Get Real: A Perspective on Social Science

We begin our discussion of social science by quickly reviewing our argument so far. We have introduced, as necessary conceptual tools for social explanation, five basic concepts — individuals, nature, culture, action and social structure. We have shown that each has its own relatively autonomous causal power, so explanations must show how they interrelate in particular instances. Our examples have shown that the explanatory power of each concept varies between cases. All five are necessary, but even where a concept is on its most favourable ground, it is never sufficient to carry the whole weight of explanation. We have argued for the importance of these basic concepts by illustrating their strengths and weaknesses as they are put to work. In this chapter we have to shift gear, from demonstrating the usefulness of the concepts, to enlarge on the social theory which informs our choosing them for our tool kit and lies behind our claim that they are all fundamental for scientific, social explanations. This will involve returning to matters briefly considered in the Introduction and becoming a little more abstract, but we hope that what you have read so far will now enable you to follow our argument. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.