Variation as a social fundamental

Over 700 historians, sociologists, demographers, and political scientists enjoyed a splendid program of panels at the Social Science History Association in Long Beach this week (link). There were panels on recent historical demography, comparative historical analysis, and social mobilization research, as well as a pair of great panels on the work of Charles Tilly. There was even a smattering of papers suggesting possible opportunities for innovation in theory and research methods in historical sociology.  (A book panel on Neil Smelser's recent The Odyssey Experience: Physical, Social, Psychological, and Spiritual Journeys illustrates this point: the book is highly original and demonstrates the value of seeking out new perspectives and angles of view on social behavior and social change.)

Here is one strong impression that emerges from the program.  Variation within a social or historical phenomenon seems to be all but ubiquitous. Think of the Cultural Revolution in China, demographic transition in early modern Europe, the ideology of a market society, or the experience of being black in America. We have the noun -- "Cultural Revolution" -- which can be explained or defined in a sentence or two as an extended social phenomenon of mobilization and conflict that took place in China from 1966-76; and we have the complex underlying social realities to which it refers, spread out over many cities, villages, and communes across China (The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History).  Or consider another general noun, "demographic transition," defined as a period in which a population experiences abrupt decline in mortality, followed by a decline in fertility.  Using a variety of statistical methods, historical demographers can document the occurrence of a demographic transition in different periods in Sweden, Italy, Britain, and China.  And it turns out that there are both common features and distinguishing characteristics that emerge from detailed study -- differences in timing, differences in social composition, differences in the mechanisms bringing these changes about.

In each case there is a very concrete and visible degree of variation in the factor over time and place. Historical and social research in a wide variety of fields confirms the non-homogeneity of social phenomena and the profound location-specific variations that occur in the characteristics of virtually all large social phenomena. Social nouns do not generally designate uniform social realities (post).  These facts of local and regional variation provide an immediate rationale for case studies and comparative research, selecting different venues of the phenomenon and identifying specific features of the phenomenon in this location. Through a range of case studies it is possible for the research community to map out both common features and distinguishing features of a given social process.

This description focuses on locational variation in processes -- village to village, country to country. But social scientists often also highlight variations across social segments within a given location: class, race, gender, religion, occupation.  Do sharecroppers have a different fertility profile over time than the wealthy in a particular region at a particular time?  Are there significant differences in survival strategies for distinct groups defined by race or ethnicity in a city or a group of cities?

This situation of variation and case-specific research raises a number of challenging questions. One is the question of whether the phenomenon designated by the noun is one integrated social reality, with varied expressions across locations, or whether instead the different locations are simply loosely similar but independent occurrences. Simon Schama's radical question -- was there a French Revolution, or were there simply a congeries of periods and locations of disturbance? -- illustrates this question (post), as does a previous discussion of the revolutions of 1848 (post).

A second major question is the challenge of discovering causal and social mechanisms connecting the various social locations encompassed by the phenomenon. How did the activism and ideology of Cultural Revolution spread from Beijing to Nanjing and other locations? How did activism spread from city to rural locations? How did local circumstances cause changes and variations in the political movement? How much path dependency existed in the spread of revolutionary ideas and strategies?

There is a more epistemic set of questions as well, concerning generalizability. Fundamentally, if there is substantial variation across locations and instances of a given phenomenon, then to what degree can we say anything about the phenomenon as a whole? And what does the study of one location allow us to say about the larger processes? Does study of the Tsinghua student Red Guard movement tell us anything about Red Guard mobilization in other places? Or is it simply one of many different and contingent develoments of contentious politics during the period?  Can we generalize from case studies and comparative research?

We can also look at the problem from the other end of the telescope: are there any social phenomena that occur fairly homogeneously across all places where this phenomenon occurs?  Candidates might include:

• Anti-Semitic violence across 19th-century Ukraine villages
• Marriage / fertility practices across rural Sweden 1700-1800
• Peasant revolts in medieval Germany
• Process of protoindustrialization in villages and towns in Low Countries 1300-1600 (Industrialization Before Industrialization)
  

For examples like these we can ask a symmetrical set of questions to those posed above. What factors explain the uniformity of results for these processes across separate locations? Various explanations are possible:

• There is a common set of conditions across the regions (e.g. famine or drought)
• There are common causes that mobilize people in many separate places (tax protests, land confiscations)
  
• There are common political traditions
• There is substantial inter-location communication and influence
• There are no large institutional or circumstantial variations that would drive significant variations in outcomes across locations

This is where the appeal to social mechanisms seems once more to be highly relevant and helpful.  If we work on the assumption that any large social process -- the dispersed locations of contention associated with the French Revolution, say -- is the compound result of a set of underlying causal social mechanisms, and if we hypothesize that many of these mechanisms are in play in some places but not in others; then we can explain both similarity and difference in the occurrence of the phenomenon across time and place.  Now the work of historical investigation can be put in these terms: identify some of the social mechanisms that evidently recur in various locations; identify some of the mechanisms that lead to significantly different results in some places; and identify some of the cross-location mechanisms that are at work to secure a degree of synchrony and parallel in the developments observed in different locations (communication systems, networks of leaders, dissemination of activists).  Case studies and comparative research permit both a degree of generalization and an explanation of variation.

In other words, the intellectual strategy here is to disaggregate the large social factor into the results of a larger number of underlying mechanisms; and then to attempt to discover how these mechanisms played out differently in different settings throughout the range of the French Revolution, protoindustrialization, or ethnic conflict in South Asia.  Significantly, this is exactly the strategy of research and explanation that Charles Tilly was led to in his emphasis on discovering the component social mechanisms that underlie social contention (McAdam, Tarrow, Tilly, Dynamics of Contention).

Variation as a social fundamental

Over 700 historians, sociologists, demographers, and political scientists enjoyed a splendid program of panels at the Social Science History Association in Long Beach this week (link). There were panels on recent historical demography, comparative historical analysis, and social mobilization research, as well as a pair of great panels on the work of Charles Tilly. There was even a smattering of papers suggesting possible opportunities for innovation in theory and research methods in historical sociology.  (A book panel on Neil Smelser's recent The Odyssey Experience: Physical, Social, Psychological, and Spiritual Journeys illustrates this point: the book is highly original and demonstrates the value of seeking out new perspectives and angles of view on social behavior and social change.)

Here is one strong impression that emerges from the program.  Variation within a social or historical phenomenon seems to be all but ubiquitous. Think of the Cultural Revolution in China, demographic transition in early modern Europe, the ideology of a market society, or the experience of being black in America. We have the noun -- "Cultural Revolution" -- which can be explained or defined in a sentence or two as an extended social phenomenon of mobilization and conflict that took place in China from 1966-76; and we have the complex underlying social realities to which it refers, spread out over many cities, villages, and communes across China (The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History).  Or consider another general noun, "demographic transition," defined as a period in which a population experiences abrupt decline in mortality, followed by a decline in fertility.  Using a variety of statistical methods, historical demographers can document the occurrence of a demographic transition in different periods in Sweden, Italy, Britain, and China.  And it turns out that there are both common features and distinguishing characteristics that emerge from detailed study -- differences in timing, differences in social composition, differences in the mechanisms bringing these changes about.

