The Idea

Social phenomena are explained by showing how they result from individual actions, which are in turn explained by the goals, beliefs, and constraints facing individuals. “Society” does not act; people do. To explain a revolution, explain why individual people revolted. A social-level correlation (integration predicts suicide rates) is not yet an explanation until you trace the individual-level mechanism through it.

Coleman’s boat is the working tool. To explain a macro relationship A→B, go down, across, and up: show how A shapes individual situations, how individuals respond, and how those responses aggregate to B. Democracy → growth becomes: democratic institutions give individuals property rights, secure rights make individuals invest, individual investment aggregates to growth.

The discipline this buys: you cannot say “culture caused X” or “the market punished investors.” You have to show how culture shaped particular beliefs and choices, or say plainly that many individual investors sold and prices fell.

Why I Keep It

It sets my explanation standard: am I identifying a mechanism or documenting a correlation? Language shift is not “the community shifted” but individual speakers changing behavior in response to incentives and identities, aggregating to a pattern. It also decides data needs: testing a micro-macro link takes individual-level data, not just the macro correlation.

Tensions

• The regression problem: individual beliefs and preferences are themselves socially formed. Take them as given and the explanation is incomplete; explain them socially and it is no longer individualism.
• Durkheim’s standing objection: social facts constrain individuals, so purely individual properties may not be available as an untainted starting point.

Key Sources

• Coleman, J. (1990). Foundations of Social Theory
• Elster, J. (1989). Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences
• Hedström, P., & Swedberg, R. (1998). “Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory”