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This is social science: A 'patterned activity' oriented to attaining objective knowledge of human society Eric Malczewski Journal of Classical Sociology 2014 14: 341 originally published online 22 August 2013 DOI: 10.1177/1468795X13495124

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Journal of Classical Sociology 2014, Vol. 14(4) 341–362 This is social science: © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: A ‘patterned activity’ sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1468795X13495124 oriented to attaining objective jcs.sagepub.com knowledge of human society

Eric Malczewski Harvard University, USA

Abstract The aim of this article is to demonstrate that approaching social science as a ‘patterned activity’ draws attention both to the distinctive nature of social science and to its central subject matter – meaningful (symbolically oriented) behavior and theoretical entities based on it – enabling therefore a constructive perspective on the major debate regarding social science’s organizing principles. A patterned activity is defined as a cluster of behavior oriented to a basic (that is, characteristic or defining) goal or aim accorded value; the goal or aim, by which the norms of the patterned activity are bounded, is the satisfaction of a certain appetite, desire, or need. The concept of a patterned activity is rooted in and developed from elements of Max Weber’s methodological writings. This concept is evaluated against Clifford Geertz’s ‘cultural systems’ approach and Robert K. Merton’s view of the norms of science, and the article then addresses the legacy of Talcott Parsons more generally. Lastly, Émile Durkheim’s and Weber’s respective approaches to social science are assessed so as to illuminate their views regarding its central subject matter and to demonstrate a convergence of their views.

Keywords Durkheim, Geertz, epistemology, meaning, Merton, methodology, Parsons, patterned activity, Science, social science, theory, Weber

The debate concerning social science’s organizing principles and central subject matter has endured for almost two centuries. In the beginning (which is as early as 1813), Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Count of Saint-Simon, offered in his nascent science de l’homme a perspective on this matter that he hoped would not only constitute a coherent approach

Corresponding author: Eric Malczewski, Lecturer on Social Studies, The Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, Harvard University, 59 Shepard Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Email: [email protected]

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com by guest on October 21, 2014 342 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4) to distinctively human (or ‘social’) phenomena but would also bridge science with the approach of speculative philosophy, resulting in objective knowledge of man and societies (Garnham, 2007; Gouldner, 1958; Saint-Simon, 1952). Saint-Simon’s perspective entailed approaching ideas as positive phenomena – that is, as observed and examined facts – and this approach, in his view, would unify the activities of science and philosophy by sub- jecting systems of ideas to empirical scrutiny and would put an end to what appeared to be science’s and speculative philosophy’s apparently irreconcilable epistemological differences. The intellectual purchase obtained by Saint-Simon’s positively grounded approach entailed the possibility of progress, distinguishing his science de l’homme from the non- constructive modes of thought that he attributed to the philosophes (Harris, 2001: 59; also see Marcuse, 1960 [1941]: 327). Remarking on the thought of this key figure in the history of social science, Émile Durkheim argued that for Saint-Simon it is the idea, or knowledge, that is the positive source of all social life and that is the motive force behind all progress or social change (1958: 90-91; also see 1928): that is to say that positively grounded (that is, empirically established and, therefore, observable) ideas are the characteristic basic set of facts that distinguish Saint-Simon’s science of man and societies from the early nineteenth century’s established sciences of chemistry, astronomy, and physics. This contribution is signal: Saint-Simon sought to define the empirical field of human distinctiveness and to bring to bear on it an approach to explanation capable of producing objective knowledge. Saint-Simon’s approach, as is well known, did not meet with success – and two centuries later the definition of the field of human distinctiveness remains contested (see Abbott, 2004: 41–79; Alexander, 1988; Alexander and Seidman, 1990; Alexander and Smith, 2010; Bunge, 1998; Friedman, 2004; Malczewski, 2013; Pascale, 2010; Sewell, 2005a; Tilly, 2005), leading the sociologist Liah Greenfeld to argue that the paradigm of the social sciences does not focus on humanity (Greenfeld, 2004, 2005b; also see Friedman, 2004: 144) and the historian William H. Sewell, Jr to ask seriously the elementary question ‘What do we mean by the “social” in “social science”?’ (2005a: 318). Contributing to this major debate, the late sociologist Charles Tilly (2005) argued that three types of approaches or metatheories – systemic, dispositional, and transactional (or relational) – account for the several ways in which what is generally recognized as social science has developed (2005; also see Bunge, 1996, 1998, whose individualism–holism–systemism trilemma echoes this in certain ways).1 Tilly sees these three approaches to explanation as contradictory, as building on differing ontological grounds with differing analytical tools: the nature and causes of social processes hence are seen to differ essentially (2005: especially 14–15 and 25–27) – and the definition of social science’s central subject matter and explanatory framework remains in abeyance. Jeffrey Alexander’s extensive analysis (1982, 1987) reveals, moreover, that postwar sociological debate largely does not illuminate the basic presuppositions informing theoretical logic in sociology (1982: 1–64), and it suggests that reliance on residual categories masks fundamental problems (such as the lack of a general framework) that derive from a lack of engagement with the level of basic presuppositions. What these views demonstrate most strikingly is that what we know as ‘social science’ is a fractured entity, and, what is also striking, the scope of empirical evidence is restricted to such an extent that it is fair to claim that social scientific theory in its generality rests on an ad hoc use of evidence.

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The key to addressing the problem concerning the central subject matter of social science is discovering an approach that permits a move from proliferating isolated metatheories to a general theory that explains the central subject matter of the social sciences. This subject matter, emphatically, first must be defined. I agree with Talcott Parsons (1990: 326) – and Durkheim before him (1937 [1895], 1978b [1909]) – that a definition is at least the prolegomenon of a theory. The elementary condition for a theory that resolves the anomalies manifest in our fractured social science is the specification of the basic or elemental set of facts – for facts never proclaim themselves – that distinguishes ‘social’ science from the other special sciences. My aim here is to take a step forward in the direction of defining the central subject matter of the social sciences by helping to make salient the importance of circumscribing the elemental phenomena against which we can test competing theories: to this end, this article examines social science from the standpoint of a ‘patterned activity’ in order to highlight the essential connection between the aims of social science and the definition of its central empirical phenomena. Understanding the organizing principles of social science from the perspective of a patterned activity can help us to simplify the structures of theories that currently pass under the term ‘social science’ by making clear social science’s central subject matter, thereby offering a solution to the crisis of identity that has plagued the social sciences. Social science, in this way, can rise unitarily from the same ontological ground. The next section begins with a discussion of the concept of a patterned activity. The difference between this concept and Clifford Geertz’s ‘cultural systems’ is discussed, before the article segues to an assessment of the improvement that the concept of a patterned activity offers over Robert K. Merton’s view of the norms of science. The legacy of Parsons is then addressed more generally. A discussion on the necessity of establishing complementarity between scientific claims and their objects follows. Then, I present my argument that social science is a patterned activity oriented to attaining objective knowledge of human society in its empirical aspects. I claim that meaningful (symbolically oriented) behavior and theoretical entities based on it constitute the central subject matter definitive of social scientific inquiry: this claim is rooted in key statements made by Durkheim and Max Weber.