In each case there is a very concrete and visible degree of variation in the factor over time and place. Historical and social research in a wide variety of fields confirms the non-homogeneity of social phenomena and the profound location-specific variations that occur in the characteristics of virtually all large social phenomena. Social nouns do not generally designate uniform social realities (post).  These facts of local and regional variation provide an immediate rationale for case studies and comparative research, selecting different venues of the phenomenon and identifying specific features of the phenomenon in this location. Through a range of case studies it is possible for the research community to map out both common features and distinguishing features of a given social process.

This description focuses on locational variation in processes -- village to village, country to country. But social scientists often also highlight variations across social segments within a given location: class, race, gender, religion, occupation.  Do sharecroppers have a different fertility profile over time than the wealthy in a particular region at a particular time?  Are there significant differences in survival strategies for distinct groups defined by race or ethnicity in a city or a group of cities?

This situation of variation and case-specific research raises a number of challenging questions. One is the question of whether the phenomenon designated by the noun is one integrated social reality, with varied expressions across locations, or whether instead the different locations are simply loosely similar but independent occurrences. Simon Schama's radical question -- was there a French Revolution, or were there simply a congeries of periods and locations of disturbance? -- illustrates this question (post), as does a previous discussion of the revolutions of 1848 (post).

A second major question is the challenge of discovering causal and social mechanisms connecting the various social locations encompassed by the phenomenon. How did the activism and ideology of Cultural Revolution spread from Beijing to Nanjing and other locations? How did activism spread from city to rural locations? How did local circumstances cause changes and variations in the political movement? How much path dependency existed in the spread of revolutionary ideas and strategies?

There is a more epistemic set of questions as well, concerning generalizability. Fundamentally, if there is substantial variation across locations and instances of a given phenomenon, then to what degree can we say anything about the phenomenon as a whole? And what does the study of one location allow us to say about the larger processes? Does study of the Tsinghua student Red Guard movement tell us anything about Red Guard mobilization in other places? Or is it simply one of many different and contingent develoments of contentious politics during the period?  Can we generalize from case studies and comparative research?

We can also look at the problem from the other end of the telescope: are there any social phenomena that occur fairly homogeneously across all places where this phenomenon occurs?  Candidates might include:

• Anti-Semitic violence across 19th-century Ukraine villages
• Marriage / fertility practices across rural Sweden 1700-1800
• Peasant revolts in medieval Germany
• Process of protoindustrialization in villages and towns in Low Countries 1300-1600 (Industrialization Before Industrialization)
  

For examples like these we can ask a symmetrical set of questions to those posed above. What factors explain the uniformity of results for these processes across separate locations? Various explanations are possible:

• There is a common set of conditions across the regions (e.g. famine or drought)
• There are common causes that mobilize people in many separate places (tax protests, land confiscations)
  
• There are common political traditions
• There is substantial inter-location communication and influence
• There are no large institutional or circumstantial variations that would drive significant variations in outcomes across locations

This is where the appeal to social mechanisms seems once more to be highly relevant and helpful.  If we work on the assumption that any large social process -- the dispersed locations of contention associated with the French Revolution, say -- is the compound result of a set of underlying causal social mechanisms, and if we hypothesize that many of these mechanisms are in play in some places but not in others; then we can explain both similarity and difference in the occurrence of the phenomenon across time and place.  Now the work of historical investigation can be put in these terms: identify some of the social mechanisms that evidently recur in various locations; identify some of the mechanisms that lead to significantly different results in some places; and identify some of the cross-location mechanisms that are at work to secure a degree of synchrony and parallel in the developments observed in different locations (communication systems, networks of leaders, dissemination of activists).  Case studies and comparative research permit both a degree of generalization and an explanation of variation.

In other words, the intellectual strategy here is to disaggregate the large social factor into the results of a larger number of underlying mechanisms; and then to attempt to discover how these mechanisms played out differently in different settings throughout the range of the French Revolution, protoindustrialization, or ethnic conflict in South Asia.  Significantly, this is exactly the strategy of research and explanation that Charles Tilly was led to in his emphasis on discovering the component social mechanisms that underlie social contention (McAdam, Tarrow, Tilly, Dynamics of Contention).

Variation as a social fundamental

Over 700 historians, sociologists, demographers, and political scientists enjoyed a splendid program of panels at the Social Science History Association in Long Beach this week (link). There were panels on recent historical demography, comparative historical analysis, and social mobilization research, as well as a pair of great panels on the work of Charles Tilly. There was even a smattering of papers suggesting possible opportunities for innovation in theory and research methods in historical sociology.  (A book panel on Neil Smelser's recent The Odyssey Experience: Physical, Social, Psychological, and Spiritual Journeys illustrates this point: the book is highly original and demonstrates the value of seeking out new perspectives and angles of view on social behavior and social change.)

Here is one strong impression that emerges from the program.  Variation within a social or historical phenomenon seems to be all but ubiquitous. Think of the Cultural Revolution in China, demographic transition in early modern Europe, the ideology of a market society, or the experience of being black in America. We have the noun -- "Cultural Revolution" -- which can be explained or defined in a sentence or two as an extended social phenomenon of mobilization and conflict that took place in China from 1966-76; and we have the complex underlying social realities to which it refers, spread out over many cities, villages, and communes across China (The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History).  Or consider another general noun, "demographic transition," defined as a period in which a population experiences abrupt decline in mortality, followed by a decline in fertility.  Using a variety of statistical methods, historical demographers can document the occurrence of a demographic transition in different periods in Sweden, Italy, Britain, and China.  And it turns out that there are both common features and distinguishing characteristics that emerge from detailed study -- differences in timing, differences in social composition, differences in the mechanisms bringing these changes about.

In each case there is a very concrete and visible degree of variation in the factor over time and place. Historical and social research in a wide variety of fields confirms the non-homogeneity of social phenomena and the profound location-specific variations that occur in the characteristics of virtually all large social phenomena. Social nouns do not generally designate uniform social realities (post).  These facts of local and regional variation provide an immediate rationale for case studies and comparative research, selecting different venues of the phenomenon and identifying specific features of the phenomenon in this location. Through a range of case studies it is possible for the research community to map out both common features and distinguishing features of a given social process.

This description focuses on locational variation in processes -- village to village, country to country. But social scientists often also highlight variations across social segments within a given location: class, race, gender, religion, occupation.  Do sharecroppers have a different fertility profile over time than the wealthy in a particular region at a particular time?  Are there significant differences in survival strategies for distinct groups defined by race or ethnicity in a city or a group of cities?

This situation of variation and case-specific research raises a number of challenging questions. One is the question of whether the phenomenon designated by the noun is one integrated social reality, with varied expressions across locations, or whether instead the different locations are simply loosely similar but independent occurrences. Simon Schama's radical question -- was there a French Revolution, or were there simply a congeries of periods and locations of disturbance? -- illustrates this question (post), as does a previous discussion of the revolutions of 1848 (post).

A second major question is the challenge of discovering causal and social mechanisms connecting the various social locations encompassed by the phenomenon. How did the activism and ideology of Cultural Revolution spread from Beijing to Nanjing and other locations? How did activism spread from city to rural locations? How did local circumstances cause changes and variations in the political movement? How much path dependency existed in the spread of revolutionary ideas and strategies?

