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Explaining explanation: A critical review of john levi martin’s The explanation of social action

Social Theories of History and Histories of Social Theory

ISBN: 978-1-78350-218-9, eISBN: 978-1-78350-219-6

Publication date: 2 December 2013

Abstract

Purpose

To summarize and evaluate John Levi Marin’s recent book, The Explanation of Social Action (2011), the central thesis of which is that the actions of other people cannot be explained without first understanding those actions from the point of view of the actors themselves. Martin thus endeavors to reorient social science toward concrete experience and away from purportedly useless abstractions.

Design/methodology/approach

This review chapter employs close scrutiny of and applies immanent critique to Martin’s argumentative claims, warrants, and the polemical style in which these arguments are presented.

Findings

This chapter arrives at the following conclusions: (1) Martin unnecessarily truncates the scope of sociological investigation; (2) he fails to define the key concepts within his argument, including “explanation,” “social action,” and “understanding,” among others; (3) he overemphasizes the external or “environmental” causes of action; (4) rather than inducing actions, the so-called “action-fields” induce experiences, and are therefore incapable of explaining actions; (5) Martin rejects counterfactual definitions of causality while defining his own notion of causality in terms of counterfactuals; (6) most of his critiques of other philosophical accounts of causality are really critiques of their potential misapplication; (7) the separation of experience and language (i.e., propositions about experience) in order to secure the validity of the former does not secure the validity of sociological inquiry, since experiences are invariably reported in language; and, finally, (8) Martin’s argument that people are neurologically incapable of providing accurate, retrospective accounts of the motivations behind their own actions is based on the kind of third-person social science he elsewhere repudiates; that he acknowledges the veracity of these studies demonstrates the potential utility of the “third-person” perspectives and the implausibility of any social science that abandons them.

Originality/value

To date Martin’s book has received much praise but little critical attention. This review chapter seeks to fill this lacuna in the literature in order to better elucidate Martin’s central arguments and the conclusions that can be reasonably inferred from the logical and empirical evidence presented.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank Larry Chappell, Sheeji Kathuria, and Eric Royal Lybeckfor their helpful comments.

Citation

Bradford, J.H. (2013), "Explaining explanation: A critical review of john levi martin’s The explanation of social action ", Social Theories of History and Histories of Social Theory (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Vol. 31), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 309-332. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0278-1204(2013)0000031010

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2013 Emerald Group Publishing Limited