For Pragmatist Social Theory: Causal Depth and the Possibility of Solving Social Problems

Introduction

The primacy of middle-range theory sits awkwardly with the concept of causal depth (e.g. a distinction between proximate and root causes). Although Merton’s ([1949] 1968:39, 44) middle-range theory has been a remarkably productive “guide for empirical inquiry” that moves us beyond the “mock problem” of the conceptual antithesis of “the general” versus “the particular,” its influential rise has also created new problems. This is because middle-range theory practically undermines the “unique purview of sociology” that Bailey (1991:37) described as “the holistic analysis of society sui generis.” As middle-range theory became synonymous with scientific theory (e.g., see Boudon 1991), the basic problematics of sociology have narrowed to often disconnected or substantive (i.e., non-relational) foci (e.g., see Brint 2025). Consequently, root causes have become less and less visible as a relevant dimension of sociological theory.

While this tension between middle-range theories and causal depth presents a wide-reaching problem, it is especially acute among sociological pragmatists. This is because a defining characteristic of pragmatism is its orientation toward problem solving. As Gross (2009:366; see also Joas 1993) points out, pragmatists adopt an anthropological theory of knowledge wherein, “humans are problem solvers, and the function of thought is to guide action in the service of solving practical problems that arise in the course of life.” Because such an activist epistemology defines itself in opposition to reflectionist accounts of knowledge, an emphasis should naturally fall on orienting problem-solving research toward the root causes of problems. However, this question of causal depth divides pragmatist sociologists. While some pragmatist sociologists (Gross 2018; Reed 2011) have theorized aspects of depth in social causality, the current project of problem-solving sociology implicitly maintains a flat account. I argue that causal depth presents a structured methodological challenge for problem-solving sociology. In doing so, I present problem-solving sociology as a case study of how causal depth challenges middle-range theory. I show how problem-solving sociology can be productively extended by engaging with the concept of causal depth, and I argue that such an engagement can perhaps even enhance how we theorize causal depth.

Pragmatism as Problem Solving

What does it even mean to solve social problems? Prasad (2021) provides an answer to this question while diagnosing a problem among pragmatist sociologists. Pragmatist sociologists have struggled to orient themselves toward solving real-world problems and have instead focused on translating Dewey’s metatheory into sociology. For example, Emirbayer’s (1997) “relationalism” aims to replace substantialist ontologies with a processual ontology. Similarly, Gross’s (2009) “action-theoretical mechanisms” are a formal account of what counts as a good explanation for pragmatists. However, convincing as these arguments are, solving practical problems hasn’t been a downstream consequence of these metatheoretical interventions. According to Prasad (2021:8), “recent sociological pragmatists have not been able to show such downstream consequences, or even show much concern about them.” Hence, her advocacy of “pragmatism as problem solving.” We should be grappling with real-world problems because, for pragmatists, solving practical problems is the point of inquiry.

But what does it mean for sociologists to work toward solving practical problems? What precisely should they do?

According to Prasad (2021:11), problem-solving sociology “can be summarized as: turn normative questions into analytical questions, and aim for new knowledge about causation, particularly through a methodological strategy of comparisons.” By generating new causal knowledge about social problems, sociologists can help to track their resolution by gradually creating knowledge of how to make effective interventions.

For example, Luft (2015) does this by showing how genocidal violence was more likely to occur in Rwanda when individuals were in large groups than when they were alone. This is an example of “pragmatism as problem solving” because it reveals something causal. Such causal knowledge is useful for policy planners. It also opens next-step questions for future research (e.g., what factors associate large gatherings with genocidal violence?), thereby tracking a resolution to a fundamental problem that no single study could hope to resolve.

Causal Depth

Prasad’s argument can be sharpened by whetting it against a deeper account of social causality. That social causality exhibits a kind of depth is evident in the arguments of pragmatist sociologists (Gross 2009, 2018; Hirschman and Reed 2014; Knight and Reed 2019; Reed 2011). For example, although the mid-century reintroduction of pragmatism into sociology focused on micro phenomena, Gross (2018) shows how pragmatism has also been utilized across meso- and macro-levels of inquiry (see also Schwalbe’s 2019 “Upscaling Goffman” for a similar extension of a pragmatically informed micro framework in a more holistic direction). Approached in terms of social causality, the validation of such a spectrum suggests an important line of questions that broach some notion of depth. Do micro-, meso-, and macro-level accounts each bring unique social processes into focus? If so, what, if any, implications do these different levels of analysis have for how problem-solving sociologists should theorize causality?

