مكانيسم ها و جامعه شناسي ( نقش و اهميت مكانيسم هادر تبيين پديده هاي اجتماعي )

Mechanisms and Sociology

Over the recent few decades we have observed a new wave of methodological attempts for the revival of the concept of causality, especially the mechanismic understanding of causation in social sciences. Many social scientists, despite their major differences in significant theoretical and methodological issues, have jointly laid an increasing emphasis on explaining phenomena through causal mechanisms. Despite the relatively voluminous literature on mechanismic understanding of causation, there are a number of questions about the meaning and application of causal mechanisms in social sciences. The present article is an attempt to offer a conceptual anatomy of the term of mechanism and demonstrate why scholars of social sciences, particularly sociologists who study macro-level phenomena crucially need to study causal mechanisms. In other words, attempts have been made to demonstrate how mechanisms can, to a great extent, solve the longstanding and enduring problems in sociological studies. Also the relationship between mechanismic understanding of causation with methodological individualism in social sciences have been analyzed.