There is a more epistemic set of questions as well, concerning generalizability. Fundamentally, if there is substantial variation across locations and instances of a given phenomenon, then to what degree can we say anything about the phenomenon as a whole? And what does the study of one location allow us to say about the larger processes? Does study of the Tsinghua student Red Guard movement tell us anything about Red Guard mobilization in other places? Or is it simply one of many different and contingent develoments of contentious politics during the period?  Can we generalize from case studies and comparative research?

We can also look at the problem from the other end of the telescope: are there any social phenomena that occur fairly homogeneously across all places where this phenomenon occurs?  Candidates might include:

• Anti-Semitic violence across 19th-century Ukraine villages
• Marriage / fertility practices across rural Sweden 1700-1800
• Peasant revolts in medieval Germany
• Process of protoindustrialization in villages and towns in Low Countries 1300-1600 (Industrialization Before Industrialization)
  

For examples like these we can ask a symmetrical set of questions to those posed above. What factors explain the uniformity of results for these processes across separate locations? Various explanations are possible:

• There is a common set of conditions across the regions (e.g. famine or drought)
• There are common causes that mobilize people in many separate places (tax protests, land confiscations)
  
• There are common political traditions
• There is substantial inter-location communication and influence
• There are no large institutional or circumstantial variations that would drive significant variations in outcomes across locations

This is where the appeal to social mechanisms seems once more to be highly relevant and helpful.  If we work on the assumption that any large social process -- the dispersed locations of contention associated with the French Revolution, say -- is the compound result of a set of underlying causal social mechanisms, and if we hypothesize that many of these mechanisms are in play in some places but not in others; then we can explain both similarity and difference in the occurrence of the phenomenon across time and place.  Now the work of historical investigation can be put in these terms: identify some of the social mechanisms that evidently recur in various locations; identify some of the mechanisms that lead to significantly different results in some places; and identify some of the cross-location mechanisms that are at work to secure a degree of synchrony and parallel in the developments observed in different locations (communication systems, networks of leaders, dissemination of activists).  Case studies and comparative research permit both a degree of generalization and an explanation of variation.

In other words, the intellectual strategy here is to disaggregate the large social factor into the results of a larger number of underlying mechanisms; and then to attempt to discover how these mechanisms played out differently in different settings throughout the range of the French Revolution, protoindustrialization, or ethnic conflict in South Asia.  Significantly, this is exactly the strategy of research and explanation that Charles Tilly was led to in his emphasis on discovering the component social mechanisms that underlie social contention (McAdam, Tarrow, Tilly, Dynamics of Contention).

A better social ontology

I believe that the social sciences need to be framed out of consideration of a better understanding of the nature of the social—a better social ontology. The social world is not a system of law-governed processes; it is instead a mix of different sorts of institutions, forms of human behavior, natural and environmental constraints, and contingent events. The entities that make up the social world at a given time and place have no particular ontological stability; they do not fall into “natural kinds”; and there is no reason to expect deep similarity across a number of ostensibly similar institutions – states, for example, or labor unions. (W. V. O. Quine’s metaphor of the bushes shaped to look like elephants comes to mind here; Word and Object.)

So the rule for the social world is – heterogeneity, contingency, and plasticity. And the metaphysics associated with classical thinking about the natural world – laws of nature, common, unchanging structures, and predictable processes of change – do not provide appropriate metaphors for our understandings and expectations of the social world. Nor do they suggest the right kinds of social science theories and constructs.

Instead of naturalism, I suggest an approach to social science theorizing that emphasizes agency, contingency, and plasticity in the makeup of social facts. It recognizes that there is a degree of pattern in social life – but emphasizes that these patterns fall far short of the regularities associated with laws of nature. It emphasizes contingency of social processes and outcomes. It insists upon the importance and legitimacy of eclectic use of social theories: the processes are heterogeneous, and therefore it is appropriate to appeal to different types of social theories as we explain social processes. It emphasizes the importance of path-dependence in social outcomes. It suggests that the most valid scientific statements in the social sciences have to do with the discovery of concrete social-causal mechanisms, through which some types of social outcomes come about.

And finally, this approach highlights what I call “methodological localism”: the view that the foundation of social action and outcome is the local, socially-located and socially constructed individual person. The individual is socially constructed, in that her modes of behavior, thought, and reasoning are created through a specific set of prior social interactions. And her actions are socially situated, in the sense that they are responsive to the institutional setting in which she chooses to act. Purposive individuals, embodied with powers and constraints, pursue their goals in specific institutional settings; and regularities of social outcome often result.

How does this perspective fit with current work in the social sciences? There are several current fields of social research that are particularly well suited to this approach. One is the field of comparative historical sociology, in its use of fairly detailed studies of similar cases in order to identify common causal mechanisms. Kathleen Thelen’s astute studies of different institutions of skill formation in Germany, UK, US, and Japan are an excellent case in point; she asks the twin questions, what causal processes give stability to a set of institutions? And what causal processes lead to a process of transformation in those institutions? The research methods of comparative historical sociology, then, are particularly well suited to the ontology of contingency, plasticity, and causal mechanisms (How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan).

Ethnography gives us a different angle on this same ontology. Ethnographers can give us insight into culturally specific mentalities—the “socially constructed individuals”. And they can give concrete analysis of the institutions that both shape individuals and are in turn shaped by them. More generally, qualitative research methods can offer a basis for discovery of some of the features of agency, mentality, and culture within the context of which important social processes take place. A good current example is Leslie Salzinger's Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico's Global Factories, a study of the social construction of femininity in the factories of the maquiladoras. C. K. Lee's sociology of Chinese factory protests is also a model of a study that combines qualitative and quantitative methods; Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt.

The new institutionalism is a third theoretical perspective on social analysis and explanation. This approach postulates the causal reality of institutions; it highlights the point that differences across institutions lead to substantial differences in behavior; and it provides a basis for explanations of various social outcomes. The rules of liability governing the predations of cattle in East Africa or Shasta County, California, create very different patterns of behavior in cattle owners and other land owners in the various settings. (Mary Brinton and Victor Nee, The New Institutionalism in Sociology; Jean Ensminger, Making a Market: The Institutional Transformation of an African Society.) It is characteristic of the new institutionalism that researchers in this tradition generally avoid reifying large social institutions and look instead at the more proximate and variable institutions within which people live and act.

What kind of social science research and theory corresponds to these assumptions about social ontology? Here are some chief features--

• They make use of eclectic multiple theories and don't expect a unified social theory that explains everything
  
• They are modest in their expectations about social generalizations
• They look for causal mechanisms as a basis for social explanation
• They anticipate heterogeneity and plasticity of social entities
• They are prepared to use eclectic methodologies -- quantitative, comparative, case-study, ethnographic -- to discover the mechanisms and mentalities that underlie social change
  

We need a better sociology for the twenty-first century. If social scientists continue to be captivated by the scientific prestige of positivism and quantitative social science to the exclusion of other perspectives, they will be led to social science research that looks quite different from what would result from a view that emphasizes contingency and causal mechanisms. And if there are strong, engaging, and empirically rigorous examples of other ways of conducting social research that can come into broad exposure in the social sciences—then there is a greater probability of emergence of a genuinely innovative and imaginative approach to the problem of social knowledge.

