Abstract
By reductionism I understand the methodologically illegitimate practice which consists of dealing with a certain order of phenomena in such a way that their possible distinctiveness and internal dynamic is disregarded or underemphasised in a-prioristic fashion. Reductionist practices can, of course, take different forms, not all of them entailing the neglect of hierarchical levels. For instance Marxist economism, a form of reductionism I have dealt with extensively in Post-Marxist Alternatives, has not so much to do with relations between more and less encompassing social systems as with relations between economic and non-economic institutional orders, mainly on the macro-level of analysis.
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Notes
For a systematic and concise review of such theories see A. Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986.
A. Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969.
4. For a clear exposition and balanced critique of Frank’s work see D. Booth, ‘André Gunder Frank: An introduction and appreciation’, in I. Oxaal et al, Beyond the Sociology of Development, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975.
See for instance E. Laclau, ‘Feudalism and capitalism in Latin America’, New Left Review, no. 67, May-June 1971.
8. See for instance P. Rodakis, The Colonels’ Dictatorship: Rise and Fall (in Greek), Athens: 1974;
or John Katris, The Birth of Neo-Fascism, (in Greek), Geneva: Editex, 1971.
For an extended bibliography of the voluminous literature on the Greek dictatorship see C. Korizis, The Authoritarian Regime 1967–74, (in Greek), Athens, 1975.
See S. Gregoriadis, The History of the Dictatorship, Athens: Kapopoulos, 1975, vol. I, pp. 45 ff.
11. See N. Mouzelis, Politics in the Semi-Periphery, op. cit., Particularly pp. 173 ff. On the ‘new professionalism’ ideology of the military see A. Stepan, ‘The new professionalism of internal warfare and military role expansion’, in A. F. Lowenthal, Armies and Politics in Latin America, New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1976.
See also R. C. Schmitter (ed.), Military Rule in Latin America, Beverly Hills and London: Sage, 1973.
For such an analysis see N. Mouzelis, ‘Capitalism and dictatorship in post-war Greece’, New Left Review, April 1976, and N. Mouzelis, Politics in the Semi-Periphery, op. cit., ch. 3.
E. E. Hagen, On the Theory of Social Change, Homewood, 111.: Dorset Press, 1962. Another work with an even more strongly marked tendency to upward reductionism is D. C. McLelland’s The Achieving Society, Princeton, NJ.: D. van Nostrand, 1961. I characterise these and similar works as neo-evolutionist because they view the modernisation of third-world countries as an upward move along an evolutionary continuum, one pole of which refers to the highly differentiated Western societies and the other to the least differentiated, that is, most traditional third-world countries. The move upwards is held to be mainly generated by a diffusion of Western values and cultural institutions.
These capitalists had previously thrived as intermediaries between metropolitan (particularly British) and colonial societies. The 1873 world economic crisis, and the rise of nationalism in several peripheral and semi-peripheral societies, seriously restricted their room for manoeuvre. A great number of them therefore either relocated themselves in countries where English imperialism was still strong (Egypt, the Sudan), or looked for refuge to Greece proper. See George Dertilis, Social Change and Military Intervention in Politics: Greece 1881–1928, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1976;
and C. Tsoukalas, Dépendence et Réproduction: le Rôle de L’Appareil Scolaire dans une Formation Transterritoriale, PhD. Thesis, University of Paris, 1975.
See G. Dertilis (ed.), Banquiers, Usuriers et Paysans: Réseaux de Crédit et Strategies du Capital en Grèce, 1780–1930, Paris: Edition La Découverte, 1988, pp. 33–79.
See George Dertilis, The Issue of the Banking Institutions 1871–1873, (in Greek), Athens: Educational Institute of the National Bank of Greece, 1980.
See for instance J. Elster, Making Sense of Marx, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985;
M. Taylor (ed.), Rationality and Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988;
J. E. Roemer, Analytical Foundations of Marxian Economic Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986;
J. E. Roemer (ed.), Analytic Marxism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; and his Free to Lose, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988.
G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: a Defence, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
For the prevalence of issues and struggles related to authoritative rather than allocative resources in pre-capitalist societies see A. Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historic Materialism, London: Macmillan, 1981.
For the concepts of general and specific evolution see M. D. Sahlins and E. R. Service (eds), Evolution and Culture, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1960.
For a very vivid account of such struggles within business organisations see M. Dalton, Men Who Manage, New York: Wiley, 1959.
For a discussion of this type of limitation of rational-choice theory see J. Elster (ed.), Rational Choice, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976. Introduction.
A. Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
For an overall view of the capital-logic approach to the analysis of the state in capitalist formations see J. Holloway and S. Picciotto (eds), State and Capital: a Marxist Debate, London: Edward Arnold, 1978.
For a critique of the capital logic school along such lines see N. Mouzelis, ‘Types of reductionism in Marxist theory’, Telos, Fall, 1980.
See A. Levine, E. Sober and E. O. Wright, ‘Marxism and methodological individualsm’, New Left Review, no. 162, March/April 1987.
47. Concerning analytic Marxism in particular, its attempt (i) to provide the micro-foundations of macro-theories that do not bother to spell out what linkages there are between the phenomena on which they are focussed and real micro-actors, and (ii) its attempts, by means of a battery of analytic tools, to clarify and reassess obscure or widely misunderstood aspects of Marx’s work, have definitely enriched Marxist scholarship, as well as provided an effective antidote to the mystificatory and reifying style of Althusserian Marxism. For instance, Roemer’s attempt to develop in a highly logico-deductive manner a theory of exploitation which is based on the notion of initial differential endowments of economic actors, rather than on Marx’s labour theory of value, does not only provide insights on the notion of exploitation, it also provides new ways of looking at Marx’s work. (See J. E. Roemer, Value, Exploitation and Class, New York: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1986).
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© 1991 Nicos P. Mouzelis
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Mouzelis, N.P. (1991). Reductionism: Neglecting Hierarchical Levels. In: Back to Sociological Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21760-1_8
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