ABSTRACT

In this chapter the author will argue for three central ideas. First, historical and social events are amenable to causal explanation. Second, the best way of understanding social and historical causation is through discovery of underlying causal mechanisms and powers: real concrete social arrangements through which one social event or condition produces another event or condition. And third—and most important—it is argued for a particular view of the substrate of social causation: socially embedded actors who act out of an expression of their values, goals, emotions, beliefs, and mental frameworks in the settings of a range of institutional and structural circumstances. This view of historical explanation results in a nice resolution of the key riddle within the philosophy of history, concerning whether historical knowledge is causal or interpretive. With an actor-centered understanding of the nature of social causation, we are enabled to maintain the validity of causal explanations of social and historical outcomes while at the same time recognizing the meaningfulness and intentionality of human action. In order to explain historical outcomes we must both interpret actors and identify causal connections among institutions, value systems, and individual actors.