Reed (2011) and his collaborators have theorized another notion of depth premised on the unique role of culture as a “forming cause” that shapes, colors, concretizes, characterizes, and, perhaps, underlies the “forcings causes” of agentic motivations and structuring mechanisms. “[F]ormation stories,” which “explain how social things come to be stable enough to force and be forced,” are not merely descriptive; their formative role is causal (Hirschman and Reed 2014:260). Because the relational nature of meaningful mechanisms violates the modularity of interventionist mechanisms, Knight and Reed (2019) raise doubts about the ability of a single theory of mechanisms to unify causality. Such a distinction between kinds of causes suggests another notion of depth and a second line of questions. What, if anything, does the cultural nature of social causality imply for how problem-solving sociologists should theorize social problems?

In what follows, I proceed by focusing on a specific conceptualization of causal depth, which can be summarized as a distinction between proximate and root causes. Doing so raises a methodological problem about how to orient problem-solving research toward root causes. In the last substantive section of this essay, I suggest a specific qualification to the project of problem-solving sociology that returns to the two lines of questions just raised. In brief, I advocate for a global genre of theory that can relationally situate micro- and meso-theories within a broader macro context. In doing so, such a global genre brings root causes into focus, thereby providing a distinct and complementary research strategy to middle-range theory, which tends to focus on proximate causes. I also argue that the cultural nature of social causality should push problem-solving sociologists past causal mapping to include intervention strategies that recognize the important role that “communicative knowledge” (see Dewey 1916, 1938a) has in resolving social problems.

Causal depth is not specific to sociology but is a mature concept found across the sciences studying complex phenomena. For example, biologists such as Mayr (1961:1502–1503) have argued that we need to distinguish the underlying cause of evolutionary biology (which is relatively stable) from the proximate cause of seasonal weather (which is highly variable) to explain why a warbler’s migration doesn’t begin like clockwork on the 25th of August each year.

Within sociology, Lieberson and Silverman (1965) argued that understanding the occurrence of race riots entails an analysis of precipitants (e.g., instances of police brutality) as well as underlying conditions (e.g., unresponsive municipal governments). As Link and Phelan (1995; see also Clouston and Link 2021) have observed, it is because sociologists investigate dynamic systems that we can distinguish “proximate” from “fundamental causes.” Of course, epidemiologists should explain the role of individual risk factors like diet and exercise, but not myopically. The point is to move through such proximate causes to identify more fundamental social causes, like the role socioeconomic status, race, or gender play in differentially placing people at “risk of risks.”

The concept of causal depth is especially strong at the intersection of history and the social sciences. For example, historians generally recognize that the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the spark that ignited the First World War. However, scholarly debate centers on the deeper causes that transformed Europe into a powder keg susceptible to relatively minor sparks. According to one influential argument (see Kaiser 1983), a deep cause of the Great War was the post-1897 decision by Imperial Germany to pursue an aggressive foreign policy to deal with its domestic threats of socialism and democracy. Similarly, political scientists, historians, and sociologists have explored the deep role that Germany’s overseas colonialism played in the emergence of Nazism as a genocidal political project (see Steinmetz 2007:10–11).

All these examples highlight the role of context by distinguishing a kind of depth within causality, which is rooted in different historical processes. However, the point is not that proximate causes are temporally close to the action while root causes are temporally remote. Evolutionary biology, racist municipal governments, socioeconomic status, imperial policies, and colonial experiences are not merely discrete causal processes that happened in the past. These deep causal forces can be as much a part of the here-and-now as proximate causes.

In the context of sociology, such a depth can be grasped readily in terms of the process of institutionalization. As values, practices, and relational social structures become institutionalized or as situations become characterized by what Bourdieu ([1972] 1977) called “doxa,” they settle into a background that, although transmutable, is more or less obdurate and assumes the force of something like social gravity.

