Raymond Boudon

Theories of social change : a critical appraisal

Foreword. 1. Theories of Social Change. 2. Individual Action, Aggregation Effects and Social Change. 3. The Laws Governing Change: the Nomological Bias. 4. Structures and Change: the Structuralist Bias. 5. The Search for the Prime Mover: the Ontological Bias. 6. A Well--Tempered Determinism. 7. Giving Disorder its Due. Epilogue. Notes. General Index.

Subjective Rationality and the Explanation of Social Behavior

This article discusses the central role of subjective rationality in the social sciences, particularly sociology. Actions need not produce good outcomes to be subjectively rational, but need only be carried out for reasons seen as good by the actor. The article examines a class of reasons that are both good (that is, subjectively rational) and invalid, that is, not objectively rational. An imaginary dialogue between David Hume and Anthony Downs is used to illustrate the way in which the apparent irrationality of ideology can be incorporated into subjective rationality. The social use of magic and the case of false beliefs are examined as further examples in the same class. Finally, the way in which good mental procedures can lead to false beliefs is examined.

Comment on Hauser's Review of Education, Opportunity, and Social Inequality

Robert Hausers review of Education, Opportunity, and Social Inequality (American Journal of Sociology [January 1976]: 911-28) contains useful suggestions and comments. However, my general impression is that he has not understood the very objective of my book, probably because I have not made this objective clear enough: to explain, in the sense of making intelligible, a number of apparent paradoxes produced by empirical research on social mobility. Here are some of these paradoxes: 1. Inequality of educational opportunity (IEO) decreased more or less regularly in all Western societies during the two decades after World War II. That is, the ratio of the probability of, say, a higher-class son to the probability of a lower-class on going to college declined. However, this decrease had no impact on the structure of intergenerational mobility, although educational attainment is a determinant of status. 2. It had no evident impact on income equality either, although educational attainment is a determinant of income. Obviously, these first two points are paradoxical with respect to the beliefs of many sociologists and economists for whom IEO is an essential factor responsible for other forms of inequality and for their intergenerational transmission. 3. Countries very different with respect to IEO appear as not markedly different from one another with respect to mobility. This is the classical Lipset-Bendix paradoxical finding. 4. Even in countries where IEO is lowest, it is still considerable. That is, the disparity ratio between higher and lower classes as far as college attendance is concerned can be as high as 10 when it is lowest. Is this fact immediately intelligible? 5. Mobility is generally weakly related to educational attainment measured absolutely or relatively to fathers educational attainment. If not Hauser, C. A. Anderson in his pioneering paper (1961) had, before me, the impression that this fact was not immediately clear. 6. Sophisticated techniques uch as path analysis have been intensively used in recent years by stratification researchers. They have led to many

Propriétés individuelles et propriétés collectives : un problème d'analyse écologique

Raymond Boudon : Individuelle und kollektive Eigenschaften : ein Problem der okologischen Analyse. ; Ist es moglich, den Prozentsatz der kommunistisch stimmenden Arbeiter herauszuarbeiten, wenn man den Anteil der Arbeiter und den Anteil der kommunistischen Stimmen kennt ? Es handelt sich um ein allgemeines Problem, das sich jedesmal dann stellt, wenn die Informationen, die man besitzt, eine kollektive und keine individuelle Einheit betreflfen, das aber unbestimmt bleibt, solange keine besonderen Hypothesen vorliegen. Es wird eine Theorie zur Erklarung der frei folgenden empirischen Phanomene dargestellt : — dass die okologischen Korrelationen im allgemeinen stark sind, — dass sie umso starker sind, als die Gruppierung grosser wird und dass sie im allgemeinen krummlinig sind. Auf der Basis dieser Resultate werden einige Modelle entworfen, die in einigen bestimmten Fallen eine Losung des gestellten Problems ermoglichen. Anhand von Wahlergebnissen in Belgien zeigt der Verfasser ein Beispiel der durch die Analyse ermoglichten Forschungsstrategie. Zahlreiche Referenzen auf die in den Vereinigten Staaten und in Frankreich uber dieses Thema verofientlichten Arbeiten.

