“Practical” Hermeneutics of Muhammad Quraish Shihab – between Scilla of Anarchy and Charybdis of Dogmatism

The present article deals with the work of an Indonesian scholar and a public intellectual Muhammad Quraish Shihab. The paper reveals the main principles of Quraish Shihab's Quranic Hermeneutics, which include pragmatism (orienting towards the joint interest), thematic approach and methodological holism. Among the objects of the research there are his innovative approach to Quran exegesis, his links with Egyptian modernist schools of M. Abduh and M.R. Ridah, his ideas, where Islam comes as a “middle way”. Moreover, the article demonstrates the connection between his hermeneutical theory and his social activism, especially in the fi eld of media. The author concludes the paper with a brief explanation of the main points of Quraish Shihab's hermeneutical theory.

Prospects for System Expansion of Institutional Economic Theory

The article discusses the ways of creating unified economic theory describing the functioning and interaction of significant units of the national economy and the economy as a whole. The general construction of a unified economic theory, its connection with the system economic theory and its system components (object, process, project, environmental economic theories) is determined. Based on the example of institutional economic theory, it is shown that the expansion of its terminology and conceptual apparatus within the framework of the construction of a unified multi-level economic theory allows minimizing the contradictions between the “old” and “new” institutionalism, methodological individualism and methodological holism. This expansion is carried out following the principle of the maximum possible system community in two lines. The first line is expanding the subject area (along with organizations as systems of the object type, systems of the process, project, the environment types are also considered as the focal subject of study). The second line is the expanding the instrumental area (analysis of the influence on the behavior of agents from not only institutional subsystems but also information, infrastructural, network, mental, and other environmental subsystems). As a result, each system receives the compact and maximum volumetric internal systemic content and, at the same time, the minimum volumetric external systemic environment, which creates conditions for the effective application of the duality principle in the theory of economic systems. Thus, the system expansion of institutional theory should take place in two lines: content of the theory per se and creation of its immediate environment.

Possibilities of the Economic Institutionalism’ Integration

The article is devoted to the search and substantiation of the answer to the question whether it is possible to combine the original and new institutional economics. For this, first, methodological holism and methodological individualism are compared, which share the aforementioned directions of economic institutionalism. It is concluded that these methodological principles are logically incompatible in their ontological foundations, but they are close in the types of the analyzed processes and phenomena explanations. Secondly, the definitions of the institution are compared, which are usually used in these areas. From their comparison, it is concluded that the understanding of the institution in the new institutional economics is more productive than that followed by the supporters of the original institutional economics. In the final part of the article, it is concluded that the convergence of the two institutionalisms is possible through the deployment of a discussion based on the results of empirical research, which can show the participants the advantages and disadvantages of the scientific methods used. Methodological discussions are considered unproductive.

From ‘the people’ to the crowd: The push for independence in Catalonia

This article examines the sociological value of Elias Canetti’s work on crowds and power. It explores crowd action and imagery in the push for Catalan independence through the analysis of materials published on Twitter by Tsunami Democràtic, which emerged to coordinate the response to the sentencing of Catalan political leaders after the unilateral declaration of independence. It then goes on to discuss how a crowd-based approach offers a supplementary perspective to contemporary studies of populism, on the one hand, and to accounts that primarily focus on the role of social media in organizing political protest movements, on the other. An analysis of crowds not only avoids both methodological holism and methodological individualism. It also helps to understand why so many people were mobilized beyond the power of concepts, ideologies and discourse.

O mogućnostima naučnog objašnjenja zasnovanog na metodološkom individualizmu u antropologiji

The paper deals with methodological individualism in sociocultural anthropology. Key theories and debates within the framework of methodological individualism in anthropology are presented in the paper. The authors discuss criticisms aimed at the use of methodological individualism in anthropology as not suitable for anthropology, due to its specificity. Instead, they argue that methodological individualism has advantages for a better understanding of many anthropological topics, especially compared to methodological holism. The authors’ assumption is that anthropology is not exclusively a holistic science, as the history of anthropological theory points to an important tradition of methodological individualism. The focus is placed on alternative models of scientific explanation, found in the works of contemporary anthropologists (Holy, Stuchlik), as well as methodological individualists from other disciplines (Boudon), whose conclusions are applicable to anthropology. Methodological individualism does have a significant place in anthropology. There are areas of anthropology that can draw heuristic benefit from epistemological approaches based on the principles of methodological individualism.

