Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T15:58:41.596Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Multiple Levels of Analysis and the Limitations of Methodological Individualisms (2011)

from Part III - The Institutional Level of Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2021

Ronald L. Jepperson  and
John W. Meyer
By
R. Jepperson  and
J. Meyer
Ronald L. Jepperson
Affiliation:
University of Tulsa
John W. Meyer
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Get access

Summary

Works in detail through important empirical examples – including a canonical one from Max Weber – showing how supra-individual social causal processes often provide more sensible depictions of historical processes than do cumbersome ones imagining highly autonomous individual and organizational actors.

Keywords

levels of analysismultilevel analysismethodological individualismProtestant Ethic ThesisMax Webercollective levelinstitutional level
Type
Chapter
Information
Institutional Theory
The Cultural Construction of Organizations, States, and Identities
 , pp. 139 - 169
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abell, P. (1997). Homo Sociologicus: Do We Need Him/Her? In Turner, S. P., ed., Social Theory and Sociology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 229–34.Google Scholar
Alexander, J. C. & Giesen, B.. (1987). From Reduction to Linkage: The Long View of the Micro-Macro Link. In Alexander, J. C., et al., eds., The Micro-Macro Link. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 1–44.Google Scholar
Anderson, P. (1974). Lineages of the Absolutist State, London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
Anderson, P. W. (1972). More Is Different. Science, New Series, 177(4047), 393–6.Google ScholarPubMed
Baechler, J., Hall, J. A., & Mann, M., eds. (1988). Europe and the Rise of Capitalism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bendix, R. (1960). Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait, Garden City, NY: Anchor.Google Scholar
Berger, P. L. & Luckmann, T.. (1967). The Social Construction of Reality, Garden City, NY: Anchor.Google Scholar
Berman, H. J. (1983). Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bhargava, R. (1992). Individualism in Social Science, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blau, P. M. (1974). Parameters of Social Structure. American Sociological Review, 39(5), 615–35.Google Scholar
Boudon, R. (1981). The Logic of Social Action, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Brunsson, N. (1985). The Irrational Organization, Chichester: Wiley.Google Scholar
Buckley, W. (1967). Sociology and Modern Systems Theory, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Bunge, M. (1996). Finding Philosophy in Social Science, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Bunge, M. (2000). Ten Modes of Individualism – None of Which Works – And Their Alternatives. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 30(3), 384–406.Google Scholar
Burt, R. (1982). Toward a Structural Theory of Action, New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Coleman, J. S. (1986a). Social Theory, Social Research, and a Theory of Action. American Journal of Sociology, 91(6), 1309–35.Google Scholar
Coleman, J. S. (1986b). Micro Foundations and Macrosocial Theory. In Lindenberg, S., Coleman, J. S., & Nowak, S., eds., Approaches to Social Theory. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 345–63.Google Scholar
Coleman, J. S. (1987). Microfoundations and Macrosocial Behavior. In Alexander, J. C., Giesen, B., Münch, R., & Smelser, N. J., eds., The Micro-Macro Link. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 153–73.Google Scholar
Coleman, J. S. (1990). Foundations of Social Theory, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Coleman, J. S. & Fararo, T. J.. (1992). Introduction. In Coleman, J. S. & Fararo, T. J., eds., Rational Choice Theory. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, pp. ix–xxii.Google Scholar
Collins, R. (1979). The Credential Society, New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Collins, R. (1980). Weber’s Last Theory of Capitalism: A Systematization. American Sociological Review, 45(6), 925–42.Google Scholar
Collins, R. (1981). The Microfoundations of Macrosociology. American Journal of Sociology, 86(5), 984–1014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, R. (1986). Weberian Sociological Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, R. (1988). Theoretical Sociology, San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Collins, R. (1999). Macrohistory, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drori, G., Meyer, J. W., Ramirez, F. O., & Schofer, E.. (2003). Science in the Modern World Polity, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Durkheim, E. [1898] 1969. Individualism and the Intellectuals. Political Studies 17, 14–30.Google Scholar
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 1965. Transformation of Social, Political, and Cultural Orders in Modernization. American Sociological Review, 30(5), 659–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. (1968a). Social Institutions: The Concept. In Sills, D. L., ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. XIV. New York, NY: Macmillan, pp. 409–21Google Scholar
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. (1968b). The Protestant Ethic Thesis in an Analytical and Comparative Framework. In Eisenstadt, S. N., ed., The Protestant Ethic and Modernization. New York, NY: Basic Books, pp. 3–45.Google Scholar
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. (1999). Fundamentalism, Sectarianism, and Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Elster, J. (1989). Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Engerman, S. L. (2000). Max Weber as Economist and Economic Historian. In Turner, S., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Weber. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 256–71.Google Scholar
Esser, H. (1994). Explanatory Sociology. Soziologie, 3, 177–90.Google Scholar
