Chapter 11, the first chapter in this part, explores some of the kinds of explanations and structures of explanations that are common in sociology. I will be referring to a classic monograph by Arthur Stinchcombe (1968), especially to the division “Complex Causal Structures: Demographic, Functional and Historicist Explanations of Social Phenomena.” In Chapter 12, I'll provide examples of the construction and testing of explanations from some work of mine on racial disturbances. Chapters 13 and 14 cover two additional examples of empirical analysis: a study of the construction of a time series for lynchings events in the American South and an investigation of career advancement within a large corporation.

We'll start by discussing explanatory structures at a meta-level. How do sociologists go about formulating theories, and what are the structures of those theories? First, there is the issue of deductive versus inductive explanations. Should one start with a particular theory from which implications are derived? Or should one begin with the data and look for empirical regularities, essentially generalizations from observed patterns, leading to the formulation of low-level theoretical statements? Sociologists use both kinds of reasoning, as do other social scientists. Sociologists, however, tend to do more inductive work than, for example, economists. Economists have developed a robust theoretical apparatus from which hypotheses are derived and that are then tested with data. Economists usually operate under a framework of utility maximization by actors, subject to a constraint set. You rarely see this type of formulation in the work of sociologists.