sociology. The chapters provide both a masterful summary of existing research and a valuable roadmap for future investigation. (Donald Green, A. Whitney Griswold Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University )
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Analytical sociology is a strategy for understanding the social world. It is concerned with explaining important social facts such as network structures, patterns of residential segregation, typical beliefs, cultural tastes, and common ways of acting. It explains such facts by detailing in clear and precise ways the mechanisms through which the social facts were brought about. Making sense of the relationship between micro and macro thus is one of the central concerns of analytical sociology. The approach is a contemporary incarnation of Robert K. Merton's notion of middle-range theory and presents a vision of sociological theory as a tool-box of semi-general theories each of which is adequate for explaining certain types of phenomena. The Handbook brings together some of the most prominent sociologists in the world. Some of the chapters focus on action and interaction as the cogs and wheels of social processes, while others consider the dynamic social processes that these actions and interactions bring about.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Interesting, but not Definitive
13 Feb 2010
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The central fact about contemporary sociology is that it has not core theory. This doesn't prevent applied sociologists from doing very good word based on what is called "middle level theory." But what one learns in graduate school is parade of sociological gurus, such as Pareto, Simmel, Weber, Durkheim, Parsons, Homans, Goffman, Garfinkle, Schutz, and so on. Moreover the culture of high level sociological theory is that one must uniquely individual, basing one's ideas as much as possible on one's own psyche, not the work of previous researchers. Doing high level sociological theory is thus like painting or writing fiction. This of course is but the cause and the effect of the absence of core sociological theory.
Obviously, then, sociology is a science only from the middle level down, and it is to the credit of a younger generation of sociological theorists that they are trying to create at least a unified middle-level theory, which the authors of this handbook call "analytical sociology." There are two major points to make about this new school of thought (I will call it a "school" in that Hedström and Bearman argue eloquently in the "Foundations" part of the book that it has enough unity to define it as a cogent intellectual entity). First, the analytical foundations of neighboring fields, psychology, biology, economics, and political science have analytical cores that are deeply mathematical, and students learn to deal with the core even if they themselves favor applied work. In this Handbook there are virtually no equations, and certainly no analytical theory based on formal modeling. Second, the editors' exposition of core analytical sociology has no substantive principles at all, but merely methodological principles. The first fifty pages, outlining analytical sociology, are virtually exclusively methodological.
Are these facts a problem? I believe they are. Methodology is for the philosophers, not for the scientists. And scientist should be able to formulate and understand, if not personally produce, analytical theory in the form of mathematical models. The problem, of course, is that most "analytical sociologists" reject the rational actor model in any form, and this is a big mistake. I should note that in 1995, Hedström and Swedeberg wrote a very insightful paper urging the adoption of the rational actor model by sociologists. This book is a big step back.
Despite the failure of this Handbook to credibly establish "analytical sociology," there are many fine contributions by individual authors, Parts II and IV being especially useful. There is nice chapter on emotions by Jon Elster, an excellent chapter on beliefs by Jens Rydgren, and a decent job of explaining signaling models without equations by Diego Gambetta. Typical for sociologists who are afraid of being assimilated by economics and psychology, fine chapters on game theory and behavioral game theory are relegated to the back of the book.
Obviously, then, sociology is a science only from the middle level down, and it is to the credit of a younger generation of sociological theorists that they are trying to create at least a unified middle-level theory, which the authors of this handbook call "analytical sociology." There are two major points to make about this new school of thought (I will call it a "school" in that Hedström and Bearman argue eloquently in the "Foundations" part of the book that it has enough unity to define it as a cogent intellectual entity). First, the analytical foundations of neighboring fields, psychology, biology, economics, and political science have analytical cores that are deeply mathematical, and students learn to deal with the core even if they themselves favor applied work. In this Handbook there are virtually no equations, and certainly no analytical theory based on formal modeling. Second, the editors' exposition of core analytical sociology has no substantive principles at all, but merely methodological principles. The first fifty pages, outlining analytical sociology, are virtually exclusively methodological.
Are these facts a problem? I believe they are. Methodology is for the philosophers, not for the scientists. And scientist should be able to formulate and understand, if not personally produce, analytical theory in the form of mathematical models. The problem, of course, is that most "analytical sociologists" reject the rational actor model in any form, and this is a big mistake. I should note that in 1995, Hedström and Swedeberg wrote a very insightful paper urging the adoption of the rational actor model by sociologists. This book is a big step back.
Despite the failure of this Handbook to credibly establish "analytical sociology," there are many fine contributions by individual authors, Parts II and IV being especially useful. There is nice chapter on emotions by Jon Elster, an excellent chapter on beliefs by Jens Rydgren, and a decent job of explaining signaling models without equations by Diego Gambetta. Typical for sociologists who are afraid of being assimilated by economics and psychology, fine chapters on game theory and behavioral game theory are relegated to the back of the book.
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