Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytic Sociology (review)

For a decade or so beginning around the mid-1980s, it was relatively commonplace to encounter calls by prominent sociologists to build bridges between micro- and macro-social phenomena. Each effort typically offered a "theoretical framework" for bridging the ostensible gap – a few sensitizing concepts, perhaps a small typology or rough causal diagram. Conspicuously absent from these efforts were explicit theories capable of generating testable hypotheses for empirical analysis. In Dissecting the Social, Peter Hedström accomplishes all of these things.

The book's first chapter, "The analytical tradition in sociology," introduces the author's orientation toward constructing social theories. In his words, "we explain a social phenomenon by referring to a constellation of entities and activities, typically actors and their actions, that are linked to one another in such a way that they regularly bring about the type of phenomenon we seek to explain." (p. 2) This is the social mechanism approach that is at the heart of the book. It entails dissecting phenomena into components, then modeling the key elements and processes that underlie and generate those phenomena. The approach advocates realism, reductionism and methodological individualism, in addition to promoting precision and clarity. These qualities become standards for guiding and evaluating the theory and empirical analyses that are used for illustrative purposes in subsequent chapters.

Chapter 2, "Social mechanisms and explanatory theory," reviews the nature of explanation. It focuses on two common types of sociological explanation: covering law and statistical probability. Hedström then contrasts each with mechanism-based explanations. The next chapter, "Action and interaction," presents a simple theoretical mechanism for later use in a multilevel theory. The so-called DBO theory specifies how individuals' desires, beliefs and opportunities combine to produce individual actions, and the various ways that these three factors may combine in social interactions.

Chapter 4, "Social interaction and social change," forges connections from micro-level interactions to macro-level social phenomena. Simple agent-based simulations illustrate the key ideas without requiring any technical expertise on the part of the reader. In particular, the emergence of relatively complex social patterns from very simple assumptions about actors and interactions (e.g., the DBO theory) may be revelatory to those unfamiliar with this kind of work. The approach is further elaborated by introducing the intermediate level of interrelated social categories. In the next chapter "On causal modeling," Hedström shows how traditional causal models fail to capture the insights afforded by his social mechanisms approach.

Chapter 6, co-written with Yvonne Åberg, addresses "Quantitative research, agent-based modeling and theories of the social." The lion's share of this penultimate chapter is devoted to a full-blown application of the social mechanisms approach: a dynamic, empirically calibrated agent-based model of unemployment. Specifically, the authors sought to explain variations in unemployment among 20-24 year olds in Stockholm during the years 1993-1999. They did so by (1. developing a simple agent-based social interaction model capable of producing variable unemployment levels; (2. using empirical data to render agents similar in certain ways to those in the actual sample; (3. statistically controlling for potentially confounding factors; and (4. comparing the macro consequences of the empirically informed simulation against actual unemployment trends. The approach permitted the authors to conduct virtual experiments to explore how varying the mutual impact of neighborhood peers affected employment propensities. The concluding chapter, "Coda," summarized the major points from throughout the book.

Dissecting the Social offers an approach to building and testing theories that stands at odds with prevailing norms, but it provides many useful insights and justifications for the strategies it prescribes. With a strong emphasis on the nexus of theory and empirical analysis, the book is potentially valuable for graduate level courses, and perhaps for highly motivated advanced undergraduates. I suspect that most scholars in the discipline also would find much of the material interesting and useful.

My endorsement is not unqualified, however, due to some non-trivial quibbles. For example, Hedstr...