1 1. This definition includes all profit–making firms but is not limited to them: non–profit groups, like universities, also market goods, such as education, to given publics.
2 2. I ignore the fact that the nomads’ productivity will increase under secure conditions, so that the cost of protection will in future consume a smaller proportion of their total resources. This might, of course, be offset by increased population.
3 3. If control is required in all groups, then what is the difference between compensation and obligation as means of assuring production? Compensation is based upon a strict quid pro quo, and the agent is paid for each compliant act. In obligatory groups, however, there is no quid pro quo: compliance is expected of members and, as such, merits no special attention or reward.
Chapter 5 Metatheory: Explanation in Social Science [1990]
James S. Coleman
A central problem in social science is that of accounting for the functioning of some kind of social system. Yet in most social research, observations are not made on the system as a whole, but on some part of it. In fact, a natural unit of observation is the individual person; and in the development of quantitative methods of research, the dependence on individual-level data has increased greatly. This has led to a widening gap between theory and research: Social theory continues to be about the functioning of social systems of behavior, but empirical research is often concerned with explaining individual behavior.
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Explanation of the Behavior of Social Systems
The principal task of the social sciences lies in the explanation of social phenomena, not the behavior of single individuals. In isolated cases the social phenomena may derive directly, through summation, from the behavior of individuals, but more often this is not so. Consequently, the focus must be on the social system whose behavior is to be explained. This may be as small as a dyad or as large as a society or even a world system, but the essential requirement is that the explanatory focus be on the system as a unit, not on the individuals or other components which make it up.
As with the explanation of individual behavior, there are two modes of explanation of the behavior of social systems. One depends on either a sample of cases of system behavior or observation of the behavior of the system as a whole over a period of time. The analytical methods are based on statistical association between the behavior of interest and other characteristics of the social system as the context for that behavior. […]
A second mode of explanation of the behavior of social systems entails examining processes internal to the system involving its component parts, or units at a level below that of the system. The prototypical case is that in which the component parts are individuals who are members of the social system. In other cases the component parts may be institutions within the system or subgroups that are part of the system. In all cases the analysis can be seen as moving to a lower level than that of the system, explaining the behavior of the system by recourse to the behavior of its parts. This mode of explanation is not uniquely quantitative or uniquely qualitative, but may be either.
This second mode of explanation has certain points to recommend it, as well as certain special problems. Because this is the mode of explanation I will use throughout this book, it is useful to list some of the points that favor its use before turning to its major problem. In order to have a label to designate this mode, I call it the internal analysis of system behavior.
Points Favoring the Internal Analysis of System Behavior
1 A major problem of data adequacy exists in confirmation of theories based on system-level data when the systems are large in size and few in number. There are too many alternative hypotheses which cannot be rejected by the data. In part for this reason, research data in the social sciences are often gathered at the level of units below the level of the system whose behavior is of interest. […]Because data are so often gathered at the level of individuals or other units below the level of the system whose behavior is to be explained, it is natural to begin the explanation of system behavior by starting at the level at which observations are made, then “composing,” or “synthesizing,” the systemic behavior from the actions of these units.
2 Just as observations are often most naturally made at levels below that of the system as a whole, interventions must be implemented at these lower levels. Thus a successful explanation of system behavior in terms of the actions or orientations of lower-level units is ordinarily more useful for intervention than is an equally successful explanation which remains at the level of the system itself. Even where an intervention is at the level of the system, such as a policy change made by a nation’s government, its implementation must ordinarily occur at lower levels, and that implementation is what determines the consequences for the system. Thus an explanation of system behavior which goes down as far as the actions and orientations of those who will implement the policy is likely to be more useful than one which does not.
3 An explanation based on internal analysis of system behavior in terms of actions and orientations of lower-level units is likely to be more stable and general than an explanation which remains at the system level. Since the system’s behavior is in fact a resultant of the actions of its component parts, knowledge of how the actions of these parts combine to produce systemic behavior can be expected to give greater predictability than will explanation based on statistical relations of surface characteristics of the system. […]
4 As point 3 suggests, an internal analysis based on actions and orientations of units at a lower level can be regarded as more fundamental, constituting more nearly a theory of system behavior, than an explanation which remains at the system level. It can be said to provide an understanding of the system behavior which a purely system-level explanation does not. Still, this raises the question of what constitutes a sufficiently fundamental explanation. Is it any explanation that goes down to a level of units below that of the system itself? Is it one that goes down to the level of the individual person? Is it one that does not stop at the level of the person but continues below that level?I will not attempt to answer this question in general, except to say that point 2 provides a satisfactory criterion in practice. That is, an explanation is sufficiently fundamental for the purpose at hand if it provides a basis for knowledgeable intervention which can change system behavior. Later I will suggest that a natural stopping point for the social sciences (although not psychology) is the level of the individual―and that, although an explanation which explains the behavior of a social system by the actions and orientations of some entities between the system level and the individual level may be adequate for the purpose at hand, a more fundamental explanation based on the actions and orientations of individuals is more generally satisfactory. […]
5 The internal analysis of system behavior is grounded in a humanistically congenial image of man. This cannot be said for much of social theory. For many social theorists social norms are starting points of theory. The image of man demanded by a theory that begins at the level of social systems is homo sociologicus, a socialized element of a social system. The questions of moral and political philosophy which address the fundamental strain between man and society cannot be raised. The freedom of individuals to act as they will, and the constraints that social interdependence places on that freedom, nowhere enter the theory. Problems of freedom and equality cannot be studied. Individuals as individuals enter only via their conformity to or deviance from the normative system. With this image of man as a socialized element of a social system, it becomes impossible, within the framework of social theory, to evaluate the actions of a social system or a social organization. Germany under Hitler or Russia under Stalin is indistinguishable as a nation-state from Switzerland in any evaluative sense and Charles Manson’s and Jim Jones’s communes, which were directed toward death, are morally indistinguishable from an Israeli kibbutz, which is directed toward life. This