Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

When case studies are constructed as narratives, then causal explanation can be achieved without either comparison or generalization. Narratives provide paths of causal links on a chronology of actions or events. The links, in turn, can be studied as Bayesian inferences generating Bayesian narratives. The causal paths in a narrative have a Boolean structure.

Keywords

Bayesian narrative causal explanation Boolean analysis

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abbott, A. 1992. ‘‘What Do Cases Do? Some Notes on Activity in Sociological Analysis.’’ Pp. 53-82 in What Is a Case, edited by C. Ragin and H. S. Becker. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Abell, P. 1987. The Syntax of Social Life: The Theory and Method of Comparative Narratives. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

---. 1993. ‘‘Some Aspects of Narrative Method. ’’ Journal of Mathematical Sociology 18:93-134.

---. 2001. ‘‘Causality and Low-Frequency Complex Events: The Role of Comparative Narratives.’’ Sociological Methods & Research 30:57-80.

---. 2004. ‘‘Narrative Explanation: An Alternative to Variable Centered Explanation.’’ Annual Review of Sociology 30:287-310.

Boudon, R. 2004. The Poverty of Relativism. Oxford, UK: Bardwell Press.

Cartwright, N. 1989. Nature’s Capacities and Their Measurement. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Danto, A.C. 1985. Narration and Knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press.

Elster, J. 1978. Logic and Society. Chichester, UK: John Wiley.

10.

Goldthorpe, J. 2000. On Sociology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

11.

Good, I.J. 1983. Good Thinking: The Foundations of Probability and Its Applications. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

12.

Hedstrom, P. 2005. Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

13.

Heise, D. 1989. ‘‘Modelling Event Structures. ’’ Journal of Mathematical Sociology 14:139-69.

14.

Lieberson, S. 1985. Making It Count: The Improvement of Social Research and Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.

15.

March, J.G. , L.S. Sproull , and M. Tamuz. 1991. ‘‘Learning From Samples of One or Fewer.’’ Organization Science 2:1-13.

16.

Pearl, J. 2000. Causality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

17.

Ragin, C. 1987. The Comparative Method. Berkeley: University of California Press.

18.

Roberts, C. 1996. The Logic of Historical Explanation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

19.

Schum, D.A. 1994. The Evidential Foundations of Probabilistic Reasoning . Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

20.

Spirtes, P. , C. Glymour , and R.S. Scheines. 2000. Causation, Prediction, and Search. New York: Springer-Verlag.

21.

von Wright, G.H. 1971. Explanation and Understanding. London : Routledge Kegan Paul.

22.

Winship, C. and S.L. Morgan. 1999. ‘‘The Estimation of Causal Effects From Observational Data.’’ Annual Review of Sociology 25:657-704.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.06 MB

0.00 MB