This paper investigates the systemic nature of methodological individualism. According to widespread belief, the notion of autonomy of the actor that is defended by methodological individualism is mistaken because it is incompatible with the study of society in terms of its organized structure. We argue that this viewpoint must be rejected. In our opinion, it stems from confusion between ontolo...

The author explores the relationship between rationality, ethics, and space. He argues that the contemporary ethical project involves a derationalisation of ethics through a recorporealisation of space. There is a move away from the abstract space of liberal ^ individualist notions of justice to more enclosed and local spaces of communitarian loyalties and intersubjective communication. Postmod...

There are several approaches in the social sciences that seek to provide causal explanations of social phenomena neither in terms of general causal laws nor in terms of case-specific narratives , but, at a middle level of generality, in terms of recurrent causal patterns or “mechanisms ” (Hedström and Swedberg 1998 ). Typically, these approaches invoke micro-mechanisms to explain macro-social p...

I propose a reinterpretation of Peirce’s theory of pragmaticism which sees it to cater a general methodological approach, as well as a historical counterpoint, to a multiplicity of issues arising in contemporary social and behavioural sciences. This interpretation deflects methodological individualism but integrates co-evolution, abduction and triadic forms of emergence into it. It follows that...

Twenty years after Poverty and Famines elaborated the entitlement approach as an innovative and holistic approach to famine analysis, debates about some of its fundamental assertions remain unresolved. This paper examines four limitations acknowledged by Sen himself: starvation by choice, disease-driven rather than starvation-driven mortality, ambiguities in entitlement speciŽ cation and extra-...