A better social ontology

I believe that the social sciences need to be framed out of consideration of a better understanding of the nature of the social—a better social ontology. The social world is not a system of law-governed processes; it is instead a mix of different sorts of institutions, forms of human behavior, natural and environmental constraints, and contingent events. The entities that make up the social world at a given time and place have no particular ontological stability; they do not fall into “natural kinds”; and there is no reason to expect deep similarity across a number of ostensibly similar institutions – states, for example, or labor unions. (W. V. O. Quine’s metaphor of the bushes shaped to look like elephants comes to mind here; Word and Object.)

So the rule for the social world is – heterogeneity, contingency, and plasticity. And the metaphysics associated with classical thinking about the natural world – laws of nature, common, unchanging structures, and predictable processes of change – do not provide appropriate metaphors for our understandings and expectations of the social world. Nor do they suggest the right kinds of social science theories and constructs.

Instead of naturalism, I suggest an approach to social science theorizing that emphasizes agency, contingency, and plasticity in the makeup of social facts. It recognizes that there is a degree of pattern in social life – but emphasizes that these patterns fall far short of the regularities associated with laws of nature. It emphasizes contingency of social processes and outcomes. It insists upon the importance and legitimacy of eclectic use of social theories: the processes are heterogeneous, and therefore it is appropriate to appeal to different types of social theories as we explain social processes. It emphasizes the importance of path-dependence in social outcomes. It suggests that the most valid scientific statements in the social sciences have to do with the discovery of concrete social-causal mechanisms, through which some types of social outcomes come about.

And finally, this approach highlights what I call “methodological localism”: the view that the foundation of social action and outcome is the local, socially-located and socially constructed individual person. The individual is socially constructed, in that her modes of behavior, thought, and reasoning are created through a specific set of prior social interactions. And her actions are socially situated, in the sense that they are responsive to the institutional setting in which she chooses to act. Purposive individuals, embodied with powers and constraints, pursue their goals in specific institutional settings; and regularities of social outcome often result.

How does this perspective fit with current work in the social sciences? There are several current fields of social research that are particularly well suited to this approach. One is the field of comparative historical sociology, in its use of fairly detailed studies of similar cases in order to identify common causal mechanisms. Kathleen Thelen’s astute studies of different institutions of skill formation in Germany, UK, US, and Japan are an excellent case in point; she asks the twin questions, what causal processes give stability to a set of institutions? And what causal processes lead to a process of transformation in those institutions? The research methods of comparative historical sociology, then, are particularly well suited to the ontology of contingency, plasticity, and causal mechanisms (How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan).

Ethnography gives us a different angle on this same ontology. Ethnographers can give us insight into culturally specific mentalities—the “socially constructed individuals”. And they can give concrete analysis of the institutions that both shape individuals and are in turn shaped by them. More generally, qualitative research methods can offer a basis for discovery of some of the features of agency, mentality, and culture within the context of which important social processes take place. A good current example is Leslie Salzinger's Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico's Global Factories, a study of the social construction of femininity in the factories of the maquiladoras. C. K. Lee's sociology of Chinese factory protests is also a model of a study that combines qualitative and quantitative methods; Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt.

The new institutionalism is a third theoretical perspective on social analysis and explanation. This approach postulates the causal reality of institutions; it highlights the point that differences across institutions lead to substantial differences in behavior; and it provides a basis for explanations of various social outcomes. The rules of liability governing the predations of cattle in East Africa or Shasta County, California, create very different patterns of behavior in cattle owners and other land owners in the various settings. (Mary Brinton and Victor Nee, The New Institutionalism in Sociology; Jean Ensminger, Making a Market: The Institutional Transformation of an African Society.) It is characteristic of the new institutionalism that researchers in this tradition generally avoid reifying large social institutions and look instead at the more proximate and variable institutions within which people live and act.

What kind of social science research and theory corresponds to these assumptions about social ontology? Here are some chief features--

• They make use of eclectic multiple theories and don't expect a unified social theory that explains everything
  
• They are modest in their expectations about social generalizations
• They look for causal mechanisms as a basis for social explanation
• They anticipate heterogeneity and plasticity of social entities
• They are prepared to use eclectic methodologies -- quantitative, comparative, case-study, ethnographic -- to discover the mechanisms and mentalities that underlie social change
  

We need a better sociology for the twenty-first century. If social scientists continue to be captivated by the scientific prestige of positivism and quantitative social science to the exclusion of other perspectives, they will be led to social science research that looks quite different from what would result from a view that emphasizes contingency and causal mechanisms. And if there are strong, engaging, and empirically rigorous examples of other ways of conducting social research that can come into broad exposure in the social sciences—then there is a greater probability of emergence of a genuinely innovative and imaginative approach to the problem of social knowledge.

A better social ontology

I believe that the social sciences need to be framed out of consideration of a better understanding of the nature of the social—a better social ontology. The social world is not a system of law-governed processes; it is instead a mix of different sorts of institutions, forms of human behavior, natural and environmental constraints, and contingent events. The entities that make up the social world at a given time and place have no particular ontological stability; they do not fall into “natural kinds”; and there is no reason to expect deep similarity across a number of ostensibly similar institutions – states, for example, or labor unions. (W. V. O. Quine’s metaphor of the bushes shaped to look like elephants comes to mind here; Word and Object.)

So the rule for the social world is – heterogeneity, contingency, and plasticity. And the metaphysics associated with classical thinking about the natural world – laws of nature, common, unchanging structures, and predictable processes of change – do not provide appropriate metaphors for our understandings and expectations of the social world. Nor do they suggest the right kinds of social science theories and constructs.

Instead of naturalism, I suggest an approach to social science theorizing that emphasizes agency, contingency, and plasticity in the makeup of social facts. It recognizes that there is a degree of pattern in social life – but emphasizes that these patterns fall far short of the regularities associated with laws of nature. It emphasizes contingency of social processes and outcomes. It insists upon the importance and legitimacy of eclectic use of social theories: the processes are heterogeneous, and therefore it is appropriate to appeal to different types of social theories as we explain social processes. It emphasizes the importance of path-dependence in social outcomes. It suggests that the most valid scientific statements in the social sciences have to do with the discovery of concrete social-causal mechanisms, through which some types of social outcomes come about.

And finally, this approach highlights what I call “methodological localism”: the view that the foundation of social action and outcome is the local, socially-located and socially constructed individual person. The individual is socially constructed, in that her modes of behavior, thought, and reasoning are created through a specific set of prior social interactions. And her actions are socially situated, in the sense that they are responsive to the institutional setting in which she chooses to act. Purposive individuals, embodied with powers and constraints, pursue their goals in specific institutional settings; and regularities of social outcome often result.

How does this perspective fit with current work in the social sciences? There are several current fields of social research that are particularly well suited to this approach. One is the field of comparative historical sociology, in its use of fairly detailed studies of similar cases in order to identify common causal mechanisms. Kathleen Thelen’s astute studies of different institutions of skill formation in Germany, UK, US, and Japan are an excellent case in point; she asks the twin questions, what causal processes give stability to a set of institutions? And what causal processes lead to a process of transformation in those institutions? The research methods of comparative historical sociology, then, are particularly well suited to the ontology of contingency, plasticity, and causal mechanisms (How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan).

