What's the appeal of reductionism?
It may just the desire to see things in terms of a reality we're more familiar with and certain about, and that's why we tend to bring things down to the familiar terrain of the individual. After all, it is the more natural perspective of all of us, one would think.
But a psychologically reductionistic perspective would miss out on the inimmitable reality of the macro. This is where Durkheim's vision of macro-level phenomena being irreducable to, and distinct from individuals. One of his most radical conceptions of that is the “collective conscious” existing “sui generis” from the collectivity, where the whole can't be reduced to the sum of its parts, individuals.
Isn't any collective enterprise that?
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2 comments:
I think that macro theorists can sometimes forget that their theories are describing individuals who have feelings and think and adapt to situations. Some macro theories can be rather rigid and don't allow any room for individual creativity. Obviously that's why I'm a symbolic interactionist/ethnomethodolgist. :)
But I do see value in macro theories. People do work and interact in groups and it's important to see that these groups can sometimes act as individuals. At the end of the day, we are individuals. Social theorists can't lose the individual.
because people are people not simply parts of one whole! Yes, of course, we are influenced by each other and may act in concert, but like michelle said, macro theories leave no room for individual creativity. otherwise we can't explain einsteins and shelleys and earharts and my new friend dorothy smith. it's important to reconcile both...i think that's the word i want. a whole person is a combination of herself alone and herself as a part of a community
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