Methodological collectivism
The methodological collectivism or methodological holism assumes that individual behavior from macrosociological can be derived statements, and in that collective phenomena such as the behavior of social groups not can be explained by the behavior of individuals. On the higher levels (macro level) of a system there are holistic qualities that cannot (more moderate: not completely) be derived from elements of lower levels (micro level). " The whole is more than the sum of its parts ." In approaches based on this, collective phenomena form the independent, explanatory variable. A variant of methodological collectivism is the dialectical materialism developed by Karl Marx with the idea and the famous sentence: “It is not the consciousness of people that determines their being, but, conversely, their social being that determines their consciousness.” This sentence is one Basis of Marxian thought.
More moderate variants say that sentences about social phenomena can at least not be fully explained from sentences about individual behavior, as methodological individualism presupposes. In order to test the theories at the macro level, it should be possible to derive them at least partially from individual behavior. The behavior of the individual is thought of as interdependent , which, due to the high complexity of such systems, leads to new, holistic qualities of the overall system that cannot be fully explained .
To distinguish the methodological collectivism or holism of ontological holism . This claims to make statements about being (true reality) and states that there are social totalities independent of the individual . From this property of being it follows that causality relationships, such as scientific propositions, can only explain individual action from society . Methodological holism arises as a consequence of ontological holism. In contrast, researchers based on methodological collectivism concentrate only for methodological reasons on the macro perspective to explain anthropological and sociological phenomena. But you don't want to make an ontological determination of how "it" really is. Ontological holism does not follow from methodological collectivism .
At the macro level there are other concepts of methodological collectivism in addition to dialectical materialism, such as systems theory ( Niklas Luhmann ), structural functionalism ( Talcott Parsons or, for political science, David Easton ) and autopoiesis ( Humberto Maturana , Francisco Varela ). The opposite position to methodological collectivism is methodological individualism .
literature
- H. Reimann / B. Giesen / D. Goetze / M. Schmid: Basale Sociology - Theoretical Models . Opladen 1991.
- Horst Dieter Rönsch: collectivism, methodological . In: W. Fuchs / R. Lautmann / O. Rammstedt / H. Wienhold: Lexicon for Sociology . 2nd ext. Ed., Opladen 1978.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Karl Marx, Critique of Political Economy, foreword. Quotation from MEW 13, p. 9, mlwerke.de/me/me13/me13_007.htm
- ^ Karl Popper : The open society and its enemies; Volume II: False Prophets - Hegel, Marx and the Consequences. (7th edition), Mohr Siebeck Verlag, Tübingen 1992, p. 394, ISBN 3-16-145953-9 .