But there does seem to be something awfully vague and genuinely objectionable about the “social forces” sociologists–I guess?–constantly refer to? (I could be wrong.) Is that what you have in mind by juxtaposing methodological individualism?

If so you wouldn’t need to assert self-interestedness or rationality to criticize the vagueness; you could just ask “What’s the mechanism?”

Jeff

I think rational choice makes more sense if you take Austrian concepts of limited knowledge and temporal concerns. And I should emphasize that I’m not a fan of the strict homo economicus used by economists, but rather a wider conception of self-interest that includes altruism. Some might argue that it strips economics or sociology any analytical usage, but I still think it gives you a good framework for descriptive analysis of real world events and processes.

But given the ambition of my project, I’d settle on an agreement among economists and sociologists that methodogical individualism is the only way to study society.

Methodological individualism sounds more promising if it could be separated from rat choice and self-interest, but can it?

Jeff

@phil: Good to know you’re out there!

Granted, Nicosia doesn’t reside in the Pantheon with some of names noted above. But, read him anyway.

The question you raised is indeed a tricky issue. I’m not sure that you can lump economists and “economic sociologists” together just like that. As you said, economists tend to be either tourists or imperialists. A lot of economists see economics as a social science discipline characterized by selected methods – especially analytical proofs. In that regard, you might want to consider rationality as a method because many economists had adopted the assumption so that it is feasible to perform max/min operations. But many sociologists take issue with that, seeing the specific constrained assumptions as a theoretical divider between economics and sociology. So yeah, to them, economic sociology may not be legit.

Anyway, I’m glag that you blog about this issue. Definitely something that we should blog about, albeit with a much more in-depth literature review.

I knew there were a few people out there interested in bringing sociology and economics back n’sync but being interested in sociology and Austrian economics I considered myself somewhat of a personified oxymoron of todays rather left-leaning social sciences especially and ironically so at my Alma Mater: the University of Economics and Business Administration in Vienna (!)
It is a good feeling to know that I am not alone out there studying “socioeconomics” in Vienna Austria…

Well, what about Schumpeter (ok also dead), but I wonder why you didn’t come up with Richard Swedberg or Jens Beckert especially;
or what’s with the whole old school Austrian guys like Wieser, Böhm-Bawerk all of which can be read in a genuin sociological/socioeconomic way; and of course Mises himself, who initially wanted to call his praxeology sociology but came to late…

Grüße aus Wien,

phil