Organizing principles: Social science as a ‘patterned activity’ A patterned activity2 is defined as a cluster of behavior oriented to a basic (that is, characteristic or defining) goal or aim accorded value; the goal or aim, by which the norms of the patterned activity are bounded, is the satisfaction of a certain appetite, desire, or need. The goal of the set of activities that characterizes any given patterned activity typically suggests the following: (a) the set of phenomena or relationships central to or relevant for this activity; and/or (b) criteria for an adequate manner or method employed in pursuit of this activity. The cluster of behavior characteristic of a given patterned activity is distinguished analytically from other activities or behaviors on the bases of both the goal and the characteristic organizing logic (as there may be several approaches to the satisfaction of a goal) manifest in these activities or behaviors; these criteria specify

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com by guest on October 21, 2014 344 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4) the defining qualities of the phenomenon and therein constitute the perspective from which the activities and behaviors that constitute it become intelligible as entities of objective analysis. To put it more strongly, the criteria that justify the delimitation of activities into analytically cogent sets are found in the definite patterns constitutive of the activities and the guiding purpose for which the activities are carried out. To be clear, to say that the goal of a patterned activity suggests (a) and/or (b) is not to imply that the goal in whatever way predetermines these boundaries; as in other spheres of human activity, the boundaries set by the environment make certain possibilities available and actors may be more or less receptive to and creative with those possibilities. Patterned activities hence possess organizing principles that delineate essentially the behaviors that comprise the set from other behaviors or sets of behavior. The resonance of this standpoint with Weber’s view on the autonomy of orders is deliberate: with a view to fashioning a helpful analytical tool, the concept of a patterned activity is built from the principle of the content of regular social action being oriented toward ‘determinable “maxims”’ manifest in the concept of order in Weber’s methodological writings (1978: 31, and 1981 [1913]: 160–161; Blustone, 1987: 6–22) and the ideas implicit in his ‘vocation’ essays specifically tied to what he calls ‘internal presuppositions’ (1958a [1917], 1958b [1921]; also see 2011a [1904]); this view also develops specifically on Greenfeld (1987, 2006; also see Eastwood, 2006; Greenfeld, 2012: viii–ix, 4) and is influenced by Joseph Ben-David (1971). The organizing principle of a patterned activity (that is, what I call the goal or aim accorded value, or the ‘maxim’ [Weber, 1978: 28] determined in the act of analysis) constitutes what Weber saw as an internal presupposition. Take science, for example: the central internal presupposition is the value of solving an explicitly posed problem – that is, that which is yielded by inquiry is, as Weber emphasizes, privi- leged as ‘worth being known’ (1958a [1917]: 143; 1989 [1917]: 18; also see Schluchter, 1979: 65 fn. 1, 69 fn. 5, and 83–84) – with direct reference to (that is, an external basis of proof in) empirical phenomena; developments such as the spread of logic, the realiza- tion of the significance of the concept, or the rise in the authority of the rational experi- ment (Weber, 1958a [1917]: 140–141; Schroeder and Swedberg, 2002: 397 fn. 2) stand in service of problems, which lend such developments significance. Weber also recognizes the role of supporting conditions for a given patterned activity – for example, in the case of science there are the training patterns of German Privatdozenten (Weber, 1958a [1917]: 129–134), and, to illustrate with contemporary examples, there are the roles of conference presentations in advancing one’s work to completion (Gross and Fleming, 2011) or library research infrastructure (Abbott, 2011); such supporting conditions Weber calls ‘external presuppositions’, and, howsoever important they are for realizing a given set of behaviors, they derive their explanatory significance from the principle of the organizing logic of a specified patterned activity. For the following reasons, ‘patterned activity’ is convenient both as a concept and as a term. One, it emphasizes in a common-sense manner that a set of activities is defined by its constitutive principle or characteristic pattern, which, as in Weber’s ‘determinable “maxims”’, depends on both the analytical contribution of the investigator and the phe- nomenal qualities of the objects being studied; in this way, the complementary nature of the scientific process remains at the conceptual surface. (see discussion on ‘complementarity’ below). Two, it resists the tendency toward reification by emphasizing that the

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com by guest on October 21, 2014 Malczewski 345 significant patterns, whatever their explanatory principles, are drawn from discrete actions. Three, the goal or aim – which is the defining element – is accorded prominence, demarcating it clearly from ‘norms’, which perform a regulatory function but do not provide the constitutive principle. Four, it patently bears its connection to the major problems of action and order that are at the basis of social scientific inquiry.

