Daniel Little — Classifying mechanisms by location

If we are going to take social mechanisms seriously, we need to be able to say more about what they are. Earlier posts have opened the possibility of offering a scheme of classification for social mechanisms (link,link). Here I want to briefly explore a different idea: to group mechanisms according to which part they play within the space of social influence postulated by the idea of methodological localism (link). I introduced the idea of methodological localism in "Levels of the Social" (link) as an ontological alternative to both methodological individualism and methodological holism. That specification of the nature of social reality suggested a small handful of fundamental questions. Here I want to experiment with classifying a number of mechanisms according to which of these questions they answer. Here is the relevant statement from "Levels of the Social" (link):

According to methodological localism, the social is constituted by socially situated individuals, nested within social relations and institutions that have only an intermediate degree of persistence and permanence.

The socially situated individual finds herself within a concrete set of social relationships, networks, and institutions. This complex serves to socialize and provide incentives, as well as to constrain. The approach of methodological localism supports as well the reality that institutions often have extra-local scope, geographically, demographically, and administratively. So, we can legitimately describe institutions with broader scope as being “higher-level” institutions. 

Understanding Society

Classifying mechanisms by location
Daniel Little | Chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Philosophy at UM-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology at UM-Ann Arbor

My view is that methodological individualism is just wrong and methodological holism is right. Individuals are elements in complex sets of a web of relationships that constitute a system. The elements of system have no meaning outside of the context in which they are embedded. It is impossible to say anything significant about the elements of a system without reference to the overall contexts, the system and its components, e.g., subsystems.

I believe that methodological localism is an articulation of the components of a system in terms of their characteristics and complex interactions with elements and subsystems, all within the context of the system.

In social science, the system is foundationally constituted by global society (humanity) and the environment. The elements are individual human beings. However, from the point of view of other contexts, physical and biological sciences, human beings are systems that are analyzable into networks of relations and subsystems.

If methodological individualism has a place in social science, it is the analysis of elements of the system, which is clearly incomplete with respect to the system as a whole and the parts that are not elements.

Finally, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is called synergy. This is investigated in particular in systems theory.

There are two aspects to a system. The real aspect is the existential structure in which everything within a static environment is related and the context in which actual change takes place in a dynamic. The formal or ideational aspect of a system is the epistemic representation of this environment as a system.

Generally speaking, the systemic aspect of reality and knowledge are ignored or submerged so that assumptions and analysis are context-independent. Since meaning and significance are context-dependent, that haphazard methodological approach is defective and often results in nonsense.