如何【精读细剖】ASR的理论论文？再来一次示范！（下）

Comments on A Pragmatist Theory of Social Mechanisms, Neil Gross

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阅读文献：

Gross, Neil. 2009. “A Pragmatist Theory of Social Mechanisms.” American Sociological Review 74 (3): 358–79.

之前发过，由吕炳强老师惠赠的细读文本作品，

第82期 如何【精读细剖】ASR的理论论文？再来一次示范！（上） 

第61期 如何【精读细剖】一篇AJS理论文章？来次示范吧！（上部）

第62期 如何【精读细剖】一篇AJS理论文章？来次示范吧！（下部）

有幸于吕老师再赠了另一篇精读细剖ASR理论文章的稿件。

以下，P.num.为ASR文章中的页码。

Lui：为吕炳强老师的解读。

蓝色字：是编者为了读者快速阅读定位加上的，不是吕老师所加。其它颜色字体，是吕老师加上的。

P. 368:

A PRAGMATISTTHEORY OF MECHANISMS

The key claim toadvance in constructing a theory of social mechanisms on these foundations isthis: Pragmatists would view social mechanisms as composed of chains or aggregations of actors confronting problem situations and mobilizing more or less habitual responses. I noted above that alternation between habit and creativity is at the heart of pragmatism, and that pragmatists see this alternation as underlying—not substituting for—other action forms(Joas 1996). These characteristics of the approach, combined with the focus onmeaning, yield unique leverage over the notion of mechanisms. To see why, letus follow Hedström and Swedberg at least part way and describe a social mechanismas the structure or process S by which some input I leads to outcome O. Apragmatist theory of mechanisms would hold that to understand S, we mustexamine the individual and collective actorsA_1–n involved in the I–O relationship. For each, our goal should be to understand why and how, when confrontedwith problem situationP_n [Lui: P_1-n, atypo?] and endowed with habits of cognition andactionH_n,[Lui: H_1-n?],along with other resources, responseR_n [R_1-n]becomes the most likely. S will then consist of all the relationsA_1–n–P_1–n–H_1–n–R_1–n that, in aggregate or sequentially, bring about the I–O relationship.

For example, ....【限制2万字，只能把这段删了。】

I hypothesize that most social mechanisms can be understood in this way—as chains or aggregations of actors, problem situations, and habitual responses—always with the possibility, greater in somecircumstances than others, that a novel way of responding to aproblem could emerge for any of the actors involved, potentially altering the workings of the mechanism. A pragmatist social science concerned with mechanisms would aim to uncover the nature of such chains: the types into whichthey may be classified, the actors involved in their operation, the habits employed by such actors and their origins, the circumstances in which the mechanisms operate, their interconnection with other mechanisms, and their causal effects.

Lui:

(1)  Since the mechanism A-P-H-R(all the relations of A_1–n–P_1–n–H_1–n–R_1–n,actually a network) is the structure (or process) S connects the input I andoutcome O, and hence explains the I-O relationship, it is in essence an openingup of a black box (I-O relationship). It is rather restricted notion of mechanism. A less restricted one is like Craver’s.  It is not known how A-P-H-R can be translated into Craver’s parts, activities and organization; in particular, the actors A_1-nand other resources R_1-n should be causings in Craver’s formulation,and H_1-n might also be causings.

(2)   One further ambiguity is that some of the A_1-n can be collected actors, implying that such actorsare in fact a collection of individual actors (each of them is an agency, the first person) and the collectivity they form (an otherness, the fourth person)at the same time. The individual actors should be causings but whether thecollectivity is so is not known, probably not.

(3)   Creativity of the individual actors should be a causing, thus leaving the mechanism entirely based on their habituality.

P. 369:

Note the centrality of meaning in the Pager example; themechanism is interpretive all the way down. Forpragmatists, humans inhabit worlds of meaning. Pragmatism is not a formof methodological individualism; it does not require that mechanisms operating at the meso- or macro-levels be explained exclusively in terms of theactions of the individuals involved, meaning-interpretive or otherwise. It doesinsist, however, that the potential contribution of individual action to the operation of mechanisms be taken into account. This requires thatwe grasp how the relevant individuals understand the situations before them andact on those understandings, helping thereby to enact the mechanism.

