Methodological Individualism: Introduction and Founding Texts (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought) - Softcover

Bulle, Nathalie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1032627034 ISBN 13: 9781032627038

Publisher: Routledge, 2025

Synopsis

Originating in the late 19th century and becoming the subject of ongoing methodological debates in the social sciences, methodological individualism is a paradigm that focuses on understanding social phenomena through the actions and choices of individuals rather than through collective explanations. This book highlights its theoretical bases as defined and developed in the writings of its founders and early proponents in the context of the liveliest methodological battles in the social sciences. It addresses fundamental epistemological issues, including the distinction between explanation in the social sciences and natural sciences, the rational bases for understanding social actions, the relation of social wholes to their parts, and the connections between social concepts and the phenomenal world. Bringing together new English translations of foundational texts by Carl Menger, Joseph Schumpeter, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber, this book provides key insights into one of the essential methodological paradigms in the social sciences, corrects misconceptions, and advances a deeper understanding of methodological individualism as a robust and valuable approach to explaining social phenomena. It will therefore appeal to scholars and students of sociology and sociological theory with an interest in questions of social science methodology.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

About this title

About the Author

Nathalie Bulle is a sociologist research director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS, Groupe d’Etude des Méthodes de l’Analyse Sociologique de la Sorbonne) in France. Her interest in the analysis of human thought, in its common or scientific form, is at the core of her work applied to educational ideas and the epistemology of the social sciences. She has published articles on methodological individualism in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, the Journal of Classical Sociology, and L’Année sociologique. http://www.nathaliebulle.com/

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1032627034
• ISBN 13: 9781032627038
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112