Building bridges in social research: narrative, logic and simulation
- 2006
- p.349-57.
- May
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. - Reproduced.