In the

social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...

s, methodological individualism is the principle that subjective individual motivation explains social phenomena, rather than class or group dynamics which are illusory or artificial and therefore cannot truly explain market or social phenomena. This concept was introduced as an assumption in the social sciences by

Max Weber Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas profo ...

, and discussed in his book ''

Economy and Society ''Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology'' (1921; ; or simply ''Economy and Society'') is a book by political economist and sociologist Max Weber, published posthumously in Germany by his wife Marianne. Alongside ''The Prote ...

''. Methodological individualism is often contrasted with methodological holism and

methodological pluralism __notoc__ Epistemological pluralism is a term used in philosophy, economics, and virtually any field of study to refer to different ways of knowing things, different epistemological methodologies for attaining a fuller description of a particular f ...

In economics

neoclassical economics Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good ...

, people's behavior is explained in terms of rational choices as constrained by prices and incomes. The neoclassical economist accepts individuals' preferences as given.

Gary Becker Gary Stanley Becker (; December 2, 1930 – May 3, 2014) was an American economist who received the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, and was a leader of ...

and

George Stigler George Joseph Stigler (; January 17, 1911 – December 1, 1991) was an American economist. He was the 1982 laureate in Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and is considered a key leader of the Chicago school of economics. Early life and ...

provide a forceful statement of this view: :On the traditional view, an explanation of economic phenomena that reaches a difference in tastes between people or times is the terminus of the argument: the problem is abandoned at this point to whoever studies and explains tastes (psychologists? anthropologists? phrenologists? sociobiologists?). On our preferred interpretation, one never reaches this impasse: the economist continues to search for differences in prices or incomes to explain any differences or changes in behavior.

Criticisms

Economist

Mark Blaug Mark Blaug FBA (; 3 April 1927 – 18 November 2011) was a Dutch-born British economist (naturalised in 1982), who covered a broad range of topics during his long career. He was married to Ruth Towse. Life and work Blaug was born on 3 April ...

has criticized over-reliance on methodological individualism in economics, saying that "it is helpful to note what methodological individualism strictly interpreted ..would imply for economics. In effect, it would rule out all macroeconomic propositions that cannot be reduced to microeconomic ones ..this amounts to saying goodbye to almost the whole of received macroeconomics. There must be something wrong with a methodological principle that has such devastating implications". Similarly, the economist Alan Kirman has critiqued

general equilibrium theory In economics, general equilibrium theory attempts to explain the behavior of supply, demand, and prices in a whole economy with several or many interacting markets, by seeking to prove that the interaction of demand and supply will result in an ov ...

and

modern economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

for its "fundamentally individualistic approach to constructing economic models", and showed that an individualist

competitive equilibrium Competitive equilibrium (also called: Walrasian equilibrium) is a concept of economic equilibrium introduced by Kenneth Arrow and Gérard Debreu in 1951 appropriate for the analysis of commodity markets with flexible prices and many traders, and s ...

is not necessarily stable or unique. However, stability and uniqueness can be achieved if aggregate variables are added, and as a result he argued "the idea that we should start at the level of the isolated individual is one which we may well have to abandon".

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Methodological Individualism Reductionism Sociological theories Criticisms of economics Individualism Philosophy of social science

In economics

Criticisms

See also

References

Further reading

External links