Patterned activities as compared to cultural systems Other advantages of the patterned activities concept become salient through comparison with Geertz’s cultural systems framework. Seeking to expand the conceptual reach of the social sciences, Geertz trains his focus on what he calls the cultural dimension of human activity (Geertz, 2003: 89, 144–145). The ‘cultural dimension’ is the complement of ‘social system’ and ‘personality structure’ in a Parsonian approach to the study of human society. ‘Culture’, Geertz writes, ‘denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life’ (2003: 89). At the elementary level, Geertz’s view permits delinea- tion of the relevant symbolic or meaning-laden features of a given social context. The contribution of his approach is that it enables the rigorous definition of the symbolic structure of an isolated human social phenomenon, namely by controlling for bias and prejudgment as to what the phenomenon is beforehand (2003: 194). Symbolic forms and their utilization – all of those public, external, phenomena that are amenable to objective analysis – are, Geertz argues, theoretically abstractable from the events that give them reality (2003: 91). His framework draws attention to the manner in which the symbols (he alternately calls these ‘vehicles for conceptions’) and the practices and events in which they are embodied comprise a system – a cultural system – and mutually reinforce or ‘borrow authority’ (2003: 90) from one another.3 Take into account, for illustration, Geertz’s important claim relating to the use of the cultural system framework in the anthropology of religion:

The anthropological study of religion is … a two-stage operation; first, an analysis of the system of meanings embodied in the symbols which make up the religion proper, and, second, the relating of these systems to social-structural and psychological processes. (2003: 125)

For a given event, the observer must account for ‘the construction, apprehension, and utilization of symbolic forms’ (2003: 91); this raw material thus becomes the set in which systems of meanings may be traced. Once these systems have been delineated, one pro- ceeds to the second step – relating them to social-structural and psychological processes; examples of this given by Geertz include relating the role of ancestor worship to the regu- lation of political succession, or relating the role of initiation rites in propelling personality maturation. Emphatically, Geertz notes that it is the activity named in the second step that, at the time of his writing, was the subject of so much social anthropological work in religion (2003: 125); comparatively speaking, this is the less problematic aspect of the

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com by guest on October 21, 2014 346 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4) question for Geertz because it is the one least in need of attention. The payoff of the cultural system approach for Geertz is clear: a more rigorous conceptual apparatus capable of broadening our understanding of activities and patterned behavior makes likely progress in theory-formation (mainly as a result of the discipline it imposes on the use of concepts), and it enables a more profound understanding of the web of relationships peculiar to every specific case of symbolic activity insofar as the various symbolic patterns in a given case can be analytically grasped, permitting conceptual refinement and explanation.4 On the surface, the concept of a patterned activity being advanced in this article bears resemblance to Geertz’s framework of a ‘cultural system’, particularly as it relates to determining the organizing principles of a set of patterned behavior and helping to account for the complex of which such behavior is part and parcel. The concept of a patterned activity developed here, however, differs from Geertz’s in a very important way: in accounting for the characteristic or defining goal (that is, the appetite, desire, or need being satisfied) of a given set of activities, the framework of a patterned activity pre- serves the centrality of the question of the motive and causal forces in human action. The framework of a patterned activity, in this way, accounts for aspects of the phenomena left unaddressed by Geertz’s contribution.5 The attention paid here to Geertz’s thought is meant to help circumvent misinterpretation of the framework of a patterned activity and to draw attention to the fact that the emphasis on the aims of human action in the patterned activity framework enables symmetry between the observed phenomena and the conceptual tools used to make sense of them, and, in this way, the framework of a patterned activity surpasses Geertz’s contribution.

Science and its presuppositions With the concept of a patterned activity in mind, let us pose the question: ‘What is the organizing principle by which science coheres?’ One of the most influential sociological responses comes from Merton. As early as 1942, Merton specified the standard variety of referents of the term ‘science’. He writes:

Science is a deceptively inclusive word which refers to a variety of distinct though interrelated terms. It is commonly used to denote (1) a set of characteristic methods by means of which knowledge is certified; (2) a stock of accumulated knowledge stemming from the application of these methods; (3) a set of cultural values and mores governing the activities termed scientific; or (4) any combination of the foregoing. (1942: 115–126; also see 1996: 267–276)

The characteristic set of methods Merton mentions first is a central subject of discussion for the tradition of the philosophy of science, and, as it regards the stock of accumulated knowledge stemming from the application of these methods, this refers to the ideal set of that to which we may refer as the content of science. Analysis of the facet of science concerning the set of values and mores governing activities termed scientific makes manifest, Merton argues (1973b [1938], 1973c [1942]), the following institutional imperatives: uni- versalism, communism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism. In Merton’s view,

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com by guest on October 21, 2014 Malczewski 347 these four features characterize the ethos of modern science; notably, they also inform our understanding of the methods and content, both of which are logically secondary. In a paper of 1957, Merton added the claim that recognition is the central reward mechanism in scientific activity. The analytical purchase of Merton’s approach is grounded in his treatment of science as an interconnected and manifold set of phenomena realized by human actors. His inventory, however, leaves a major lacuna: the identification of science’s organizing principles. Lacking an account of the motive force behind scientific activity, Merton overlooks an important facet of the process rendering certain forms of knowledge wor- thy of pursuit for or worth being known to the actors who create scientific reality; for this reason, there is no organizing principle which provides coherence to the activity and helps explain why certain methods are viewed as legitimate, what the significance of the products is, or why certain typical values and mores – the norms of science – come to be adopted. Merton’s claim that recognition is the central reward mechanism in scientific activity, although it accounts for a force which may sustain the activity of science once it is already underway, leaves unanswered the questions as to why certain fields are carved out and rendered legitimate and why there has been enduring emphasis on getting the scientific method ‘right’. Barry Barnes’ argument (2007) demonstrates a suggestive linkage between Merton’s thought and the concept of status groups developed by Weber that provides a route to answering these questions, but for this to work the end or goal of science must be taken to be prior (as it would be for Weber) to the norms. Speaking metaphorically, norms are the channels through which human action flows in Merton’s account, but, in my account, it is the goal or aim of science that provides the motive force behind the carving out of the channels in the first place. It may be the case that Merton’s desire for originality, noted in Stephen Turner’s recent work (2007: 169), led him to under-specify the Weberian basis of his thought in this regard, which in my view comes at the expense of emphasizing what is prior. Merton’s specification of the norms of science does constitute an analytically potent step toward understanding science, but it is the understanding of the goal or aim accorded value (that is, the ‘maxim’ determined in the act of analysis or the guiding ‘internal presuppositions’, as discussed above) that helps to make sense of these norms and, therefore, of the significance of science’s methods and content: that is to say that values, mores, methods, and content are secondary phenomena from the standpoint being advanced here and thus stand in need of explanation. By emphasizing the significance of the goal or aim accorded value from which norms spring (and therefore the primacy of the goal or aim), viewing science as a patterned activity suggests a new take on the fundamental problem in the social sciences concerning, in Barnes’ formulation, ‘just how norms and their putative specific applications are connected’ (2007: 181). The emphasis on norms is misplaced; norms themselves are the putative rules for action, and these rules have fundamental organizing principles that must be discovered in order to be understood. A general question – one which I will not examine here – that merits attention in the social sciences is what explains the scope of a norm in actual practice and to what extent this scope differs across domains of patterned activity. In any case, the patterned activities view thus seeks to fill in the gaps left by Merton and to illuminate the significance of his claims.

