What Are the “Social Sciences”?
The social sciences, and sociology in particular, are largely the product of the nineteenth century - and the European nineteenth century at that. Inspired by the successes of the natural sciences, including especially chemistry, physics, and biology, thinkers such as Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx set the goal of providing a “scientific” theory of society.
At bottom were several goals: rigorous factual study of social phenomena, explanation of social outcomes and patterns on the basis of more fundamental theories and laws, and understandings of social processes that would permit more effective interventions (e.g., policies, reforms, revolutions) to address social problems. These goals highlight several epistemic values: rigorous empirical inquiry, explanation, and a basis for effective intervention. But they also borrow some features of the natural sciences that prove to be ill-suited to the study of the social world. By this, I mean what can be referred to as “naturalism” (Thomas 1979, McIntyre 1996): an assumption that nature is governed by laws, a quest for unification under a single comprehensive theory, and a quest for systematization and prediction that proves to be unattainable with respect to social phenomena.The social sciences today encompass a much wider terrain, and they have proliferated into a handful of core disciplines, including economics, sociology, political science, and anthropology. Each discipline further subdivides into a diverse set of methods and theories, each inspiring separate approaches to the study of social phenomena. There are cross-disciplinary combinations of these core disciplines (e.g., ethnographic sociology, political economy), and there are new interdisciplinary configurations that draw on methods and topics of the core disciplines but align themselves separately (e.g., Asian studies, women's and gender studies, and globalization studies).
The definition and evolution of the disciplines is itself an understudied topic in the philosophy of social science. Several sociologists have provided thoughtful analysis of the logic and development of the disciplines of sociology (Zald 1992, 1995, Abbott 1999, 2001). Broadly, we might say that the disciplines of the social sciences are defined and differentiated by topic, method, and theory; under each of these headings are specific and differentiating assumptions about the way in which the sociologist or the economist will investigate and explain a body of social phenomena. But, finally, we have no reason to think that the current arrangement of the disciplines provides an ideal form of coverage for all social inquiries.It should be emphasized that the social sciences today are “works in progress.” We have no basis for thinking that we have arrived at the best ways of breaking down the central problems of social life into areas of study, or the best ways of investigating social processes, or the best theories and explanatory ideas that will provide a basis for better understanding of social phenomena. So the definition of the “core” disciplines and primary methods needs to be understood in a very provisional way; we hope we will have a better sociology, political science, or economics in the future. And the division of labor across specific disciplines should be understood as provisional and shifting.
Consider one discipline in particular, sociology. We might break the research task of sociology into several component types of intellectual work. First, sociology involves description. Social phenomena are observable, and it is straightforward to design rigorous research efforts aimed at establishing the facts about a particular domain. This aspect of sociology involves rigorous empirical study of social phenomena. Examples of descriptive research include ethnographic research and micro-sociology along the lines of the Chicago School of sociology. But large-scale description is feasible as well, including empirical description of large social patterns and institutions.
Descriptive findings often take the form of statistical estimates of the frequency of a feature within a group - for example, rates of suicide among Protestants (Durkheim), or rates of diabetes among various racial groups. Properties may be correlated with one another within a given population; variation in one variable may be associated with variation in another variable. Descriptive research can thus sometimes reveal patterns of behavior or social outcomes - for example, patterns of habitation and health status. And patterns such as these invite efforts to find causal relationships among the characteristics enumerated.Second, sociology involves discovery of social causation and mechanisms. What are the conditions or processes that lead to variation across social groups? What are the causes of such phenomena as the “demographic transition” from high-fertility to low-fertility behavior? What accounts for the rapid growth of cities during certain periods? Sociology can provide explanations of some social outcomes as a causal consequence of proposed social mechanisms. Once we have a generic idea of what social causal mechanisms look like, we can turn to specifics and try to discover the processes through which behavior is created and constrained. So we can try to discover or hypothesize the mechanisms through which governments in countries based on tropical agriculture tend to under-serve farmers (Bates 1988). Social theories are hypotheses about social causal mechanisms; so theories provide a basis for explanation of social phenomena.
Third, there is the dimension of “theory” formation. Marx offered theories of capitalism, Weber of bureaucracy, Charles Tilly of state formation, and Mayer Zald and John McCarthy of resource mobilization. What is a theory in sociology? I suggest that “theory” functions in two ways in sociology, and each is different from the use of theory in the natural sciences. First, there is “grand” theory - capitalism, social cohesion, state formation.
These concepts should be understood as articulating an organizing mental framework within which to organize many of the empirical details and characteristics of a given domain of social phenomena. This is analogous to Weber's concept of an ideal type (Weber and Shils 1949). The second use is what Robert Merton calls “theories of the middle range” (Merton 1967), and what I believe can be paraphrased as an exposition of a concrete social causal mechanism. The theory of free-riding; the theory of charismatic leadership; the theory of the flat organization - each involves an exposition of a social context and a characteristic social mechanism that can take place in that context. When we explain the low productivity of collective farming as a result of “free-riding” or “easy-riding,” we are highlighting features of individual decision making and the context of supervision that leads to low levels of productivity on the part of individual workers.What none of these examples provides - and what I think cannot be provided in the social sciences - is a theory that can serve as the unifying, deductively articulated foundation of all explanation in a given domain. Whereas Maxwell's electromagnetic theory was capable of deductively explaining a wide range of physical phenomena, there are no such comprehensive theories in the social sciences. And this is easily understood, given the multiplicity of motives, structures, institutions, and mentalities through which any given social phenomenon results. Once we look closely at the ontology of social phenomena, there emerge major and visible limitations on the degree of systematicity, interconnection, and determination that should be expected of social phenomena. The social world is highly contingent, the product of many independent actors. So we should only expect a weak degree of systematic variation among social phenomena.
So sociology consists of descriptive research, the search for social mechanisms that would explain empirical findings, and the formulation of mid-level theories that can provide a basis for better understanding the causes thus identified.
Finally, the epistemic setting provided by the disciplinary institutions offers a basis for estimating the rational credibility of social science knowledge: journals, peer review, tenure evaluation. Social research and explanation remain fairly close to the level of the facts. Researchers in the disciplines and sub-disciplines are charged to test and explore the empirical and theoretical claims of their peers.The results of a science including these components will be empirically disciplined, theoretically eclectic, and systemically modest. The goal of providing an over-arching theory that demonstrates the systematic integration of the social is abandoned. (It is worth observing that there was a period in the history of sociology when the epistemic values of the discipline were most consistent with this view. That was the period of the Chicago School (Abbott 1999).)
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