In this respect, pragmatism comes close to the weak version ofmethodological individualism championed by Hedström and Swedberg. Hedström(2005), in particular, makes belief central to his account of social action,mobilizing Weber’s stress on subjective meaning to argue that actors’beliefs about the social world are as important as their desires andopportunities in explaining their actions, and hence social mechanisms. How, then,with respect to questions of meaning, does a pragmatist approach to mechanismsdiffer from Hedström’s approach?

Drawing inspiration in part from Peirce’s work on semiotics (see Deledalle 2000), pragmatists would insist that meaning is not reducible to belief in Hedström’s sense of propositions about the world thatactors hold to be true (e.g., that a bank is or is not solvent). In thepragmatist view, consistent with other work following from the cultural or linguistic turn, such propositions, while important, become meaningful only insofar asthey string together symbolic elements that acquire theirindividual and relational meanings in larger cultural systems and structures..... 【限制2万字，只能把这段内容删了。】This implies that the studyof social mechanisms must be undertaken alongside a project ofcultural interpretation.

Social mechanisms that affect collective actors (e.g., firms,states, or organizations) can be analyzed in the same way. Collective actors also face problem situations and respond in habit-bound, culturally mediated ways,and social mechanisms involving collective actors consist of chains or aggregations of such responses, whether or not there is explanatory value infurther decomposing them into individual-level action.

Lui:

(1)   Hedstrom’s theory is called analytical sociology, and Gross is trying to distinguish his pragmatist theory from it. He argues that pragmatists insist that “humans inhibit in worlds of meaning”and that “meaning is not reducible to belief in Hedström’s sense ofpropositions about the world that actors hold to be true”. Here, actors are humans (agencies, the first person), not a collectivity (an otherness, thefourth person).

(2)   What are these “worlds of meaning”? Probably not the same as the social world. They are perhaps and only perhaps similar to the Voegelin-Schutzian cosmion or the the Berger-Luckmannian symbolic universe. We do not know their fine details yet.

(3)   On the one hand, I agree that meaning itself has no value of truth (or falsity) in the logical sense, but it can be contained like the belief in a proposition whose value of truth (or falsity) remains undecided. On the other hand, I think propositions are simply pieces of speech on the Saussure-Bourdieuen network of speech, their truth (or falsity) are claimed not by themselves but by the human actor who happens to claim them. In other words, if we agree to relax the notion of a proposition(to be more precise, a proto-proposition) to have undecided value of truth (or falsity), meaning and belief can be synonyms. This is exactly the logical status of all pieces of speech on the Saussure-Bourdieuen network of speech.

(4)   Gross’s argument for the legitimacy of the collective actors in social mechanism is probably unnecessary if all human actors are taken to be causings which is outside of the mechanism in Craver’s sense.

(5)   Where should the term “worlds of meaning” be situated in the earlier pragmatist semiotic system in which itis still absent? It should perhaps be thus inserted between “actor” and“acquired dispositions”: (actor―worlds of meaning)―acquired dispositions. 

(6)   Thus, the term “cultural environments” in the semiotic system of symbolic interactionism can perhaps be replaced by “worlds of meaning”, and the terms “interpretations of problemsituations”, “intersubjective judgements” and “goals, orientations, identities,etc.” can be grouped under “acquired dispositions”. Then the difference betweenpragmatism and symbolic interactionism becomes much less than what is held byGross.  

P. 370:    

A FURTHER SPECIFICATION OF THE THEORY

The pragmatist theory of social mechanisms outlined here can be further developed and elaborated—and preemptively defended—by responding to four objections it might encounter on first hearing.

