Understanding Society

One of the catechismal ideas of analytical sociology is the microfoundations model of explanation: to explain a social fact we should provid...

Emile Durkheim is celebrated for many achievements in the founding of the discipline of sociology, but most striking is his endorsement of t...

I've argued for the idea that social phenomena are generated by the actions, thoughts, and mental frameworks of myriad actors ( lin...

The idea of generativity in the realm of the social world expresses the notion that social phenomena are generated by the actions and t...

I've argued often for the idea that social science and historical explanations need to be "actor-centered" -- we need to g...

Is every social process  generated by facts about individuals? For example, consider a television advertising campaign for a General M...

image: micro-structure of a nanomaterial ( link ) Are there strong logical relationships among the ideas of emergence, microfoundations...

For quite a few years I have found the concept of microfoundations to be central for thinking about relationships across levels of social...

Image: Three Mile Island control room There isn't a lot of cross-over between the microfoundations literature (Peter Hedstrom,...

The topics of microfoundations and causal mechanisms have come up frequently in this work. The microfoundations thesis maintains that so...

I  Figure. An orderly ontological hierarchy (University of Leeds ( link ) Figure. Complex non-reductionist social outcome -- bligh...