Homans said functionalist sociologists have tended to reject psychological explanations as reductionistic, but that means it can't provide explanations like a psychological theory can.
But two can play that game. Are there kinds of functionalist macro-level explanations that are more scientifically "parsimonious" (i.e., efficient in their explanations) than any micro-level social psychological theory can be because they DON'T go to that level where things make less sense?
That's a heavy question, but try to answer it.
2 comments:
Homans says historians seem o.k. with making everything psychological in the end, so what's the problem with sociologists? He says sociology needs to put some “men” in their explanations (he means people, of course) and to put some “blood in them.”
One could respond, do we have to? If we're explaining society like you would an organism, what makes live long and prosper, get sick, possibly die, why do you have to explain it from the point of view of the cell? or, worse yet, the atom? Now that would be reductionistic, wouldn't it?
I may be way off base here, but let me see if I can respond to that. This might be the psychology major in me, but I do think it is important to take into account individual differences in society. People are not all built the same. Some generlaizations can be applied to all people in a particular society such as everyone needs food to sustain and shelter to live in, and jobs to make money, etc, but what about things like what a mother decides to do with her unborn baby? Is she pro-life or pro-choice? Because if she's pro-choice, she will help sustain the business of an abortion clinic in society if she so decides. If she's pro-life, that's another person to add to the population, another mouth to feed, another person to grow up and need a job. People's personal choices are going to affect the whole of society, and I don't think you can come up with one explanation for how it works without taking into account that preferences are going to be different among different people.
Is this somewhat going in the right direction?? or am I completely off? lol.
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