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A comment on Parsons The explicit background of Geertz’s and Merton’s respective contributions is the same as the implicit background of the bulk of post-World War II theory: the legacy of Parsons. From the perspective of the patterned activities standpoint, the central limitation of Parsons’ approach – a limitation that affects both Geertz and Merton – is that his specification of the cultural dimension of concrete action focuses on symbol systems of value orientation (that is, on patterns of evaluative orientation seen as an actor’s way of orienting to his or her own orientations – whether these orientations are of the cognitive, affective, or evaluative types; Parsons and Shils 1951: 161–164) without adequate regard for the postulated underlying motive (that is, goals or aims) driving individual and inter-individual systems of value orientations.6 In other words, Parsons focuses on evaluative symbols or ‘norms’ at the expense of goals or aims. In his posthumously published paper on institutions (originally submitted for publication in 1934 to the Journal of Social Philosophy), Parsons recognizes that what I refer to as goals or aims (his term is ‘ultimate value attitudes’) underlie what he calls ‘the system of common or ultimate ends’ (1990: 324). The Weberian linage of this view is obvious. Unfortunately, Parsons never systematically developed this idea, and his usage of Weber’s thought in this regard, although acknowledged, was never carefully spelled out or shown in what way it fell short of or surpassed his own view. Granted, Parsons’ intention to theorize institutions led to a focus on normative rules (which he saw as the institutional element or defining characteristic) and the systems of which they are a part. His view of institutions, by focusing on the normative rules, differs from the Weberian view of ‘orders’ that places the emphasis on the goals or aims. The patterned activity view focuses on the goals or aims so as to isolate and explain the motive force driving patterns of action. The systems of normative rules that comprise institutions can be seen, of course, as constraining the pursuit of goals or aims (as Merton clearly saw), and I agree with Parsons (Parsons and Shils, 1951: 331) that ‘the institutional element constitutes a causal factor in its own right’ in explaining concrete instances of action. Normative rules, however, are representations of something more basic, and as the discussions of Durkheim and Weber later in this article illustrate, this more basic something is the level of analysis that ties together subjective expression of aims (as concrete ends), norms, and patterns of relation within communities. As Alexander argues (1987: 302–327), Geertz himself appreciated the importance of this lacuna in Parsons’ view, although the resolution of the problem was ultimately unsuccessful. Normative rules are in the service of goals or aims whose characteristic qualities are integral both to the clear understanding of the significance of any given value system and to defining the nature or underlying form of the set of patterned relations among various systems. Patterned activities being concerned with the presuppositions internal to the phenomena in question are not to be confused with ‘institutions’, which (whatever the differences are among social science’s several approaches to institutions) take a broader view (for example, Abrutyn, 2009; Gerth and Mills, 1954: 370; Parsons, 1990) and account also for dynamics among institutions and ‘external presuppositions’ such as peer recognition (Merton, 1973a [1957]).7As the patterned activities view suggests, I take the goal or aim to underlie Parsons’ norms – and it is the definition of this more basic element that would legitimate his prolegomenon to a theory of institutions.

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Descriptive and theoretical ‘complementarity’, and the central subject matter of social science The goal of science, to attain objective knowledge of empirical reality, implies sets of problems or questions. Accounting for these problems or questions is of paramount importance for understanding the character of science’s organizing principles. Science’s problems are unique in that they are formulated against a background (one informing what would constitute acceptable answers) that imposes a methodological approach which demands claims be capable of refutation and a tethering of claims to relevant sets of empirical phenomena that are, in principle, objectively accessible or observable (Popper, 1972, 2002, 2008); in this specific way, claims at the theoretical and basic descriptive levels obtain universal validity. To put this point more strongly, the problems of science imply that solutions to its myriad puzzles must comply with the rule that complementarity be established in the following two ways: (1) between a proposed solution (or theory) and the relevant empirical facts – this is done through systematic testing of the solution against evidence (and, also, against other theories that may satisfy better or worse); and, at a basic level, (2) between descriptive claims about the relevant empirical phenomena and the basic or elemental objects being described (that is, descriptions must index characteristics of the phenomena they describe that are in principle objectively observable).8 It is obvious that the difference between (1) and (2) is relative, insofar as theories and descriptive claims only differ from each other in terms of their magnitude or generality of scope. When the pieces fit together – when each has its complement – claims are scientifically valid. Andrew Abbott has put it, ‘The heart of good work is a puzzle and an idea’ (2004: xi; also see Weber, 2011a [1904]: 68). Science begins here. To help complete the work (that is, to solve the puzzles and to prove ideas about their solutions through systematic testing) and to satisfy the special requirements set by science’s central presupposition that reference to empirical phenomena matters deeply, science demands delineated sets of relevant empirical phenomena. Problems (or puzzles) are boundary conditions we place on the world, and these boundaries are delineated according to our central presuppositions concerning what is worth being known; hence the act of circumscribing a central subject matter is the first and most important step in both formulating and solving scientific problems in that it emphasizes the implicit boundaries around the relevant empirical phenomena contained in such problems. Karl Popper is helpful here: as he argues, an ‘expectation’ (or a ‘frame of reference’) precedes an ‘observation’ (1972: 345–346). Popper refers to expectation-driven observation as the ‘searchlight theory’ (as compared to an as if pure experiential or inductivist view of phenomena, which he refers to as the ‘bucket theory’; 1972: 346). As it specifically concerns social science, solutions to puzzles that rise above those offered by the current fractured approach demand a central subject matter based on a delineated set of basic or elemental phenomena against which descriptive claims and theories may be systematically tested. This central subject matter must be shaped by the frame of reference driving social scientific problem formation. The significance of the characteristic goal of social science is that the goal both points in the direction of the set of phenomena central to or relevant for social science and limits