Ethnography gives us a different angle on this same ontology. Ethnographers can give us insight into culturally specific mentalities—the “socially constructed individuals”. And they can give concrete analysis of the institutions that both shape individuals and are in turn shaped by them. More generally, qualitative research methods can offer a basis for discovery of some of the features of agency, mentality, and culture within the context of which important social processes take place. A good current example is Leslie Salzinger's Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico's Global Factories, a study of the social construction of femininity in the factories of the maquiladoras. C. K. Lee's sociology of Chinese factory protests is also a model of a study that combines qualitative and quantitative methods; Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt.

The new institutionalism is a third theoretical perspective on social analysis and explanation. This approach postulates the causal reality of institutions; it highlights the point that differences across institutions lead to substantial differences in behavior; and it provides a basis for explanations of various social outcomes. The rules of liability governing the predations of cattle in East Africa or Shasta County, California, create very different patterns of behavior in cattle owners and other land owners in the various settings. (Mary Brinton and Victor Nee, The New Institutionalism in Sociology; Jean Ensminger, Making a Market: The Institutional Transformation of an African Society.) It is characteristic of the new institutionalism that researchers in this tradition generally avoid reifying large social institutions and look instead at the more proximate and variable institutions within which people live and act.

What kind of social science research and theory corresponds to these assumptions about social ontology? Here are some chief features--

• They make use of eclectic multiple theories and don't expect a unified social theory that explains everything
  
• They are modest in their expectations about social generalizations
• They look for causal mechanisms as a basis for social explanation
• They anticipate heterogeneity and plasticity of social entities
• They are prepared to use eclectic methodologies -- quantitative, comparative, case-study, ethnographic -- to discover the mechanisms and mentalities that underlie social change
  

We need a better sociology for the twenty-first century. If social scientists continue to be captivated by the scientific prestige of positivism and quantitative social science to the exclusion of other perspectives, they will be led to social science research that looks quite different from what would result from a view that emphasizes contingency and causal mechanisms. And if there are strong, engaging, and empirically rigorous examples of other ways of conducting social research that can come into broad exposure in the social sciences—then there is a greater probability of emergence of a genuinely innovative and imaginative approach to the problem of social knowledge.

What do polls tell us?

We're all interested in the opinions of vast numbers of strangers -- potential voters, investors, consumers, college students, or home owners. Our interest is often a practical one -- we would like to know how the election is likely to go, whether the stock market will rebound, whether an influenza season will develop into a pandemic, or whether the shops in our cities and malls will have higher or lower demand in the holiday season. And so we turn to polls and surveys of attitudes and preferences -- consumer confidence surveys, voter preference polls, surveys of public health behaviors, surveys of investor confidence. And tools such as pollster.com aggregate and disaggregate the data to allow us to make more refined judgments about what the public's mood really is. But how valid is the knowledge that is provided by surveys and polls? To what extent do they accurately reflect an underlying social reality of public opinion? And to what extent does this knowledge provide a basis for projecting future collective behavior (including voting)?

There are several important factors to consider.

First is the heterogeneity of social characteristics across a population at virtually every level of scale -- including especially attitudes and beliefs. No matter what slice of the social demographic we select -- selecting for specific age, race, religion, and income, for example -- there will be a range of opinions across the resulting group. Groups don't suddenly become homogeneous when we find the right way of partitioning the population.

Second is an analogous point about plasticity over time. The attitudes and preferences of individuals and groups change over time -- often rapidly. In polling I suppose this is referred to as "voter volatility" -- the susceptibility of a group to changing its preferences in response to changing information and other stimulation. And the fact appears to be that opinions and beliefs change rapidly during periods of decision-making. So knowing that 65% of Hispanic voters preferred X over Y on October 10 doesn't imply much about the preferences of this group two weeks later. This is precisely what the campaigns are trying to accomplish -- a new message or commercial that shifts preferences for an extended group.

Third are questions having to do with the honesty of the responses that a survey or poll elicits. Do subjects honestly record their answers; do they conceal responses they may be ashamed of (the Bradley effect); do they exaggerate their income or personal happiness or expected grade in a course? There are survey techniques intended to address these possibilities (obscuring the point of a question, coming back to a question in a different way); but the possibility of untruthful responses raises an important problem for us when we try to assess the realism of a poll or survey.

Fourth are the standard technical issues having to do with sampling and population estimation: how large a set of observations are required to arrive at an estimate of a population value with 95% confidence? And what measures need to be taken to assure a random sample and avoid sample bias? For example, if polling is done based solely on landline phone numbers, does this introduce either an age bias or an income bias if it is true that affluent young people are more likely to have only cell phones?

So, then, what is the status of opinion surveys and polls as a source of knowledge about social reality? Do public opinion surveys tell us something about objective underlying facts about a population? What does a finding like "65% of Iowans favor subsidies for corn ethanol" based on a telephone poll of 1000 citizens tell us about the opinions of the full population of the state of Iowa?

Points made above lead to several important cautions. First, the reality of public opinion and preference itself is fluid and heterogeneous. The properties we're trying to measure vary substantially across any subgroup we might define -- pro/con assessments about a candidate's judgment, for example. So the measurement of a particular question is simply an average value for the group as a whole, with the possibility of a substantial variance within the group. And second, the opinions themselves may change rapidly over time at the individual level -- with the result that an observation today may be very different from a measurement next week. Third, it is a credible hypothesis that demographic factors such as race, income, or gender may affect attitudes and opinions; so there is a basis for thinking that data disaggregated by these variables may demonstrate more uniformity and consistency. Finally, the usual cautions about sample size and sample bias are always relevant; a poorly designed study tells us almost nothing about the underlying reality.

But what about the acid test: to what extent can a series of polls and surveys performed over many subgroups over an extended period of time, help to forecast the collective behavior of the group as a whole? Can we use this kind of information to arrive at credible estimates of an election in two weeks, or the likely demand for automobiles in 2009, or the willingness of a whole population to accept public health guidelines in a time of pandemic flu?

What do polls tell us?

We're all interested in the opinions of vast numbers of strangers -- potential voters, investors, consumers, college students, or home owners. Our interest is often a practical one -- we would like to know how the election is likely to go, whether the stock market will rebound, whether an influenza season will develop into a pandemic, or whether the shops in our cities and malls will have higher or lower demand in the holiday season. And so we turn to polls and surveys of attitudes and preferences -- consumer confidence surveys, voter preference polls, surveys of public health behaviors, surveys of investor confidence. And tools such as pollster.com aggregate and disaggregate the data to allow us to make more refined judgments about what the public's mood really is. But how valid is the knowledge that is provided by surveys and polls? To what extent do they accurately reflect an underlying social reality of public opinion? And to what extent does this knowledge provide a basis for projecting future collective behavior (including voting)?

There are several important factors to consider.

First is the heterogeneity of social characteristics across a population at virtually every level of scale -- including especially attitudes and beliefs. No matter what slice of the social demographic we select -- selecting for specific age, race, religion, and income, for example -- there will be a range of opinions across the resulting group. Groups don't suddenly become homogeneous when we find the right way of partitioning the population.

