Sociological Individualism

Abstract

Methodological individualism often is seen as an import from the outside; something which threatens to colonize the discipline of sociology and to make it into something that it was not intended to be or at least to introduce some alien elements into the discipline. Often some form of “economic imperialism” is seen as the main culprit, but although Gary Becker (1976) and his “unflinching” economic approach to human behavior may appear simplistic and a bit offensive to many of us, it is important to be aware of that methodological individualism was not an invention of economists. To the contrary, it is an important part of our own intellectual heritage. This is perhaps most clearly demonstrated in the work of Max Weber and in his insistence that one should never accept aggregate associations as explanatory until they have been broken down into intelligible patterns of individual action (see Udéhn 2001).