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com by guest on October 21, 2014 350 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4) the criteria for an adequate manner or method employed in the discovery of putative solutions to social science’s problems. The goal of science in general confers significance on empirical phenomena and on a special method, and the several sciences are organized around those sets of phenomena that are taken to bear on the problems from which these sciences begin and which are indicative of their respective goals: from this view, all sciences are ‘special’. The various sciences are distinguished, firstly, by the nature of the problems that scientists set for themselves, and, in consequence of this, by the boundaries placed around what sets of phenomena qualify as relevant and legitimate (that is, scientific activity betrays no indication of an ultimate disinterest in where the lines of its relevant empirical phenomena are drawn). Defining social science’s central subject matter hence demands understanding the problems specific to social science in order to draw out its central presuppositions and therein to grasp what is judged to be worth being known. In this section I examine exemplary views on social science as formulated by Durkheim and Weber, so as to demonstrate that meaningful (symbolically oriented) behavior and theoretical entities based on it constitute social science’s central subject matter and, therein, to contribute to the endeavor (for example, Emirbayer, 1996b; Kalberg, 1996; Morrison, 2001) to vitalize Durkheim and Weber’s theoretical contributions. My argument is that the scope of social science – as seen from classic and contemporary standpoints – concerns both basically meaningful behavior and the theoretical entities (complemented by reference to such behavior) to which the endeavor of social science affords access: it is here where we must shine our searchlight so as to better understand human society.

Durkheim Durkheim’s aims for his science are spelled out in his earliest major work, De la division du travail social: ‘This book is before all else an effort to treat the facts of moral life according to the methods of the positive sciences’ (1930 [1893]: xxxvii).9 In Chapter 1 of Les règles de la méthode sociologique, he specified social facts as sociology’s relevant order of facts: social facts ‘present very special characteristics: they consist in manners of acting, thinking, and feeling, external to the individual, and that are endowed with a power of coercion in virtue of which they impose themselves on him’ (1937 [1895]: 5).10 In the preface to the second edition of the same work, he offered his definition of sociology: ‘… the science of institutions, their genesis and their functioning’ (1937 [1895]: xxii).11 To be clear, Durkheim’s concept of institutions, ‘all the beliefs and all the modes of behavior instituted by the collectivity’ (1937 [1895]: xxii),12 composes both social facts (‘manners of acting, thinking, and feeling’) and the theoretical entities based on analyses of these forms, or collective representations. These elementary albeit telling statements reveal the goal or aim accorded value when Durkheim’s endeavor is seen as a patterned activity: to solve problems relating to a specific body of phenomena using the scientific method. Approaching Durkheim’s work from the perspective of a patterned activity exemplifies Warren Schmaus’ contention (1994: 14–16, 18, 236; 2004) that Durkheim’s explanatory goals and method deserve to be the object of focus. The fore- most part of Durkheim’s endeavor is to demonstrate the soundness of his aims – that is,

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com by guest on October 21, 2014 Malczewski 351 that institutions can be studied systematically as objective reality – and this is perhaps his signal contribution. Throughout his oeuvre Durkheim sought complementarity between his claims (that is, sociological claims at both the basic and theoretical levels must be completed by or be shown to agree with their objects), and he argued that his central subject matter com- prises phenomena that are ‘recognizable by certain distinctive characteristics; it should thus be possible to observe, describe, and classify them and to seek out the laws that explain them’ (1930 [1893]: xxxvii).13 The groundwork for Durkheim’s sociology – the central focus here – entailed delineating his central subject matter at the basic descriptive level and, concomitantly, at the theoretical level. To wit: the big idea in Durkheim’s discussions of his central subject matter is a theoretical entity – collective representations – that lends coherence to the social facts and the realized instances of behavior that ground this entity (Malczewski, 2013). Durkheim’s main theoretical contention is that collective representations explain the realized instances of acting, thinking, and feeling for which individual actors are proximately responsible. Schmaus argues:

… it is the manner or type of action and not the action itself that exists in collective representations for Durkheim. To classify actions as belonging to a certain type is of course to ascribe a certain meaning to them. … When he said that manners of acting exist in collective representations he was trying to say that what makes the motion a kind of action is its shared meaning and not just the meaning that it may have for an individual. (1994: 39, emphasis in original)

I maintain alongside Schmaus (1994: 3–20) that there is continuity across Durkheim’s thinking on this matter. From Durkheim’s standpoint, the systematic study of social facts opens a vista to collective representations, the putative underlying reality of central importance, which in turn sheds light on the nature of particular types of social facts; hence when Durkheim refers to his sociology as the science of institutions we are to understand the term ‘institutions’ as encompassing both defined social facts as well as the theoretical entities – generally termed collective representations – that are observed in the study of such facts and which help to explain them (Durkheim, 1960 [1912], 1970 [1914], 1955). For clarity, an analogy can be made concerning the relationship between organisms and life: the study of organisms opens a vista to the processes of life (the putative underlying reality of central importance), which in turn sheds light on the nature of particular organisms; life, in this way, is a theoretical entity observed in the study of organisms that helps to explain them – and it is life that is the central subject matter of biology (Mayr, 1998). Social facts as defined by Durkheim compose a set made up of manners of acting, thinking, and feeling – that is, types of rule-based behaviors – that are essentially based on instances of meaningful or symbolically oriented behavior: this is explicitly obvious in Durkheim’s cases of behaviors postulated as being oriented to a principle symbolized by a totem (1960 [1912]), or in his analyses of legal codes that open to claims regarding theoretical entities such as social solidarity or anomie (2004 [1897]), or in his illustration of the genesis of the French esprit rooted in analyses of meaningful orientations (1977 [1938], 2002 [1898]), or even in the passionate reactions by society to those who have