Fararo, T. (1992). The Meaning of General Theoretical Sociology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. (1997). Special Sciences: Still Autonomous After All These Years. Philosophical Perspectives, 11, 149–63.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, A. (1981). Forms of Explanation, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Gell-Mann, M. (1994). The Quark and the Jaguar, New York, NY: W.H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Gerring, J. (2007). The Mechanismic Worldview: Thinking Inside the Box. British Journal of Political Science, 38, 161–79.Google Scholar
Goldstein, L. J. (1973). The Inadequacy of the Principle of Methodological Individualism. In O’Neill, J., ed., Modes of Individualism and Collectivism. London: Heinemann, pp. 264–76.Google Scholar
Gorski, P. S. (2003). The Disciplinary Revolution, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gorski, P. S. (2005). The Little Divergence: The Protestant Reformation and Economic Hegemony in Early Modern Europe. In Swatos, W. H., Jr. & Kaelber, L., eds., The Protestant Ethic Turns 100. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, pp. 165–90.Google Scholar
Granovetter, M. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–80.Google Scholar
Hannan, M. (1992). Rationality and Robustness in Multilevel Systems. In Coleman, J. S. & Fararo, T. J., eds., Rational Choice Theory. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 120–36.Google Scholar
Hannan, M. & Freeman, J.. (1986). The Ecology of Organizations: Structural Inertia and Organizational Change. In Lindenberg, S., Coleman, J. S. & Nowak, S., eds., Approaches to Social Theory. New York, NY.Google Scholar
Hannan, M. & Freeman, J.. (1989). Organizational Ecology, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawthorn, G. (1987). Enlightenment and Despair: A History of Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hechter, M. (1989). Rational Choice Foundations of Social Order. In Turner, J. H., ed., Theory-Building in Sociology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, pp. 60–81.Google Scholar
Hedström, P. & Swedberg, R.. (1998). Social Mechanisms: An Introductory Essay. In Hedström, P. & Swedberg, R., eds., Social Mechanisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hernes, G. (1976). Structural Change in Social Processes. American Journal of Sociology, 82(3), 513–54.Google Scholar
Hernes, G. (1989). The Logic of the Protestant Ethic. Journal of Rationality and Society, 1, 122–61.Google Scholar
Homans, G. (1961). Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms, New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and World.Google Scholar
Huff, T. (2003). The Rise of Early Modern Science, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, E. L. (1981). The European Miracle, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A.. (1982). Judgment Under Uncertainty, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kessler, R. (1997). The Effects of Stressful Life Events on Depression. Annual Review of Psychology, 48(1), 191–214.Google Scholar
Kessler, R. & McLeod, J.. (1984). Sex Differences in Vulnerability to Undesirable Life Events. American Sociological Review, 49(5), 620–31.Google Scholar
Kincaid, H. (1996). Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Knorr-Cetina, K. (1981). The Micro-Sociological Challenge of Macro-Sociology: Towards a Reconstruction of Social Theory and Methodology. In Knorr-Cetina, K. & Cicourel, A. V., eds., Advances in Social Theory and Methodology. Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 1–48.Google Scholar
Kontopoulos, K. M. (1993). The Logics of Social Structure, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kurzweil, E. (1989). The Freudians: A Comparative Perspective, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Landes, D. S. (1998). The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, New York, NY: Norton.Google Scholar
Levine, D. N. (1995). Visions of the Sociological Tradition, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Little, D. (2007). Levels of the Social. In Turner, S. P. & Risjord, M. W., eds., Philosophy of Anthropology and Sociology. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 343–72.Google Scholar
Lüthy, Herbert. (1968). Once Again: Calvinism and Capitalism. In Eisenstadt, S. N., ed., The Protestant Ethic and Modernization. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Mahoney, J. (2001). Beyond Correlational Analysis: Recent Innovations in Theory and Method. Sociological Forum, 16(3), 575–93.Google Scholar
Mann, M. (1986). A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. Vol. I of The Sources of Social Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mayhew, B. H. (1980). Structuralism Versus Individualism. Social Forces, 59(2), 335–75, 627–48.Google Scholar
Mayntz, R. (2003). Mechanisms in the Analysis of Social Macro-Phenomena. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34(2), 237–59.Google Scholar
McClelland, D. (1967). The Achieving Society, New York, NY: Free Press.Google Scholar
McNeill, W. (1963). The Rise of the West, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McNeill, W. (1974). The Shape of European History, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Merton, R. K. (1970). Science, Technology & Society in Seventeenth-Century England, New York, NY: Howard Fertig.Google Scholar
Meyer, J. W. (1977). The Effects of Education as an Institution. American Journal of Sociology, 83(1), 55–77.Google Scholar
Mokyr, J. (1992). The Lever of Riches, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Münch, R. (1986). The American Creed in Sociological Theory: Exchange, Negotiated Order, Accommodated Individualism, and Contingency. Sociological Theory, 4(1), 41–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Münch, R. (1987). The Interpenetration of Microinteraction and Macrostructures in a Complex and Contingent Institutional Order. In Alexander, J. C., et al., eds., The Micro-Macro Link. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 319–36.Google Scholar
