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methodological individualism The view
that social events must be explained by redu-
cing them to individual actions, where, in
turn, those actions are explained by reference
to the intentions of individual actors. For the
methodological individualist, all macro-scale
social entities are ultimately decomposable to
the acts and underlying intentions of individ-
uals.society, therefore, is a chimera, some-
thing that appears real, but which is not. As a
perspective, methodological individualism is
usefully contrasted with, on the one hand,
approaches that accentuate the importance
and reality of trans-individual social structures
(as found, for example, in structural Marxism,
a form ofmarxismthat trades onstructural-
ism) and, on the other hand, approaches that
deny the autonomy of individual human sub-
jects altogether (as found, for example, within
post-structuralism).
The term ‘methodological individualism’
was first systematically deployed by the
German sociologist Max Weber, in his book
Economy and Society(1968 [1922]). He was
keen to argue that social collectivities such as
firms or governments ‘must be treated as
solely the resultants. .. of the particular acts
of individual persons, since these alone can be
treated as agents in a course of subjectively
understandable action’ (Weber, 1968 [1922],
p. 13). Weber’s point was not to privilege
individuals over social institutions, but to
stress that understanding social phenomena
should rest methodologically on action-based
theory; that is, theory providing motivations
for agents to act (in Weber’s theory, this
turned on the methodological protocols of
Verstehen(‘understanding’) andideal types).
In subsequent versions this point was lost,
however, and methodological individualism
was used to privilege the individual primarily
for the purpose of disparaging especially
Marx’s theory of historical materialism,
which rested precisely on collective social
entities. This impulse is found in Friedrich
von Hayek’s and Karl Popper’s writings of
the 1940s and 1950s, and then again in Jon
Elster’s (1982b) work onanalytical marxism
in the 1980s and 1990s. While there are dif-
ferences among these three writers, they also
have commonalities. First, Hayek and Elster,
and perhaps Popper too through his model of
psychological reductionism, adhered to a
rational choicemodel of the individual
derived fromneo-classical economics: rati-
onality was posited as the only action-based
motivation for agents. Second, all three
accepted thatrational individualsrepresented‘rock-bottom explanations’ of social phenomena
(Watkins, 1957, p. 105).
Both the specific rational choice model and
the more general notion of an individualist
‘rock-bottom’ explanation have been criti-
cized: the underlying intentions of an act are
not always known, and so it may be impossible
to provide individual action-based accounts;
non-individual based forms ofexplanation–
for example, aggregate-statistical – can in
some cases provide better explanations than
ones resting on individual motivations; indi-
viduals in interaction with one another pro-
duce emergent effects irreducible to
individual acts; and individuals are the conse-
quence, not the cause, of social structures and
institutions (‘methodological holism’).
Because of the association with the ration-
ality postulate, inhuman geographymeth-
odological individualism was found most
readily ineconomic geography, since it was
most influenced byneoclassical economics,
and it also reappears inregional scienceand
thenew economic geography. But thecul-
tural turnand the turn toinstitutional
economicshave resulted in the strong asser-
tion of the importance of social phenomena on
their own terms, and hence a falling away of
methodologicalindividualism fromthe one
sub-discipline where it had gained a foothold
(Lee and Wills, 1997). tbSuggested reading
Heath (2005).methodology The principles and assump-
tions underlying the choice of techniques for
constructing and analysing data. Methodology
should not be confused with ‘methods’: it is
the conceptual rationale for which methods
are used, and how. Methodology brings
together and links the underlying philosoph-
ical and conceptual bases of a study with
appropriate techniques. Good methodologies
thus align theontologyof a study, how it
conceives of the world, with itsepistemology,
how it claims to know things about the world.
This is more than, though it includes, compe-
tently using one or more research ‘techniques’.
ThisDictionary, for instance, lists at least
11 groups of techniques and many more
analytical and representational procedures
for the data thus created. Methodology is a
meta-level issue about fitting techniques to
research questions, rather than simply learning
a method.
A weak formulation of methodology as
recounting how research was done wasGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_M Final Proof page 457 1.4.2009 3:19pmMETHODOLOGY