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com by guest on October 21, 2014 352 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4) violated rules of conduct which provides a view on punishment understood from the aspects of its function to strengthen the collective consciousness (1930 [1893]). In found- ing his descriptive and theoretical claims on this set of phenomena, Durkheim’s theories rise from a real basis.14 Schmaus has argued with exquisite care as well as with remark- able sensitivity to Durkheim’s thought and its broader intellectual contexts that Durkheim’s firmly hypothetico-deductive approach ‘links the theoretical with the empirical and the meanings of social facts with their explanations’ (1994: 4; also see Durkheim, 1899 [1897–1898]; 1902: i–xxxvi; 1978a [1888]; Schmaus, 2004) and that Durkheim ‘treated definitions like empirical hypotheses, comparing them with regard to their empirical scope’ (1994: 194). Schmaus notes that Durkheim’s theoretical terms for unob- servable entities ‘have actual referents for Durkheim’ (1994: 43; also see Schmaus, 1994: 62–68 regarding the differentia of and views on Durkheim’s realism). Ken Morrison avers that Durkheim wanted to show in a realist sense how ‘obligations and practices can be considered to carry capacities that override personal dispositions and discretions’ (2001: 99). Although Durkheim defined his relevant phenomena in accordance with the nature of the problems that he set for himself, postulated theoretical entities in order to gain explanatory leverage, and recognized the artificial, constructed nature of scientific discovery, it is evident that his view is both constructivist and realist without contradiction. Durkheim writes: ‘… there is nothing in reality that one is justified in considering as fundamentally beyond the scope of human reason’ (2002b [1903]: 4; also see Alpert, 1939: 151–163). On this note, Schmaus argues that Durkheim’s lesson for us is that the fact that science is a social construction has no antirealist, metaphysi- cal consequences (1994: 68). Emphatically, the concept of social facts lends form to more basic – elemental – empirical instances of meaningful behavior: that is to say that social facts are defined by Durkheim in the process of scientific discovery, and his searchlight allows us to see certain phenomena – elementally meaningful or symbolically oriented behavior – in a special way. Underlying social facts, however, is always simpler stuff – realized individual instances of meaningful behavior. From the perspective of Durkheim’s driving questions, it may appear controversial to draw attention to the as if ‘raw’ or ‘actual’ meaningful behaviors that complement the descriptive statements concerning either social facts or postulated theoretical entities and processes such as collective representations (in general) or social solidarity or anomie (in particular) – not least because it might appear to suggest inductivism. It is undeniable, however, that Durkheim’s realism as well as the order of facts he deliberately drew from to test his hypotheses support the argument that the elemental facts are meaningful behaviors realized by individuals, ‘society’s only active elements’ (1937 [1895]: xvi fn. 1);15 meaningful behaviors, of course, can be individuated only by recourse to their shared meanings, a point Schmaus drives home (1994: 4). Depending on the problems one poses, from this view one may emphasize within Durkheim’s central subject matter either the general composite set of reality (that is, institutions), or the explanatory theoretical reality (that is, collective representations), or the defined set of empirical reality (that is, social facts), or the elemental empirical reality (that is, meaningful or symbolically oriented behavior) illuminated by our searchlight. By drawing attention to the fact that meaningful behaviors are realized by individuals, I do not mean to suggest that an individual actor’s intentions are central for Durkheim,

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com by guest on October 21, 2014 Malczewski 353 for this would be a misreading at odds with his view; instead I wish to emphasize that Durkheim’s theoretical claims direct our attention to a basic defined set of empirical phenomena that provides a place for hypothesis-driven investigation of the relevant theoretical processes and entities sharing the same empirical ground. In its generality, Durkheim’s central subject matter is meaningful (symbolically oriented) behavior and theoretical entities based on it. In the creation of his ‘social’ science, Durkheim delineated a central subject matter composing meaning-laden facts opening out to a grand theoretical entity he called ‘society’, an entity whose facets could be examined according to what was seen to be worth being known from his standpoint and without fracturing the totality. As Marcel Mauss recognized, Durkheim specified both a method and a subject matter for sociology (Mauss, 1928: v; quoted in Schmaus, 1994: 3); Morrison put it more recently that in Durkheim’s first three major works ‘the autonomy of its own domain of treatment … its own rationality and its own way of doing things’ was inaugurated for sociology (2001: 98). In short, Durkheim gave birth to a ‘social’ scientific approach with its own organizing principles and a clearly demarcated central subject matter.

Weber Weber offered a perspective similar to Durkheim’s in two important respects: one, Weber explicitly provided a guide to his aims and goals; two, he circumscribed his central subject matter in his methodological writings and exemplified his approach in his studies. In ‘Basic Sociological Terms’, Weber writes that sociology is ‘a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences’; he adds, ‘We shall speak of “action” insofar as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to his behavior. …Action is “social” insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course’ (1978: 4). The view articulated here is consistent with the one that he published in ‘Some Categories of Interpretive Sociology’ in 1913, in which he writes, the ‘individual [as the agent of meaningful behavior] and his action are treated as the most basic unit or “atom”’ (Weber, 1981 [1913]: 158; also see Gerth and Mills, 1958: 55; Graber, 1981; Oakes, 1998; Whimster, 2007: 251–252; and Weber’s letter to Robert Liefmann of 9 March 1920, quoted in Whimster, 2007: 263). The characteristic qualities of the patterned activity defined by Weber as sociology – that is, the centrality of the problem of meaningful behavior and the belief in attaining objective knowledge of it – demarcate this activity from all other activities and practices. The central subject matter Weber specifies composes two types of facts: ‘action’ and ‘social action’. The first type of facts (which Weber terms action) is elemental or basic – they are the behaviors to which subjective meanings are attached realized by individuals. The focus of Weber’s sociology is on the set of phenomena that bear an additional, second, distinguishing characteristic: subjectively meaningful behavior must take account of or be ‘related to’ (Whimster, 2004: 312) behavior of others and be oriented in its course. Social action thus composes the basic fixed empirical forms of meaningful behavior as well as the analytical types based on the analyses of the former. The relevant set of phenomena for Weber’s sociology is social action. Throughout Weber’s studies,

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com by guest on October 21, 2014 354 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4) types of social action shed light on the patterns of action he is examining and lend coherence to the historical phenomena that comprise the individual cases he provides as evidence. ‘Typical modes of action’ or ‘courses of action that are repeated’ (Weber, 1978: 29) are simple theoretical entities built from the basic units of subjectively meaningful behavior of several actors. Most importantly, the two sets of facts that Weber’s definition of social action composes undergird his grandest set of claims – those concerning rationalization. Rationalization, a theoretical entity capturing an essential human social process, is the big idea in Weber’s thought. Weber argues:

By [rationalization] very different things may be understood. …There is, for example, rationalization of mystical contemplation, that is of an attitude which, viewed from other departments of life, is especially irrational, just as much as there are rationalizations of economic life, of technique, of scientific research, of military training, of law and administration. Furthermore, each one of these fields may be rationalized in terms of very different ultimate ends, and what is rational from one point of view may well be irrational from another. Hence rationalizations of the most varied character have existed in various departments of life and in all areas of culture. To characterize their differences from the viewpoint of cultural history it is necessary to know what departments are rationalized and in what direction. (2005 [1930]: xxxix)

Rationalization refers to the process of the meaningful construction of reality and the cognitive orientation to and ordering of it (also see Greenfeld and Malczewski, 2010). Liah Greenfeld argues that the general meaning of rationalization manifest in Weber’s thought is

… that of articulation and organization, primarily cognitive, of an area of experience. … [Rationalization] refers to the fundamental process of the ordering of reality, or its cultural, i.e., symbolic, i.e., mental construction … it goes on all the time, in every society, and in all spheres of life. (2005a: 325; also see Greenfeld, 2007)

The process of rationalization is a theoretical entity empirically established on the foun- dation of patterns manifest in social action – the set of phenomena on which Weber shines his searchlight. Weber’s claims regarding rationalization are theoretical claims explaining what he argues is of significance in the basic empirical data. His main insight for social theory is that the process of rationalization precedes and conditions the realm of historical or individual behavior (see Eastwood, 2005; Roth, 1978: xxxviii, xxxix; Weber, 1978: 280, 287, 293–294, 298). To repeat, the starting point for Weber is social action; he avers, however, that the underlying phenomena can be studied from other perspectives, writing that history concerns important individual human events and ‘the causal analysis and explanation of individual actions, structures, and personalities possessing cultural significance’ (1978: 19, 29). By contrast, sociology concerns generalizations of processes of social action, which offers concepts that shed light on and explain historically important phenomena (1978:

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19–20). In his well-known view, ‘It is not the “actual” interconnections of “things” but the conceptual interconnections of problems which define the scope of the various sciences’ (2011a [1904]: 68, emphasis in original). Rob Beamish notes that Weber’s sociology moves ‘from the specific to the more general and, ultimately, to broadly inclusive analyses of social behavior’ (2010: 175; also see Weber, 2011b [1906]). In this way, history and sociology shed light on the same elemental or basic phenomena, although their respective problems demand different – although not necessarily incompatible or ontologically contradictory – types of explanation. Both individual and patterned group phenomena have a place in Weber’s social science. In training his focus on social action in full recognition of the significance of the more general set of meaningful (symbolically oriented) behavior from which it is selected (that is, action), Weber elevated the problem of the interconnectedness of meaningful behavior, and, in this way, his central theoretical entity, the process of rationalization, does not fracture reality in seeking to answer the problems he posed. Weber deliberately emphasizes the constructed nature of his concepts: he exhorts us to remember that his works ‘ask’ to be surpassed (1958a [1917]: 138) – Durkheim likewise held that ‘everything leads us to think that scientific progress will never end’ (2002b [1903]: 4) – and the ‘value-relevance’ of a given question does not extend to all, yet Weber’s work embodies a central concern for real basic empirical phenomena that are clearly demarcated. Like Durkheim’s, Weber’s view is both constructivist and realist without contradiction.

Conclusion: A convergence of two classical approaches Given the foregoing, I submit that Durkheim and Weber converge in their views regarding the nature of social science – specifically, as it concerns social science’s aims and central subject matter. For Weber, what delineates social action from other types of human action is the very quality that Durkheim understood as social constraint: this is to say that both Weber and Durkheim observe that certain manners or types of action come about as a result of people being in association with one another – whether the important quality is called constraint or a reaction by society (in Durkheim’s case) or the behavior taking account of or being related to the behavior of others (in Weber’s case). One of the goals of this article has been to illustrate that the central subject matter of the social sciences – that is, ‘institutions’, ‘rationalization’, or whatever we wish to call it – bears one essential characteristic: it is elementally or basically comprised of meaningful (symbolically oriented) behaviors, and it is in these phenomena that the social scientific imagina- tion discovers what is worth being known. Where meaningful (symbolically oriented) behavior is found, there we find what is characteristic of human society – its forms of social organization, its ways of life. Of course, human activity involves ways of behav- ing that are not explicitly meaningful or symbolically oriented and which may have their basis in either meaningful or non-meaningful action; Durkheim and Weber aver this, and biological (for example, cognitive, psychological) explanations may be helpful in filling out the picture. Where meaningful action is not in evidence, such a site is outside the bounds of the field of inquiry of social science. In sum, social science is a patterned activity oriented toward satisfying the twofold desire to understand human society and to attain objective knowledge of this subject in

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com by guest on October 21, 2014 356 Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4) its empirical aspects; the basic elements of the central subject matter comprise meaningful (symbolically oriented) behavior and theoretical entities based on it.16 The claim made here about this set of phenomena addresses and offers a resolution to the most salient problem in social science – a lack of consensus regarding its central subject matter. But not just this, my claim aims to simplify the structure of theories of social science by providing the link between our most basic or elemental set of phenomena and the typical problems social scientists have sought to address by providing an account of the activity that helps us to understand its character, the bounds of its claims, and the role it plays in the activities of those who realize it. Of course, each social scientist may have his or her own view on what problems matter and what is worth being known, but recog- nizing the thread of a commonly accepted type of solution tested against a shared basic reality unites these views. This discussion, hence, not only demonstrates what social science is but also suggests to us what more it could be.

Acknowledgement I wish to thank Katrina Demulling, Francesco Duina, Jonathan Eastwood, Liah Greenfeld, Charles Lindholm, David Phillippi, Michael Sellitto, Mark Simes, and John Stone for their critical engagement with my thought. I also thank the editors of JCS and the four reviewers of this paper for the criticism and feedback they provided.

Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes 1. In systemic accounts, self-sustaining entities such as societies, communities, or persons are pos- ited, and events within that entity are explained in reference to their location within the whole entity – Auguste Comte and Talcott Parsons exemplify the systemic approach. Dispositional accounts – such as those of the Utilitarians, contemporary rational-choice theorists (taking inspiration from Bernard Mandeville), or, arguably, Max Weber (see Tilly, 2005) – posit coherent entities (most typically individuals) and explain their actions, as Tilly sees it, ‘by means of their orientations just before the point of action’ (Tilly, 2005: 14). Transactional or relational accounts take as their starting points interactions among social sites, thus handling both events at such sites and their durable characteristics as outcomes of interactions (Tilly, 2005). Karl Marx and Georg Simmel represent classic approaches, and those of Tilly (2005) himself, John R. Commons (1934), Roger Gould (2003), and the ‘new’ institutionalism (Nee, 2005; Powell and DiMaggio, 1991; also see Abrutyn, 2009) represent contemporary ones. 2. I take this phrase from Greenfeld (1987, 2006). 3. For illustration, see the discussion concerning ‘worldview’ and ‘ethos’ in ‘Religion as a Cultural System’ and ‘Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali’ in Geertz (2003). 4. Notably, Geertz’s view has been the subject of much criticism in anthropology and social theory more generally; unfortunately, the view attributed to Geertz is strikingly inconsistent with the one he explicitly articulates throughout his work. Contrary to the popular notion of Geertz – a notion evidently based on a limited treatment of his thought (see Sewell’s provocative note on this matter in 2005b: 177 fn. 6, in which he notes that arguments with Geertz are typically based solely on Geertz’s article on the Balinese cockfight) – the framework of a cultural

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system is not limited to the mere analysis of the system of meanings inherent in a discrete set of activities (such as those that comprise a Balinese cockfight) and the framework employed in isolation is by no means meant to be understood to be adequate (refer to the two-stage operation described above that asks, at a minimum, for contextualization alongside analyses of ‘social system’ and ‘personality structure’). The cultural system framework in Geertz’s view is just a beginning – albeit an analytically essential one. To illustrate, in his summary of the standard critical view of Geertz, William H. Sewell, Jr writes: ‘By treating a cultural performance as a text … one fixes it and subjects it to a synchronic gaze, bracketing the question of the processes that produced it in order to work out its internal logic’ (2005b: 178). Any process, to be a subject of reliable analysis, must be subject to a ‘synchronic gaze’: that is, the characteristics of any process, to be a subject of reliable analysis, must be described and delineated. This step is a theoretical and practical necessity in order to determine of what a set of behavior consists – without this crucial step there is no possibility of understanding its qualities or its place in relation to other processes (whether social-structural or psychological, and so on). The implication here is that it is premature to move to the second stage in the two-stage operation, the ‘relating of these systems to social-structural and psychological processes’, without defining the systems at the heart of the inquiry. 5. For a sample of works citing dissatisfaction with Geertz’s framework, see the following: Clifford (1986, 1988: 1–54); Crapanzano (1986); Roseberry (1989 [1982]). 6. Jeffrey Alexander’s (1987) penetrating account of the Parsonian background (one that set the scene of theorizing in the past half-century) emphasizes the lack of development of the role of the cultural dimension by Parsons even though this role is implicit in Parsons’ theory. 7. In his recent theoretical contribution to the analysis of institutional autonomy, for instance, Seth Abrutyn (2009) locates the relevant features of institutions in material as well as symbolic frameworks. It is not clear whether Abrutyn agrees with Parsons (1990) that the institutional element is basically located in norms or whether institutions as such must be defined necessarily as both symbolic and material. 8. Alexander (1982) has framed the issue such that science can be seen to depend on claims made along a spectrum, where ‘facts’ (my ‘basic or elemental objects’) are taken to have the same status as theoretical claims – but at a different level of generality. Popper’s ‘searchlight’ metaphor (discussed in the following paragraph) also exemplifies the view that an interest in basic or elemental objects does not imply a positivist outlook. 9. My translation of Durkheim both here and elsewhere. ‘Ce livre est avant tout un effort pour traiter les faits de la vie morale d’après la méthode des sciences positives.’ 10. ‘Voila donc un ordre de faits qui présentent des caractères très spéciaux: ils consistent en des manières d’agir, de penser et de sentir, extérieures à l’individu, et qui sont douées d’un pou- voir de coercition en vertu duquel ils s’imposent à lui.’ 11. ‘…la sociologie peut alors être définie: la science des institutions, de leur genèse et de leur fonctionnement.’ 12. ‘On peut en effet, sans dénaturer le sens de cette expression, appeler institution toutes les croyances et tous les modes de conduite institués par la collectivité.’ 13. ‘Les faits moraux sont des phénomènes comme les autres; ils consistent en des règles d’action qui se reconnaissent à certain characters distinctifs; il doit donc être possible de les observer, de les décrire, de les classer et de chercher les lois qui les expliquent.’ 14. Anne Warfield Rawls (1996, 1998) employs the term ‘enacted practice’ to refer to Durkheim’s social substratum, which has the virtue of emphasizing that for Durkheim the sociologically relevant phenomena are rooted in concrete experience. This view, as does mine, stands in con- tradistinction to the idealist readings of Durkheim offered by Gehlke (1915), Parsons (1967), and Lukes (1973). Also see Bellah (1959) and Emirbayer (1996a, 1996b: 117).

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15. ‘Outre les individus, il y a les choses qui sont des elements intégrants de la société. Il est vrai seulement que les individus en sont les seuls elements actifs.’ 16. To be clear, the concept of a patterned activity must be understood as a theoretical identification. To say that this concept takes the form of a theoretical identification is to take the concept of ‘social science’ and to equate it with one that defines its essential properties as part of a scientific account; ergo, the main title of this essay – ‘This is Social Science’. My claim implies that social science constitutes a phenomenon of one and the same kind, whatever the particular case may be and whatever variances may exist in the several historical institutional and organizational forms we have discovered (also see Ben-David, 1971). This account, like E = MC2, is not causal – there is no response to the problem any precocious six year-old would pose: ‘Why?’ The claims that ‘Water is H O’ and ‘heat is molecular motion’ exemplify 2 this standpoint (Hanzel, 1999: 122). For our purposes, explanation taking the form of a theoretical identification constitutes a powerful tool that can aid in the construction of accounts of the development of social science by permitting one to control factors seen to bear on the object of investigation and to tease out strands of activity that share certain principles (such as an emphasis on a specific set of problems) or to separate activities embedded in like conditions without their conflation or confusion with the central object of interest. The concept of a patterned activity as developed here permits the observer to describe, classify, and understand sets of activities bearing a cohering logic, thereby justifying their abstract separation into sets.

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Author biography Eric Malczewski is a Lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard University.

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