The first concerns the theory’s emphasis on culture and interpretation: Will such an approach inevitably neglectthe centrality of resources, and struggles over them, in social life?The pragmatist response comes into relief by comparison with Sewell’s (1992) account of the “duality” of structure.Reformulating aspects of Giddens’s and Bourdieu’s theories, Sewell agrees with Giddens (1984) that “rules” and “resources” must factor into any understanding of social structure.He recasts Giddens’s emphasis on rules as “generalizable procedures,” however, arguing that the rules that help constitute structures “should be thought of as including all the varieties of cultural schemas that anthropologists have uncovered ... :not only the array of binary oppositions that make up a society’s fundamental tools of thought, but also the various conventions, recipes, scenarios,principles of action, and habits of speech and gestures built up with thesefundamental tools” (pp. 6–7). Schemas in this sense are habits. Yet Sewell’s emphasis on cultural schemas does not entail a loss of concern for resources. He distinguishes two types: “nonhuman resources are objects ... naturally occurring or manufactured, thatcan be used to enhance or maintain power” and “human resources are physical strength, dexterity,knowledge” (p. 9). Both types, he argues, “are media of power.” Yet neither is unconnected from cultural schemas:“human resources ... may be thought of as manifestations and consequences ofthe enactment of cultural schemas,” while “what [nonhuman resources] amount toas resources is largely a consequence of the schemas that inform their use” (p.11).

Schemas and resources are indeed interrelated, but a pragmatist understands this relationship

some what differently from Sewell. According to pragmatists, when actors confront a problem situation they mobilize their habits, including some of the capacities described by Sewell as human resources. Yet this mobilization typically also involves putting nonhuman resources to work—for example, money. In a pragmatist understanding, the habits an actoris endowed with will affect the ways in which she understands the significance of and uses the nonhuman resources at her disposal, while the availability of resources—an objective feature of problem situations—may help instill in her distinctive habits. Insofar as socia lmechanisms are decomposable into problem situations and the habits actors use to resolve them, the availability ofresources is, from a pragmatist viewpoint, a potentially important aspect ofevery social mechanism.

Lui:

(1)   Simply put, Gross considers Sewell’s treatment of schemas (which Gross considers the same as habits) and resources unnecessary because habits and resources come together naturally. In this connection, I have said earlier that habits H_1-n and resources R_1-nshould or might be causings in Craver’s formulation. What is left in the mechanism A-P-H-R might be problem situations P_1-n only. Sounds strange to me.

(2)   It is interesting to note that Gross cites money (an otherness which Marx recognizes long ago as the Other in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844【编者注：， 见吕炳强，2007，《马克思《1844年经济学—哲学手稿》的货币现象学》，CNKI】)as nonhuman resources.

P. 370:

A second potential objection revolves around the notion of habit. Isn’t this concept too vague and poorly specified to make sense of causal mechanisms operating at multiple levels of analysis? This objection highlights the need to distinguish among kinds of habits. In my view there are three kinds:

1. Individual cognitive-affectivehabits. [...]

2. Individual behavioral habits. [...]

3. A thirdcategory of habits consists of those that are collectively enacted: that is, ways that groups of individual actors,including those who comprise collectiveactors of various kinds, have of working together to solve problems. [...]

4. Alongside this differentiated understanding of habit, I would argue that habits often come bundled in habit sets. Theseare relatively coherent repertoires for thinking and acting vis-à-vis a set of problems, as in Tilly’s idea that theremay be specific repertoires of contention, such as arose inearly-nineteenth-century Britain. [...]

Unpacking thenotion of habit helps explain how mechanisms operating at various levels canrest on a foundation of habit; we can add that pragmatists would see social mechanisms as varying in abstraction and clustering into an indefinite numberof types. [...]....【限制2万字，只能把这段内容删了。】

This discussionraises a third objection: What about formal mechanisms that seem to operate behind actors’ backsand to involve few moments of situational interpretation? Many such postulatedmechanisms concern the formal structure of social networks. The pragmatist view overlaps Emirbayer and Goodwin’s(1994:1445–46) critique of network analysis, which, they argue, neglectsculture by failing “to thematize more explicitly ... the inherently constructed nature of individual and collective identities ... [and] the complex ways inwhich actors’ social identities are culturally and normatively, as well associetally, determined.” Glossed another way, their point can be generalized andsquared with the theory presented here by invoking a critique of formalism going back to Durkheim’s ([1900] 1960) attack on Simmel: .... 【限制2万字，只能把这段内容删了。】These situations involve configurations of objective elements and meaning that make possible andset the parameters for the causal effect of network structure.