Second is an analogous point about plasticity over time. The attitudes and preferences of individuals and groups change over time -- often rapidly. In polling I suppose this is referred to as "voter volatility" -- the susceptibility of a group to changing its preferences in response to changing information and other stimulation. And the fact appears to be that opinions and beliefs change rapidly during periods of decision-making. So knowing that 65% of Hispanic voters preferred X over Y on October 10 doesn't imply much about the preferences of this group two weeks later. This is precisely what the campaigns are trying to accomplish -- a new message or commercial that shifts preferences for an extended group.

Third are questions having to do with the honesty of the responses that a survey or poll elicits. Do subjects honestly record their answers; do they conceal responses they may be ashamed of (the Bradley effect); do they exaggerate their income or personal happiness or expected grade in a course? There are survey techniques intended to address these possibilities (obscuring the point of a question, coming back to a question in a different way); but the possibility of untruthful responses raises an important problem for us when we try to assess the realism of a poll or survey.

Fourth are the standard technical issues having to do with sampling and population estimation: how large a set of observations are required to arrive at an estimate of a population value with 95% confidence? And what measures need to be taken to assure a random sample and avoid sample bias? For example, if polling is done based solely on landline phone numbers, does this introduce either an age bias or an income bias if it is true that affluent young people are more likely to have only cell phones?

So, then, what is the status of opinion surveys and polls as a source of knowledge about social reality? Do public opinion surveys tell us something about objective underlying facts about a population? What does a finding like "65% of Iowans favor subsidies for corn ethanol" based on a telephone poll of 1000 citizens tell us about the opinions of the full population of the state of Iowa?

Points made above lead to several important cautions. First, the reality of public opinion and preference itself is fluid and heterogeneous. The properties we're trying to measure vary substantially across any subgroup we might define -- pro/con assessments about a candidate's judgment, for example. So the measurement of a particular question is simply an average value for the group as a whole, with the possibility of a substantial variance within the group. And second, the opinions themselves may change rapidly over time at the individual level -- with the result that an observation today may be very different from a measurement next week. Third, it is a credible hypothesis that demographic factors such as race, income, or gender may affect attitudes and opinions; so there is a basis for thinking that data disaggregated by these variables may demonstrate more uniformity and consistency. Finally, the usual cautions about sample size and sample bias are always relevant; a poorly designed study tells us almost nothing about the underlying reality.

But what about the acid test: to what extent can a series of polls and surveys performed over many subgroups over an extended period of time, help to forecast the collective behavior of the group as a whole? Can we use this kind of information to arrive at credible estimates of an election in two weeks, or the likely demand for automobiles in 2009, or the willingness of a whole population to accept public health guidelines in a time of pandemic flu?

What do polls tell us?

We're all interested in the opinions of vast numbers of strangers -- potential voters, investors, consumers, college students, or home owners. Our interest is often a practical one -- we would like to know how the election is likely to go, whether the stock market will rebound, whether an influenza season will develop into a pandemic, or whether the shops in our cities and malls will have higher or lower demand in the holiday season. And so we turn to polls and surveys of attitudes and preferences -- consumer confidence surveys, voter preference polls, surveys of public health behaviors, surveys of investor confidence. And tools such as pollster.com aggregate and disaggregate the data to allow us to make more refined judgments about what the public's mood really is. But how valid is the knowledge that is provided by surveys and polls? To what extent do they accurately reflect an underlying social reality of public opinion? And to what extent does this knowledge provide a basis for projecting future collective behavior (including voting)?

There are several important factors to consider.

First is the heterogeneity of social characteristics across a population at virtually every level of scale -- including especially attitudes and beliefs. No matter what slice of the social demographic we select -- selecting for specific age, race, religion, and income, for example -- there will be a range of opinions across the resulting group. Groups don't suddenly become homogeneous when we find the right way of partitioning the population.

Second is an analogous point about plasticity over time. The attitudes and preferences of individuals and groups change over time -- often rapidly. In polling I suppose this is referred to as "voter volatility" -- the susceptibility of a group to changing its preferences in response to changing information and other stimulation. And the fact appears to be that opinions and beliefs change rapidly during periods of decision-making. So knowing that 65% of Hispanic voters preferred X over Y on October 10 doesn't imply much about the preferences of this group two weeks later. This is precisely what the campaigns are trying to accomplish -- a new message or commercial that shifts preferences for an extended group.

Third are questions having to do with the honesty of the responses that a survey or poll elicits. Do subjects honestly record their answers; do they conceal responses they may be ashamed of (the Bradley effect); do they exaggerate their income or personal happiness or expected grade in a course? There are survey techniques intended to address these possibilities (obscuring the point of a question, coming back to a question in a different way); but the possibility of untruthful responses raises an important problem for us when we try to assess the realism of a poll or survey.

Fourth are the standard technical issues having to do with sampling and population estimation: how large a set of observations are required to arrive at an estimate of a population value with 95% confidence? And what measures need to be taken to assure a random sample and avoid sample bias? For example, if polling is done based solely on landline phone numbers, does this introduce either an age bias or an income bias if it is true that affluent young people are more likely to have only cell phones?

So, then, what is the status of opinion surveys and polls as a source of knowledge about social reality? Do public opinion surveys tell us something about objective underlying facts about a population? What does a finding like "65% of Iowans favor subsidies for corn ethanol" based on a telephone poll of 1000 citizens tell us about the opinions of the full population of the state of Iowa?

Points made above lead to several important cautions. First, the reality of public opinion and preference itself is fluid and heterogeneous. The properties we're trying to measure vary substantially across any subgroup we might define -- pro/con assessments about a candidate's judgment, for example. So the measurement of a particular question is simply an average value for the group as a whole, with the possibility of a substantial variance within the group. And second, the opinions themselves may change rapidly over time at the individual level -- with the result that an observation today may be very different from a measurement next week. Third, it is a credible hypothesis that demographic factors such as race, income, or gender may affect attitudes and opinions; so there is a basis for thinking that data disaggregated by these variables may demonstrate more uniformity and consistency. Finally, the usual cautions about sample size and sample bias are always relevant; a poorly designed study tells us almost nothing about the underlying reality.

But what about the acid test: to what extent can a series of polls and surveys performed over many subgroups over an extended period of time, help to forecast the collective behavior of the group as a whole? Can we use this kind of information to arrive at credible estimates of an election in two weeks, or the likely demand for automobiles in 2009, or the willingness of a whole population to accept public health guidelines in a time of pandemic flu?

Social surprises

The near meltdown of the US financial system this week came as a surprise to most of us -- experts, legislators, and citizens alike. That isn't to say that the components of the disaster were unknown -- the subprime crisis, the earlier financial undoings of Fannie Mae and Bear Stearns this summer, and the sudden collapse of Lehman Brothers last week. But what has come as a surprise is the severity of the warnings by the Federal Reserve and Treasury that the entire financial system is only a few steps from seizure and collapse. This is a catastrophic system failure -- and no one would have anticipated its possibility six months ago.

Think of a few other surprises in the past thirty years -- the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iranian Revolution, or the emergence of China as a roaring engine of market-based growth. In each case the event was a discontinuous break from the trajectory of the past, and it surprised experts and citizens alike. (The photo above depicts the surprising Yeltsin standing on a tank in 1991.)

