More than a Set of Principles: Analytical Sociology at Work

The most distinctive aspect of AS is the virtuous and progressive relation between theoretical elements and methodological instruments, knowing that the natural environment to develop this relation is the field of empirical research. The uniqueness of AS in the current sociological scenario consists precisely in the combination of principles: use clear and precise concepts, avoiding any linguistic obscurity (P1); describe facts using empirical information and suitable technical tools (P2); formulate a generative model to explain the social outcome described (P3); provide a description of the micro-level entities (P4a) and activities (P4b) at work, and of the structural interdependencies (P4c) in which they operate; translate the generative model into an agent-based computational model (P5); compare the computational model’s outcomes with the empirical description of facts (P6); inject empirical experimental data into the agent-based computational model (P7).