This study of three different approaches to social structure finds Pleasants’s ideas for the use of different concepts of social structure intriguing but based on an untenable view about the possibility to discern an empirical modality. Porpora’s approach is based on the idea that the relational concept of social structure cannot be bypassed, ontologically speaking. Easton’s idea is to apply the two relational concepts of higher-order and lower-order structure. Relational structures are also salient in the specific scholarly debate studied, which (...) strengthens the idea that it is this concept of social structure that we primarily should focus on. (shrink)

Although social ontology (SO) has attracted the attention of scholars in various disciplines, how it is applied to social scientific studies is still under-researched. To tackle this issue, this paper initially considers major streams of research on SO. It then argues that one of the aims of SO in the social sciences is to identify the rhetorical expression of social dynamism. To support this argument, the present study introduces a perspective of performativity and proposes that generic performativity should be identified (...) by social scientists. Finally, such an attempt is demonstrated with reference to the global pursuit of financialization. (shrink)

In this interview, Daniel Little provides an overview of his life and work in academia. Among other things, he discusses an actor-centred approach to theory of social ontology. For Little, this approach complements the assumptions of critical realism, in that it accords full ontological importance to social structures, causal mechanisms, and enduring and influential normative systems. The approach casts doubt, however, on the idea of ‘strong emergence' of social structures, the idea that social structures have properties and causal powers that (...) cannot, in principle be explained by their constituents (social actors) and their relationships. Little’s approach to social ontology endorses instead the idea of relative explanatory autonomy. During the interview, many points of convergence become evident between this actor-centred approach to social ontology and the fundamental insights of critical realism. According to Little, analysis of social ontology also turns out to be especially relevant to philosophy of history. (shrink)

Standard defenses of ontological individualism are challenged by arguments that exploit the dependence of social facts on material facts—that is, facts that are not about human individuals. In this article, I discuss Brian Epstein’s “materialism” in The Ant Trap: granting Epstein’s strict definition of individualism, I show that his arguments depend crucially on a generous conception of social properties and social facts. Individualists, however, are only committed to the claim that projectible properties are individualistically realized, and materialists have not undermined (...) this claim. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 52, Issue 3, Page 150-174, June 2022. This article offers a reassessment of the main import of Peter Winch’s philosophy of the social sciences. Critics argue that Winch presented a flawed methodology for the social sciences, while his supporters deny that Winch’s work is about methodology at all. Contrary to both, the author argues that Winch deals with fundamental questions about methodology, and that there is something substantial to learn from his account. Winch engages (...) methodological questions without being committed to social ontology. Instead, Winch’s work on methodology is best described as a descriptive metaphysics of social inquiry. This alternative reading clarifies the close link between Winch’s argument for the autonomy of the social sciences and R. G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history. (shrink)