What are mechanisms in social science?

Abstract

Why should we introduce the notion of ‘analytical sociology’ into the field of sociology, and why should it be linked to the concept of ‘mechanism’? With these two principal questions, Pierre Demeulenaere, Professor of Sociological Theory and Philosophy of the Social Sciences at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, opens his Analytical Sociology and Social Mechanisms, a collection of thirteen papers written by social scientists and philosophers of the social sciences (1). Not every contributor should be considered an analytical sociologist. Rather than being a manifesto either pro or contra analytical sociology and the use of mechanisms, it is an attempt to reflect upon the key issues involved in sociological explanation (3). Even though several chapters raise very interesting points, the overall impression one gets from this book is that analytical sociology fails to redeem its main promise, viz. to add clarity, precision, and conceptual rigor to sociology, especially regarding one of its most central concepts: ‘mechanism’. Analytical sociology is not a new sociological paradigm, but an effort to clarify analytically the basic epistemological, theoretical, and methodological principles underlying any satisfactory way of doing social science (1). It provides an updated version of methodological individualism, often called structural individualism, which combines its predecessor’s basic focus on the individual actors underlying all social phenomena with an updated view of these individuals, including a new theory of action and special attention for the actors’ (social) environment (10–12). One of the central concepts figuring in analytical sociology is ‘social mechanism’: ‘‘Whenever we start explaining ‘why’ something happens, beyond mere description, we are necessarily led to introduce some type of causal linkage of