Analytical sociology and computational social science

Analytical Sociology: Actions and Networks (Wiley Series in Computational and Quantitative Social Science) by Gianluca Manzo (ed.)

I was keen to review this book and find out how Analytical Sociology (AS) has developed after being impressed and refreshed by Hedström and Swedberg’s Social Mechanisms in 1995. Having read it, my impression is that some excellent research is being done (and branded as AS) but that this may not really reflect the existence of a distinctive and coherent field. The similarities and contrasts betw...

Sociology and Non-Equilibrium Social Science

This chapter addresses the relationship between sociology and NonEquilibrium Social Science (NESS). Sociology is a multiparadigmatic discipline with significant disagreement regarding its goals and status as a scientific discipline. Different theories and methods coexist temporally and geographically. However, it has always aimed at identifying the main factors that explain the temporal stabili...

Social science. Computational social science.

Analytical Sociology and The Rest of Sociology

The programme of analytical sociology brings sharp focus to fundamental issues insociology as a scientific discipline. Its practitioners offer a clear paradigm of how sociologicalexplanations ought to proceed, from individual actors to social outcomes. This essay considerslimitations of the approach as a general framework for all sociological research, however. Theessay surveys ...

Geography and computational social science

The emergence of computational social science has had a transformative influence on the geographical sciences, integrating diverse themes of scholarship and allying it with the pursuit of grand challenges in the physical, natural, and life sciences. Geography has benefitted from many of these developments and has, in turn, catalyzed significant advances and innovation in computational social sc...