Reasons, cognition and society

Homo sociologicus and homo oeconomicus are, for different reasons, unsatisfactory models for the social sciences. A third model, called “rational model in the broad sense”, seems better endowed to cope with the many different expressions of rationality of the social agent. Some contributions by Weber, Durkheim and Marx are early examples of the application of this model of social explanation based on good subjective reasons. According to this model and to the evidence of cognitive anthropology, it is possible to reconcile primitive thinking with the inferential principles of Western people. Lastly, cognitive psychology can contribute to the discovery of generalizations of reason-based choices that can strengthen the explanatory power of “rational model in the broad sense”.

The Present Relevance of Max Weber’s Wertrationalität (Value Rationality)

The concept of “axiological rationality” (my translation of Wertrationalitat) is possibly one of the most difficult of all the concepts Weber put on the market.

Will sociology ever be a normal science

According to Kuhn, normal science is a quiet and felicitous state of affairs where the (supposedly unique and unitarian) scientific community corresponding to a discipline believes faithfully in a unique paradigm. If this is true, sociology has never known and will probably never know this blessed state. Durkheims sociology strongly influenced as it was by Comtes views had already little to do with Webers, in spite of all the efforts undertaken by sociologists to discover a common inspiration in the works of the founding fathers. That sociologists have repeatedly tried to overcome this diversity detrimental to their status, using either an integration strategy (stressing the convergence between founding fathers or between paradigms) or a secession strategy (this paradigm, this founding father is the good one), is understandable. Why this lasting effort toward unity remained always mere wishful thinking is the question that I would like to raise here and deal with in a very sketchy fashion. My hunch is that there are good reasons for this multiplicity of paradigms, that it derives simply from the force des choses, and that there are also good reasons to forget the existence of this multiplicity.

The Cognitive Approach to Morality

Why do people feel that some action, institution or state of affairs is fair, legitimate or good, or not? Explaining these feelings means finding out their causes. According to the cognitive approach to morality this amounts to disentangling the reasons as to why people feel so. Durkheim, Max Weber, and many classical and modern social scientists use this approach in their analyses of moral feelings. But it remains in most cases implicit. Weber makes nowhere explicit his notion of axiological rationality. The aim of this chapter is to make this notion analytical and to extend it into a theory of moral feelings. Examples from various sociological chapters, as the moral feelings aroused by inequalities, by political or economic institutions or by current moral practices and values, illustrate the explanatory power of this approach. They suggest that the theory is a powerful tool to explain the development of collective consensus on various issues and also the long- and middle-term changes in moral feelings. The theory avoids the flaw of making moral feelings a mere emanation of socio-cultural contexts or alternatively of a contextual processes. It overcomes the opposition individuals society. It provides a tool to explain the moral feelings observed in the past and in other social contexts and thus to fight prejudice, to understand and even to predict change in moral feelings.

Local vs general ideologies: A normal ingredient of modern political life

Abstract Although we no longer live in an era of strong ideologies, we currently observe a host of local ideologies: on all kinds of subjects people believe in false, fragile and sometimes socially and politically dangerous ideas. Should they, however, be considered as a normal ingredient of political life? How are they to be explained? False beliefs have always been an important topic in the human sciences. Three main types of classical theories can be identified on this subject. Herbert Simon is known for having created a ‘satisficing’ theory of decision, where he proposed to substitute ‘satisficing’ or, as we would rather say, satisfying, for optimizing. It is argued here that the local ideologies that permeate political life as well as the false and fragile beliefs that permeate ordinary life should be analyzed along the same lines. The theory explains the ‘biases’ discovered by cognitive psychologists, it solves the difficult problem of explaining magical beliefs; it explains the many strange collect...

The Social Sciences and Two Types of Relativism

The article considers two forms of relativism: cognitive and cultural. It is critical of the impact of ‘the new sociology of science’ which in the hands of Paul Feyerabend and others exaggerated the claims of Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific change. The article argues that a distinction between scientific and nonscientific arguments can be, and must be, sustained. Secondly, cultural relativism is also considered and criticized. The article considers the legacy of Montaigne, Hume and Weber on modern, primarily anthropological, theories of cultural relativism. Anthropologists are fond of demonstrating that, for example, Western indignation over genital mutilation is only or merely the consequence of socialization into a particular culture. It is argued that, while some rituals may be necessary to inculcate young people into a community, there are rational grounds for rejecting mutilation where alternative rituals would be equally effective. The article therefore rejects both cognitive and cultural relativism as resting on exaggerated or hyberbolic versions of the sceptical consequences of the critical rationalism of Montaigne, Hume and Weber