So what is a surprise? It is an event that shouldn't have happened, given our best understanding of how things work. It is an event that deviates widely from our most informed expectations, given our best beliefs about the causal environment in which it takes place. A surprise is a deviation between our expectations about the world's behavior, and the events that actually take place. Many of our expectations are based on the idea of continuity: tomorrow will be pretty similar to today; a delta change in the background will create at most an epsilon change in the outcome. A surprise is a circumstance that appears to represent a discontinuity in a historical series.

It would be a major surprise if the sun suddenly stopped shining, because we understand the physics of fusion that sustains the sun's energy production. It would be a major surprise to discover a population of animals in which acquired traits are passed across generations, given our understanding of the mechanisms of evolution. And it would be a major surprise if a presidential election were decided by a unanimous vote for one candidate, given our understanding of how the voting process works. The natural world doesn't present us with a large number of surprises; but history and social life are full of them.

The occurrence of major surprises in history and social life is an important reminder that our understanding of the complex processes that are underway in the social world is radically incomplete and inexact. We cannot fully anticipate the behavior of the subsystems that we study -- financial systems, political regimes, ensembles of collective behavior -- and we especially cannot fully anticipate the interactions that arise when processes and systems intersect. Often we cannot even offer reliable approximations of what the effects are likely to be of a given intervention. This has a major implication: we need to be very modest in the predictions we make about the social world, and we need to be cautious about the efforts at social engineering that we engage in. The likelihood of unforeseen and uncalculated consequences is great.

And in fact commentators are now raising exactly these concerns about the 700 billion dollar rescue plan currently being designed by the Bush administration to save the financial system. "Will it work?" is the headline; "What unforeseen consequences will it produce?" is the subtext; and "Who will benefit?" is the natural followup question.

It is difficult to reconcile this caution about the limits of our rational expectations about the future based on social science knowledge, with the need for action and policy change in times of crisis. If we cannot rely on our expectations about what effects an intervention is likely to have, then we can't have confidence in the actions and policies that we choose. And yet we must act; if war is looming, if famine is breaking out, if the banking system is teetering, a government needs to adopt policies that are well designed to minimize the bad consequences. It is necessary to make decisions about action that are based on incomplete information and insufficient theory. So it is a major challenge for the theory of public policy, to attempt to incorporate the limits of knowledge about consequences into the design of a policy process. One approach that might be taken is the model of designing for "soft landings" -- designing strategies that are likely to do the least harm if they function differently than expected. Another is to emulate a strategy that safety engineers employ when designing complex, dangerous systems: to attempt to de-link the subsystems to the extent possible, in order to minimize the likelihood of unforeseeable interactions. (Nancy Leveson describes some of these strategies in Safeware: System Safety and Computers.) And there are probably other heuristics that could be imagined as well.

Social surprises

The near meltdown of the US financial system this week came as a surprise to most of us -- experts, legislators, and citizens alike. That isn't to say that the components of the disaster were unknown -- the subprime crisis, the earlier financial undoings of Fannie Mae and Bear Stearns this summer, and the sudden collapse of Lehman Brothers last week. But what has come as a surprise is the severity of the warnings by the Federal Reserve and Treasury that the entire financial system is only a few steps from seizure and collapse. This is a catastrophic system failure -- and no one would have anticipated its possibility six months ago.

Think of a few other surprises in the past thirty years -- the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iranian Revolution, or the emergence of China as a roaring engine of market-based growth. In each case the event was a discontinuous break from the trajectory of the past, and it surprised experts and citizens alike. (The photo above depicts the surprising Yeltsin standing on a tank in 1991.)

So what is a surprise? It is an event that shouldn't have happened, given our best understanding of how things work. It is an event that deviates widely from our most informed expectations, given our best beliefs about the causal environment in which it takes place. A surprise is a deviation between our expectations about the world's behavior, and the events that actually take place. Many of our expectations are based on the idea of continuity: tomorrow will be pretty similar to today; a delta change in the background will create at most an epsilon change in the outcome. A surprise is a circumstance that appears to represent a discontinuity in a historical series.

It would be a major surprise if the sun suddenly stopped shining, because we understand the physics of fusion that sustains the sun's energy production. It would be a major surprise to discover a population of animals in which acquired traits are passed across generations, given our understanding of the mechanisms of evolution. And it would be a major surprise if a presidential election were decided by a unanimous vote for one candidate, given our understanding of how the voting process works. The natural world doesn't present us with a large number of surprises; but history and social life are full of them.

The occurrence of major surprises in history and social life is an important reminder that our understanding of the complex processes that are underway in the social world is radically incomplete and inexact. We cannot fully anticipate the behavior of the subsystems that we study -- financial systems, political regimes, ensembles of collective behavior -- and we especially cannot fully anticipate the interactions that arise when processes and systems intersect. Often we cannot even offer reliable approximations of what the effects are likely to be of a given intervention. This has a major implication: we need to be very modest in the predictions we make about the social world, and we need to be cautious about the efforts at social engineering that we engage in. The likelihood of unforeseen and uncalculated consequences is great.

And in fact commentators are now raising exactly these concerns about the 700 billion dollar rescue plan currently being designed by the Bush administration to save the financial system. "Will it work?" is the headline; "What unforeseen consequences will it produce?" is the subtext; and "Who will benefit?" is the natural followup question.

It is difficult to reconcile this caution about the limits of our rational expectations about the future based on social science knowledge, with the need for action and policy change in times of crisis. If we cannot rely on our expectations about what effects an intervention is likely to have, then we can't have confidence in the actions and policies that we choose. And yet we must act; if war is looming, if famine is breaking out, if the banking system is teetering, a government needs to adopt policies that are well designed to minimize the bad consequences. It is necessary to make decisions about action that are based on incomplete information and insufficient theory. So it is a major challenge for the theory of public policy, to attempt to incorporate the limits of knowledge about consequences into the design of a policy process. One approach that might be taken is the model of designing for "soft landings" -- designing strategies that are likely to do the least harm if they function differently than expected. Another is to emulate a strategy that safety engineers employ when designing complex, dangerous systems: to attempt to de-link the subsystems to the extent possible, in order to minimize the likelihood of unforeseeable interactions. (Nancy Leveson describes some of these strategies in Safeware: System Safety and Computers.) And there are probably other heuristics that could be imagined as well.

Social surprises

The near meltdown of the US financial system this week came as a surprise to most of us -- experts, legislators, and citizens alike. That isn't to say that the components of the disaster were unknown -- the subprime crisis, the earlier financial undoings of Fannie Mae and Bear Stearns this summer, and the sudden collapse of Lehman Brothers last week. But what has come as a surprise is the severity of the warnings by the Federal Reserve and Treasury that the entire financial system is only a few steps from seizure and collapse. This is a catastrophic system failure -- and no one would have anticipated its possibility six months ago.

Think of a few other surprises in the past thirty years -- the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iranian Revolution, or the emergence of China as a roaring engine of market-based growth. In each case the event was a discontinuous break from the trajectory of the past, and it surprised experts and citizens alike. (The photo above depicts the surprising Yeltsin standing on a tank in 1991.)