ON THE IRRELEVANCE OF METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM

So far, methodological individualism has been the cognitive paradigm that permeates economic thinking in the epistemic community, in economic policy, and holds a place within the wide public at large. On the other hand, the tide of criticism addressed towards traditional economic philosophy is on the rise. The gist of this study is to demonstrate the weakness and antinomic character of the individualistic paradigm and to suggest an alternative worldview – methodological holism.

The ‘Institutions-Individual’ Conceptual Nexus as a Basis of Alternative Economic Methodologies

This paper discusses issues of methodological basis of contemporary economic theory, from the perspective of rival research orientations and their conceptual sensitization to the role and impacts of institutional structures. In this regard, the paper presents methodological individualism, research support of economic orthodoxy, based on a consistent interpretation of all social phenomena as outcomes of individual choice. It is shown that even in its most rigid versions this approach has to take to a certain degree into account the social interactions that go beyond the individualist framework. The opposing research orientation, methodological holism, gives explanatory primacy to (different) social collective entities and structures, characteristics of which are autonomous in nature and essential for the explanation of the individual as an entity of a lower order, whose individual properties are not significant. Both approaches are subjected to reductionist tendencies - whether explanations of the socioeconomic reality are individual or culturally over-determined. Integrating institutions in consideration of socioeconomic reality has repercussions on the mentioned methodological dichotomy, given that in conceptual terms it has the potential to bridge the extremely individualistic or collectivist methodological positions. Awareness of the impact of institutions on the socioeconomic reality has produced distinctive methodological orientations. Institutional individualism considers institutions as exogenous mechanism whose explanation is at the service of shedding light on the behaviour of the individuals as the main actors of social dynamics, and in that sense this approach can be considered as a milder variant of methodological individualism. The institutionalist extension of methodological holism, methodological institutionalism, understands individual acting as a product of an integrated institutional framework, whose dynamics takes place independently of the individuals, according to its own regularities. Some kind of balance between the aforementioned orientations is offered by methodological systemism, which affirms the dual nature of the actors of social dynamics - as both product of units of a lower order, but also as entities with autonomous, emergent properties. The contextualisation of relations between institutions and individuals in accordance with a system perspective may be a suitable way, with more tuned reality, theoretical valuation and overcoming differences between opponent methodological traditions.

The Sacred Canopy

Peter L. Berger’s sociology of religion is one of the most studied and quoted in the contemporary social science of religions. Nevertheless, it is also one of the most discussed, notably because of the changes of position by the author with regard to his thought on the secularization of the modern world, and on the relationship between his theses of a sociological nature and his reflections on Protestant theology. The present article questions his global epistemological framework by placing that problematic within the framework of the criticisms which have been directed at ‘absolute functionalism,’ notably by the structuralists or moderate functionalists. By linking it with the prospect of going beyond the opposition between methodological holism and methodological individualism and between substantivism and functionalism, we propose a multidimensional approach to the religious, which seems to lead to a better understanding of the latter in its transformations and metamorphoses into modernity.

Methodological individualism as opposed to methodological holism. History, relevancy and the implications of the (insoluble?) debate on the explanatory capacity and scientific status of sociocultural anthropology

The paper is part of wider research into the status of explanation in the debate on the scientific status of anthropology – wherein one of the key assumptions is that there is a strong correlation between theoretical and methodological structures which would make them inseparable, and that explanation or explanatory potential, is the point of convergence which can be used to test for the possibility of separating theoretical and methodological structures in the first place. To test this idea, a line of debate between methodological holism and methodological individualism – one of the longest running and most complex debates in the social sciences and humanities – was considered. The historical background of the debate has been highlighted, and its relevancy and implications in the controversy about the explanatory capacity and scientific status of sociocultural anthropology.