Münch, R. (1994). Sociological Theory: From the 1850s to the 1920s, Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall.Google Scholar
Münch, R. (2001). The Ethics of Modernity, London: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Münch, R. & Smelser, N. J.. (1987). Relating the Micro and Macro. In Alexander, J. C., et al., eds., The Micro-Macro Link. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 356-88.Google Scholar
Padgett, J. F. & McLean, P. D.. (2006). Organizational Invention and Elite Transformation: The Birth of Partnership Systems in Renaissance Florence. American Journal of Sociology, 111(5), 1463–568.Google Scholar
Parkin, F. (1982). Max Weber, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Parsons, T. (1977). The Evolution of Societies, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Poggi, G. (1983). Calvinism and the Capitalist Spirit, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Pomeranz, K. (2000). The Great Divergence, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Przeworski, A. & Wallerstein, M.. (1982). The Structure of Class Conflict in Democratic and Capitalist Societies. American Political Science Review, 76(2), 215–38.Google Scholar
Sawyer, R. K. (2002). Durkheim’s Dilemma: Toward a Sociology of Emergence. Sociological Theory, 20(2), 227–47.Google Scholar
Sawyer, R. K. (2003). Nonreductive Individualism Part II: Social Causation. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 33(2), 203–24.Google Scholar
Schelling, T. (1971). Dynamic Models of Segregation. Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 1(2), 143–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, H. (1962). The Architecture of Complexity. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 106(6), 467–82.Google Scholar
Skocpol, T. & Orloff, A. S.. (1986). Explaining the Origins of Welfare States: A Comparison of Britain and the United States, 1880s–1920s. In Lindenberg, S., Coleman, J. S., & Nowak, S., eds., Approaches to Social Theory. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 229–58.Google Scholar
Stinchcombe, A. (1991). The Conditions of Fruitfulness of Theorizing About Mechanisms in Social Science. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 21(3), 367–88.Google Scholar
Strayer, J. (1973). The Medieval Origins of the Modern State, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. (1963). The Making of the English Working Class, New York, NY: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Thomson, G. (2003). On Philosophy, Toronto: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (1990). Coercion, Capital, and European States, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Townsend, J. M. (1978). Cultural Conceptions and Mental Illness: A Comparison of Germany and the U.S., Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. R. (1967). Religion, the Reformation and Social Change, London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Turner, J. H. & Boyns, D. E.. (2002). The Return of Grand Theory. In Turner, J. H., ed., Handbook of Sociological Theory. New York, NY: Plenum Publishers, pp. 353–78.Google Scholar
Udehn, L. (2002). The Changing Face of Methodological Individualism. Annual Review of Sociology, 28(1), 479–507.Google Scholar
Varenne, H. (1984). Collective Representation in American Anthropological Conversations: Individual and Culture. Current Anthropology, 25(3), 281–300.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, I. (1974). Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Century, Sixteenth. Vol. I of The Modern World System. New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Walzer, M. (1965). The Revolution of the Saints, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Watkins, J. W. N. (1952). The Principle of Methodological Individualism. British Journal of the Philosophy of Science, 3(10), 186–89.Google Scholar
Watkins, J. W. N. (1957). Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 8(30), 104–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, M. [1904/1905] 1996. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury.Google Scholar
Weber, M. [1920] 1996. Max Weber’s Introduction to the Sociology of Religion (1920). In Weber, M., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury, pp. 13–31.Google Scholar
Weber, M. [1923] 1950. General Economic History, Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Werner, K. F. (1988). Political and Social Structures of the West. In Baechler, J., Hall, J. A. & Mann, M., eds., Europe and the Rise of Capitalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 169–84.Google Scholar
White, H. (1970). Chains of Opportunity, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
White, H. (1992). Identity and Control, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
White, L., Jr. (1978). Medieval Religion and Technology, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience, New York, NY: Knopf.Google Scholar
Wippler, R. (1978). The Structural-Individualistic Approach in Dutch Sociology. Netherlands Journal of Sociology, 14, 135–55.Google Scholar
Wippler, R. & Lindenberg, S.. (1987). Collective Phenomena and Rational Choice. In Alexander, J. C., Giesen, B., Münch, R., & Smelser, N. J., eds., The Micro-Macro Link. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wuthnow, R. (1989). Communities of Discourse, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Zahle, J. (2007). Holism and Supervenience. In Turner, S. P. & Risjord, M. W., eds., Philosophy of Anthropology and Sociology. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 311–42.Google Scholar
Zaret, D. (1989). Religion and the Rise of Liberal-Democratic Ideology in 17th-Century England. American Sociological Review, 54(2), 163–79.Google Scholar
Zetterberg, H. L. (1965). On Theory and Verification in Sociology, 3rd edn, Totowa, NJ: Bedminster Press.Google Scholar
Zetterberg, H. L. (1993). Rationalism and Capitalism: Max Weber. Ch. 2 of the web publication, European Proponents of Sociology Prior to World War, zetterberg.org.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×