To give another example, whom one knows may strongly influence the likelihood of finding anapartment in New York City, with special advantages flowing to those with many acquaintances rather than a few close friends, but this depends on the degree to which information aboutthe housing market is decentralized and nontransparent, on whether landlordsand property managers favor legalistic arrangements over those requiring trust between parties, whether city living is seen as so desirable that people will do sodespite the difficulty and cost involved, and so on. Such factors are usually incorporated into formal models by virtue of an implied ceteris paribus clause, but insofar as they represent theconditions for the mechanism operating as postulated, we cannot really understandthe mechanism unless we understand the conditions. Instead, pragmatism would suggest that mechanismsresulting from the formal structure of social relations are best seen as moreor less obdurate features of the problem situations individual or collective actors confront—that is, features that enable or constrainlines of activity. How actor sunderstand and respond to the situations theyface will be no less important in the context ofsuch confrontations.

Lui: Elaborations of no particular interest to the commentator.

P. 372:

A fourth possible objection follows from the third. Many mechanisms of interest to sociologists, it would seem, are not formal, as I have been using the term, but center on processes of aggregation whose effect sequally appear not to depend on actors’ possessing and mobilizing culturallymediated habits. For example, Schelling’s (1971) model of residential segregation postulates that if whites and blacks hold even mild preferences fornot being outnumbered in their neighborhoods by people from the other racial group, there will be no equilibrium in housing patterns and neighborhoods will segregate and resegregate over time, even if this is not desired by anyindividual. How can a pragmatist model accommodate such a mechanism—which is aggregative and, at the individual level, seems to involve no more than a simpledecision-rule—let alone shine new light on it?

The answer tothe first part of the question is that the mechanism can be respecified as an aggregation of individual actors’efforts at problem solving—the problem being to live in a neighborhood in which one is comfortable, and a key feature of the mechanism being that the kinds of situations actors confront depend on problem-solving activities enacted previously by thei rneighbors, which may have altered the composition of a neighborhood beyond some demographic tipping point. But what, in this case, would be the value of such arespecification? Beyond the intrinsic value of greater action-theoretical adequacy, a pragmatist approach would allow preferences for varying levels ofracial homophily in one’s neighborhood and the tendency tomove if those preferences are violated—the decision-rule in question—to be profitably reconceptualized as individual behavioral habits. This would permit such preferences to remain latent without losing their causal power; relax information and calculability assumptions and replace them with a focus on interactionallyand culturally mediated experiences of comfort within socially defined neighborhood boundaries; put greater emphasis on the social and historical conditions under which the relevant habits formed for and are enacted by the social groups in question, including those by which they came to see one another in racial or other categorical terms; and allow the possibility that under different conditions—for example, in societies placing more emphasis on multicultural tolerance—different habits might be in place, resulting indifferent aggregate-level effects.

Would such amove increase the explanatory power of Schelling’s model? Taking this opportunityto speak to the issue more generally, I hold it to be an empirical question whether the

theory of mechanisms laid outhere will give sociology more explanatory purchase. Researchers who are persuaded by the theory to reconceptualizethe mechanisms they study will either find such reconceptualizations helpful inproducing more robust explanations or they will not. Because the theory isoffered as a flexible conceptual toolkit for comprehending social mechanisms, not a set of postulates about social life from which a broader sociological theory could be deduced, it is impossible to predict the specific forms that explanations informed by the theory will take and equally impossible to demonstrate the theory’s explanatory value a priori. What I can do is identify three kinds of analyticalproblems for which a pragmatist theory of mechanisms seems particularlyhelpful.

1. The problem of specifying scope conditions. [...]

2. The problem of accounting forbehavior where cultural meanings vary widely among actors.[...]

3. The problem of accounting for new practices and mechanisms. [...]

Lui: Gross concedes: The pragmatist theory of social mechanisms “is offered as a flexible conceptual toolkit.” Perhaps he is too modest: How can a mechanismic explanation be without “a set of postulates about social life”?

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第61期 如何【精读细剖】一篇AJS理论文章？来次示范吧！（上部）

第62期 如何【精读细剖】一篇AJS理论文章？来次示范吧！（下部）

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（Sociological理论大缸第83期）