Building Bridges in Social Research

Abstract

The three books examined in this review address the question of causal explanation in the non-experimental social sciences. All three books focus attention on the need to address ‘causation’ in terms of complex processes rather than through prediction. Debates over the meaning of ‘mechanism’ (Stinchcombe), ‘narrative’ (Elliott) and ‘emergence’ (Gilbert and Troitzsch) cross over each other, and are in part alternative ways of describing the same thing, even while such alternatives cannot be easily rendered compatible.