Do Mechanism-Based Social Explanations Make a Case for Methodological Individualism?

Meanings of Methodological Individualism

Advocacy of ‘methodological individualism’ is a widespread, especially among economists. However, the term is rarely defined with adequate precision and some crucial ambiguities are explored in this article. Among these is the commonplace ambivalence over whether explanations should be in terms of individuals alone, or in terms of individuals plus relations between them. It is shown that a grea...

Methodological Individualism and Generosity

Today a convergence between the fields of anthropology and economics has re-emerged after decades during which the dictates of methodological individualism, as strikingly elucidated by Kenneth Arrow, had seriously limited and hampered effective scholarship in studies of economic and social development in developing countries. A new generation of development economists represented by Spolaori an...

Ontology , methodological individualism , and the foundations of the social sciences

This is a review essay, based on a critical assessment of The Ant Trap by Brian Epstein. Epstein argues that models in the social sciences are inadequate because they are based on a false ontology of methodological individualism, and proposes a new model of social ontology. I examine this model and point to flaws in it. More generally, I argue against Epstein’s methodological approach, which tr...

Individualism as a Modern Social Anarchy

Social anarchism sometimes referred to as socialist anarchism is generally considered tobe the branch of anarchism which sees individual freedom as being dependent upon mutual aid. Socialanarchist consideration generally emphasizes community and social equality. Society in the modernperiod is in a critical situation of not only economy and social system, but also in the remarkableaspects of the...

Is Methodological Individualism a Reductionist Approach?