Explanatory and Causal Methodology in Sociology: Developments and Current Issues

Abstract Explanation and causality are fundamental concerns for sociology as a problem- and theory-guided empirical discipline. This introduction distinguishes explanation and causality analytically while showing how they are intertwined in research oriented toward causal explanation. We first revisit the historically most influential conception of explanation, the covering-law model, and use it to identify continuing challenges specific to sociological explanation addressed in Part I of the special issue. These include the status of probabilistic laws, the role of social mechanisms, the relation between micro- and macro-levels, the usefulness of theories of the middle range, “as if” simplifications, and the place of Verstehen . We proceed similarly with causality. After sketching the relation to explanation and the changing history of causal analysis in sociology, we systematize the contributions to Part II in light of the now dominant perspective of counterfactual causality. They address, among other issues, the nature of causality from a philosophical perspective, external validity, non-manipulable causes, new uses of graphical causal models, and causality in historical and cultural explanations. Finally, we consider how questions of explanation and causality relate to methodological opportunities and challenges arising from digital behavioral data, computational social science, and natural language processing, which are the focus of Part III. The special issue calls for a closer integration of careful description, explicit theoretical reasoning, transparent derivation of empirical implications, and research designs suited to assessing causal claims.