Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences

Annual Review of Sociology 36:49–67 (2010)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

During the past decade, social mechanisms and mechanism-based ex- planations have received considerable attention in the social sciences as well as in the philosophy of science. This article critically reviews the most important philosophical and social science contributions to the mechanism approach. The first part discusses the idea of mechanism- based explanation from the point of view of philosophy of science and relates it to causation and to the covering-law account of explanation. The second part focuses on how the idea of mechanisms has been used in the social sciences. The final part discusses recent developments in analytical sociology, covering the nature of sociological explananda, the role of theory of action in mechanism-based explanations, Merton’s idea of middle-range theory, and the role of agent-based simulations in the development of mechanism-based explanations.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The mechanisms of emergence.R. Keith Sawyer - 2004 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34 (2):260-282.
Social mechanisms and causal inference.Daniel Steel - 2004 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34 (1):55-78.
Mechanisms in the analysis of social macro-phenomena.Renate Mayntz - 2004 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34 (2):237-259.
Methodological individualism, explanation, and invariance.Daniel Steel - 2006 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 36 (4):440-463.
The Concept of Mechanism in Biology.Daniel J. Nicholson - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (1):152-163.
Contextualism, explanation and the social sciences.Harold Kincaid - 2004 - Philosophical Explorations 7 (3):201 – 218.
Do we need mechanisms in the social sciences?Julian Reiss - 2007 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 37 (2):163-184.
Nonreductive individualism part II—social causation.R. Keith Sawyer - 2003 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 33 (2):203-224.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-10-23

Downloads
172 (#104,485)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Petri Ylikoski
University of Helsinki

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references