Key premises of analytical sociology : read Dan LITTLE about analytical sociology, largely citing contributions by Peter DEMEULENAERE as well as Gianluca MANZO
Analytical sociology rests on three central ideas. First, there is the idea that social outcomes need to be explained on the basis of the actions of individuals. (…) Second is the idea that social actors are socially situated; the values, perceptions, emotions, and modes of reasoning of the actor are influenced by social institutions, and their current behavior is constrained and incentivized by existing institutions. (…) Third, and most distinctive, is the idea that social explanations need to be grounded in hypotheses about the concrete social causal mechanisms that constitute the causal connection between one event and another. Mechanisms rather than regularities or necessary/sufficient conditions provide the fundamental grounding of causal relations and need to be at the center of causal research.