Concept information
Preferred term
methodological individualism
Definition
- Methodological individualism is the doctrine that large-scale social events and conditions, such as wars, social customs, economic recessions, the crime rate, and the state, should be explained or understood wholly in terms of the beliefs, intentions, attitudes, and actions of individual people. It is “methodological” in the sense that it indicates how social scientific inquiry ought to proceed; the “individualism” stems from its insistence that social scientific explanations should, at least ultimately, involve only facts about individual agents. [Source: Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society; Methodological Individualism]
Broader concept
Belongs to group
URI
https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/methodological_individualism
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