HOLISM VERSUS INDIVIDUALISM IN SOCIAL RESEARCH: A DEBATE

BY DWIGHT B. PEREZ

Ph.D. in Development Studies Candidate (2021)

De La Salle University-Manila

This study was anchored on the theory of Structural-Functionalism. The structural-

functional paradigm- credited largely to August Comte, Emile Durkheim, and Talcott-Parsons–

which adopts a macro (broad focus on structures that shape society as whole view of society as a

complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. Humans are

believed to be able to thrive under these conditions.

The focus is on society as an entity that can flourish, and make things like unity,

cohesiveness, stability, and order fundamental necessities for social existence. Chaos, instability,

and alienation disrupt society’s functioning and are considered undesirable (Durkheim, 1968).

Hempel’s methodology (Hempel, 1968, 1973) is based on the concept of empirical

science which is very applicable particularly in the physical sciences. According to this view:

“… all explanation is achieved ultimately by reference to causal or correlation antecedents.

In the case of the fields of psychology and the social and historical disciplines according to some,

even in biology – the establishment of causal or correlation connections, while desirable and

important, is not sufficient. Proper understanding of the phenomena studied in these fields is held

to require other types of explanation (Hempel, 1973: p. 179).”

As such, according to Hempel, one of the explanatory methods that have been

developed for this aim is that of functional analysis. This method of analysis has somewhat found
some problems in the area of social science or management because whereas in physics,

experimentation can be made in a laboratory, it is difficult to isolate variables in the social sciences

and form an experiment. Thus, the school of thought may not be practical to use in the social

sciences.

May Brodbeck’s article on “Methodological individualisms: Definition and

Reduction”, (Brobbeck, 1968: pp. 280-304) somewhat supported Hempel’s approach of scientific

analysis as applied to sociological problems. As Brodbeck would argue that to compare Indians

are red-skinned with Indians are disappearing. She opined that in the former, each and every Indian

is said to be red-skinned, while in the latter Indians as a group are said to be disappearing, that is,

diminishing in population. As such, according to Brodbeck, when a property is attributed to a

group collectively, so that the group itself is logically the subject of the proposition, rather than

distributively, in which case, each and every member of the group could logically be the subject

of the proposition, then we have a group property. Clearly, there is no issue about the occurrence

of group properties.

Thus, Brodbeck had a point here in terms of defining and differentiating individual

properties from group properties. On the other hand, Emile Durkheim (1968: pp. 245-254) contend

that essentially individuals were and are born with existing social structures which influence the

individual.

As Durkheim argued:

“But in reality there is in every society a certain group of

phenomena which may be differentiated from those studied by the
other natural sciences. When I fulfill my obligations as brother,
husband, or citizen, when I execute my contracts, I perform duties
which are defined, externally to myself and my acts, in law and in
custom. Even if they conform to my own sentiments and I feel their
 reality subjectively, such reality is still objective, for I did not create
them; merely inherited them through my education. How many
times it happens, moreover, that we are ignorant of the details of the
obligations incumbent upon us, and that in order to acquaint
ourselves with them we must consult the law and its authorized
interpreters! Similarly, the church member finds the beliefs and
practices of his religious life ready-made a birth; their existence
prior to his own implies their existence outside of himself
(Durkheim, 1968: p. 245).”
As such, Durkheim emphasized the existence of social facts and properties that already

existed as a social structure that affected the behavior of individuals. Also, these structures were

outside or external to the individual.

In another school of thought, Ernest Gellner (1968: pp. 254-269) as written in his

essay entitled, Holism versus Individualism”, argued that certain situations encourage disposition

or balance between holism and individualism. As Gellner put it:

“To the individualist, his own position appears as true that it

barely needs the confirmation of actually carried out eliminations,
whilst, he gleefully points out that in practice the holist can and does
only approach his institutions, etc., through what concrete people
can do, which seems to the individualists a practical demonstration
and implicit confession of the absurdity of holism. By contrast (and
with neat symmetry) the holist sees in the fact that the individualist
continues to talk in holist terms a practical demonstration of the
unworkability of individualism, and he certainly not consider the
fact that he can only approach groups and individuals to be
something which he had implicitly denied and which could count
against him. Both sides find comfort in the actual practices of the
opponent (Gellner, 1968: p. 256).”
What is at issue here is the ontological status of the entities referred to by the holistic

terms. As the notion of ontological status is not clear as it might be in the debate between holism

versus individualism, Gellner pointed to something which is important to a reductionist and which

to him is an index of existence --- namely, causation.

Gellner further writes:

 “He does not wish to allow the Whole could ever be a
cause and to insist that explanations which make it appear that it is
can be translated into others. That which is a mere construct cannot
causally effect that which “really exists”; this is, I suspect, the
feeling of the individualist, the reductionist. This is in conjunction
with the truism that a whole is made up of its parts, that nothing can
happen to a whole without something happening to either some at
least of its parts or their mutual relations (Gellner, 1968: p. 256).”
Thus, the holistic counter-argument works in reverse: if something (a) is a causal

factor (b) cannot be reduced, then in some sense it really and independently exists.

Thus, Gellner called for a balance between holism and individualism. He argued that

not all things can be reduced to individualistic terms. On the other hand, not all things can be

explained in social or group terms.

In another perspective, Watkins (1968) does not exactly agree with Gellner and even

with Hempel. As he argued:

“I am not an advocate of mechanism but I have mentioned it

because I am an advocate of an analogous principle in social science,
the principle of methodological individualism. According to this
principle, the ultimate constituents of the social world are individual
people who act more or less appropriately in the light of their
dispositions and understanding of their situation. Every complex
social situation, institution, or event is the result of a particular
configuration of individuals, their dispositions, situations, beliefs,
and physical resources, and environment. There may be unfinished
or half-way explanations of such large-scale phenomena until we
have deduced an account of their statements about the dispositions,
beliefs, resources, and inter-relations of individuals. And just as
mechanism is contrasted with the organicist idea of physical fields,
so methodological individualism is contrasted with sociological
holism or organicism (Watkins, 1968: pp. 270-271).”
From holism’s point of view, social systems constitute ‘wholes’ in the sense that some of

the large-scale behavior is governed by macro-laws which are in essence sociological in the sense

they were ‘sui generis’ and not to be explained as just regularities or tendencies resulting from the
interaction of individual behaviors. The behavior of individuals according to sociological holism

can be explained at least partly in terms of such laws. An example of this sociological factor was

the long-term cyclical wave in economic life which was supposed to be self-propelling,

uncontrollable, and unexplainable in terms of human activity.

Watkins argued that social tendencies are the product of human characteristics, activities,

and situations, of people’s ignorance and laziness as well as their knowledge and ambition. He

also mentioned that there are two areas where methodological individualism does not work. The

first is a probability situation where accidental and unpredictable irregularities in human behavior

have a fairly regular and predictable result. The second kind of social phenomenon to which

methodological individualism is inapplicable is where some kind of physical connection between

people’s nervous systems short-circuits their intelligent control and causes automatic, and perhaps

in some sense appropriate bodily responses (Watkins, 1968).