Top-down causation and social structures

Abstract

Top-down causation has been implicit in many sociological accounts of social structure and its influence on social events, but the social sciences have struggled to provide a coherent account of top-down causation itself. This paper summarizes a critical realist view of causation and emergence, shows how it supports a plausible account of top-down causation and then applies this account to the social world. The argument is illustrated by an examination of the concept of a norm circle, a kind of social entity that, it is argued, is causally responsible for the influence of normative social institutions. Nevertheless, social entities are structured rather differently from ordinary material ones, with the result that the compositional level structure of reality implicit in the concept of top-down causation has some limitations in the social world. The paper closes by considering what might be involved in examining how top-down causation can be shown to be at work in the social domain.

Using Critical Realism to Explain Indeterminacy in Role Behaviour Systematically

“…To illustrate this argument, Kemp and Holmwood engage with Dave Elder‐Vass's work on emergent social entities (2007, 2010). They argue that Elder‐Vass's conception of emergent social entities relies heavily upon the coordinated relations between roles and thus necessitates an understanding of roles as singular and, as such, they reject Elder‐Vass's claim about the divergent expectations of different norm circles by contending that such norm circles only exert divergent expectations on the agent, not the role, which is still defined as singular and distinct from agents (, pp. 411–415).…”

“…In so doing, they argue both in favour of an approach based on the work of Gross, Mason and McEachern () that focuses on the diversity of role expectations held by (different groups of) relevant actors, and against approaches underpinned by either structural‐functionalism or, the main focus of this article, critical realism. According to Kemp and Holmwood, critical realists—and particularly Margaret Archer (, , ) and Dave Elder‐Vass (, , )—are unable to account satisfactorily, if at all, for diversity in role behaviour for three inter‐related reasons: first, critical realists ascribe contingency—or, in critical realist terminology, indeterminacy —solely and a priori to agency (and not, therefore, to structural features of society); secondly, critical realists view “the systematic processes influencing role behaviour as oriented towards promoting behaviour in line with a singular set of expectations” (, p. 405); and, thirdly, the central critical realist concept of emergence ensures that building diversity into the concept of roles is beyond the scope of critical realism as a theoretical framework.…”

Causal powers and social ontology

“…Austin 1962) with causal powers. For example, recall that Lawson mentioned, as examples of powers, abilities of social systems to raise taxes, establish international treaties, and monetary unions, but also abilities of individual persons (police officers, judges and doctors) to arrest suspects, pass sentences, and prescribe drugs (for similar examples, see Harré 1970, p. 92;Harré and Madden 1975, p. 95;Elder-Vass 2010, pp. 73, 173, 199, 2012.…”

“…Let me end this section by conceding that there is a regress argument looming here: if we reiterate the exclusion argument over and over again it seems that all causal powers drain away, except for those that exist at the level of elementary particles (if there is such a bottom level, see Schaffer 2003), which prima facie is an absurd consequence (see Block 2003;Elder-Vass 2012. However, on the assumption that there are powers at all, I do not find it evident that such a highly sparse version of the powers ontology is necessarily untenable (see e.g.…”

“…Dupré 1993), and, in recent years, the philosophy of social science and social ontology (e.g. Archer 1995;Cartwright 1999;Lawson 1997Lawson , 2013Porpora 2008;Elder-Vass 2010;Groff 2011;Kaidesoja 2013; but see already Bhaskar 1979Bhaskar /1998. Indeed, there is now an interdisciplinary movement, called critical realism, which among other things applies powers to the social realm.…”