So what is a surprise? It is an event that shouldn't have happened, given our best understanding of how things work. It is an event that deviates widely from our most informed expectations, given our best beliefs about the causal environment in which it takes place. A surprise is a deviation between our expectations about the world's behavior, and the events that actually take place. Many of our expectations are based on the idea of continuity: tomorrow will be pretty similar to today; a delta change in the background will create at most an epsilon change in the outcome. A surprise is a circumstance that appears to represent a discontinuity in a historical series.

It would be a major surprise if the sun suddenly stopped shining, because we understand the physics of fusion that sustains the sun's energy production. It would be a major surprise to discover a population of animals in which acquired traits are passed across generations, given our understanding of the mechanisms of evolution. And it would be a major surprise if a presidential election were decided by a unanimous vote for one candidate, given our understanding of how the voting process works. The natural world doesn't present us with a large number of surprises; but history and social life are full of them.

The occurrence of major surprises in history and social life is an important reminder that our understanding of the complex processes that are underway in the social world is radically incomplete and inexact. We cannot fully anticipate the behavior of the subsystems that we study -- financial systems, political regimes, ensembles of collective behavior -- and we especially cannot fully anticipate the interactions that arise when processes and systems intersect. Often we cannot even offer reliable approximations of what the effects are likely to be of a given intervention. This has a major implication: we need to be very modest in the predictions we make about the social world, and we need to be cautious about the efforts at social engineering that we engage in. The likelihood of unforeseen and uncalculated consequences is great.

And in fact commentators are now raising exactly these concerns about the 700 billion dollar rescue plan currently being designed by the Bush administration to save the financial system. "Will it work?" is the headline; "What unforeseen consequences will it produce?" is the subtext; and "Who will benefit?" is the natural followup question.

It is difficult to reconcile this caution about the limits of our rational expectations about the future based on social science knowledge, with the need for action and policy change in times of crisis. If we cannot rely on our expectations about what effects an intervention is likely to have, then we can't have confidence in the actions and policies that we choose. And yet we must act; if war is looming, if famine is breaking out, if the banking system is teetering, a government needs to adopt policies that are well designed to minimize the bad consequences. It is necessary to make decisions about action that are based on incomplete information and insufficient theory. So it is a major challenge for the theory of public policy, to attempt to incorporate the limits of knowledge about consequences into the design of a policy process. One approach that might be taken is the model of designing for "soft landings" -- designing strategies that are likely to do the least harm if they function differently than expected. Another is to emulate a strategy that safety engineers employ when designing complex, dangerous systems: to attempt to de-link the subsystems to the extent possible, in order to minimize the likelihood of unforeseeable interactions. (Nancy Leveson describes some of these strategies in Safeware: System Safety and Computers.) And there are probably other heuristics that could be imagined as well.

Composition of the social

Our social ontology needs to reflect the insight that complex social happenings are almost invariably composed of multiple causal processes rather than existing as unitary systems. The phenomena of a great social whole -- a city over a fifty-year span, a period of sustained social upheaval or revolution (Iran in the 1970s-1980s), an international trading system -- should be conceptualized as the sum of a large number of separate processes with intertwining linkages and often highly dissimilar tempos. We can provide analysis and theory for some of the component processes, and we can attempt to model the results of aggregating these processes. And we can attempt to explain the patterns and exceptions that arise as the consequence of one or more of these processes. Some of the subordinate processes will be significantly amenable to theorizing and projection, and some will not. And the totality of behavior will be more than the "sum" of the relatively limited number of processes that are amenable to theoretical analysis. This means that the behavior of the whole will demonstrate contingency and unpredictability modulo the conditions and predictable workings of the known processes.

Consider the example of the development of a large city over time. The sorts of subordinate processes that I'm thinking of here might include --

• The habitation dynamics created by the nodes of a transportation system
• The dynamics of electoral competition governing the offices of mayor and city council
• The politics of land use policy and zoning permits
• The dynamics and outcomes of public education on the talent level of the population
• Economic development policies and tax incentives emanating from state government
• Dynamics of real estate system with respect to race
• Employment and poverty characteristics of surrounding region

Each of these processes can be investigated by specialists -- public policy experts, sociologists of race and segregation, urban politics experts. Each contributes to features of the evolving urban environment. And it is credible that there are consistent patterns of behavior and development within these various types of processes. This justifies a specialist's approach to specific types of causes of urban change, and rigorous social science can result.

But it must also be recognized that, there are system interdependencies among these groups of factors. More in-migration of extremely poor families may put more stress on the public schools. Enhancement of quality or accessibility of public schools may increase in-migration (the Kalamazoo promise, for example). Political incentives within the city council system may favor land-use policies that encourage the creation of racial or ethnic enclaves. So it isn't enough to understand the separate processes individually; we need to make an effort to discover these endogenous relations among them.

But over and above this complication of the causal interdependency of recognized factors, there is another and more pervasive complication as well. For any given complex social whole, it is almost always the case that there are likely to be additional causal processes that have not been separately analyzed or theorized. Some may be highly contingent and singular -- for example, the many effects that September 11 had on NYC. Others may be systemic and important, but novel and previously untheorized -- for example, the global information networks that Saskia Sassen emphasizes for the twenty-first century global city.

The upshot is that a complex social whole exceeds the particular theories we have created for this kind of phenomenon at any given point in time. The social whole is composed of lower-level processes; but it isn't exhausted by any specific list of underlying processes. Therefore we shouldn't imagine that the ideal result of investigation of urban phenomena is a comprehensive theory of the city -- the goal is chimerical. Social science is always "incomplete", in the sense that there are always social processes relevant to social outcomes that have not been theorized.

Is there any type of social phenomenon that is substantially more homogeneous than this description would suggest -- with the result that we might be able to arrive a neat, comprehensive theories of this kind of social entity? Consider these potential candidates: inner city elementary schools, labor unions, wars of national liberation, civil service bureaus, or multi-national corporations. One might make the case that these terms capture a group of phenomena that are fairly homogeneous and would support simple, unified theories. But I think that this would be mistaken. Rather, much the same kind of causal complexity that is presented by the city of Chicago or London is also presented by elementary schools and labor unions. There are multiple social, cultural, economic, interpersonal, and historical factors that converge on a particular school in a particular place, or a particular union involving specific individuals and issues; and the characteristics of the school or the union are influenced by this complex convergence of factors. (On the union example, consider Howard Kimeldorf's fascinating study, Battling for American Labor: Wobblies, Craft Workers, and the Making of the Union Movement. Kimeldorf demonstrates the historical contingency and the plurality of social and business factors that led to the significant differences among dock workers' unions in the United States.)

What analytical frameworks available for capturing this understanding of the compositional nature of society? I have liked the framework of causal mechanisms, suggesting as it does the idea of there being separable causal processes underlying particular social facts that are diverse and amenable to investigation. The ontology of "assemblages" captures the idea as well, in its ontology of separable sub-processes. (Nick Srnicek provides an excellent introduction to assemblage theory in his master's thesis.) And the language of microfoundations, methodological localism, and the agent-structure nexus convey much the same idea as well. In each case, we have the idea that the social entity is composed of underlying processes that take us back in the direction of agents acting within the context of social and environmental constraints. And we have a premise of causal openness: the behavior of the whole is not fully determined by a particular set of subordinate mechanisms or assemblages.