In the next section, I argue that such institutional frameworks have consequences for the meaning and possibility of problem-solving sociology insofar as they influence the articulation and prioritization of causal knowledge.

A Methodological Problem

In order to clearly isolate the methodological problem that causal depth presents for problem-solving sociology, it is useful to briefly highlight something that problem-solving sociology gets right. Doing so avoids some confusion regarding the actual target of my critique. It also heads off simplistic conflations of orienting research toward root causes with strong reductionist assumptions.

The project of problem-solving sociology suggests that sociologists can contribute to solving social problems by generating new causal knowledge. Prasad’s (2021:10) argument is couched in terms of meliorism. As she explains, we do not need to solve fundamental problems (i.e., problems that have never been solved) to create traction toward their resolution. Even if each individual study falls short of solving a fundamental problem, when we generate new causal knowledge about it, we establish an empirical research agenda that tracks the problem and builds toward a comprehensive resolution. Concrete steps furnish new research questions and subsequent concrete steps.

This strikes me as half true. The important pragmatic virtue of meliorism (e.g., see Hildebrand 2013) is not my target. The expectation should not be to resolve deeply ingrained social problems by finding the definitive theory of a problem, but we should instead expect that social progress will proceed piecemeal and along multiple paths, if at all. Like other currents within the broader movement of postpositivism—which abandoned the positivist assumption that the social world is governed by invariant laws (see Wilson and Mayrl 2024 for a summary of the shift from positivism to postpositivism)—pragmatists recognize that social scientists cannot offer recipes or guarantees. Instead, social scientists must embrace the uncertainty of the iterative, trial-and-error process, which is more or less characteristic of any applied science.

One reason for this is that postpositivist theories of causality are more complex than positivist theories. Whereas the positivist search for laws implies single and definitive theories of phenomena, postpositivist approaches are better described in terms of what Steinmetz (1998:173) has called “conjunctural causality.” Events are caused by constellations of mechanisms and contingently develop. Because social causality is non-linear, it raises complex questions of feedback loops, unintended consequences, and emergent constraints. This is why meliorism makes sense. Although the project of problem-solving sociology correctly embraces meliorism, it undertheorizes the nature of social causality that grounds this pragmatic virtue and, consequently, its methodological implications.

The important question is, does all the causal knowledge relevant to a social problem necessarily track its resolution? If this assumption can be shown to be dubious—and I think it can be—then it raises an important methodological question for sociological theorists: which kind of new causal knowledge should we prioritize generating?

As we saw, Prasad (2021) cites a finding in Luft’s (2015) study of the Rwandan genocide as an exemplar of problem-solving sociology. Although social psychologists have long known that individuals are more likely to take extreme actions when they are in groups, Luft shows that this also applies to the extreme action of genocidal violence. According to Prasad, this new causal knowledge is useful for both policy-makers and future researchers. While policy planners can potentially use this knowledge to impede large gatherings when genocidal violence is imminent, future researchers can investigate which factors associate large gatherings with genocidal violence. Of course, this single study has not solved the problem of genocide. No meliorist would have such an expectation. But by revealing something causal, it tracks the problem and provides concrete next steps.

But does this unsurprising finding really track a resolution to the problem of genocide? Introducing an understanding of causal depth—like the distinction between “proximate” and “fundamental causes” (Link and Phelan 1995; see also Clouston and Link 2021) or the recognition of “broader conditions” which “are necessary for narrower conditions to operate” (Lieberson and Lynn 2002:12)—considerably complicates this argument.

Surely the role of large gatherings is merely a proximate cause of genocidal violence. Stadiums of people do not regularly erupt into genocidal violence. Large gatherings only become a proximate cause of genocidal violence when a situation is already on the precipice of such a possibility. Does such a proximate cause track a resolution? Does it bring us any closer to understanding what concrete steps can be taken that address the root causes of the problem (e.g., ethnic nationalism), which have deeply contributed to the creation and maintenance of such a genocidal situation in the first place?

It is unclear how this particular piece of new causal knowledge could possibly track a resolution to the fundamental problem of genocide, which is not to say it is without merit. We should resist the imposition of a false dichotomy that categorically pits the usefulness of proximate causes against root causes. A well-timed curfew or the imposition of martial law could mean the difference between mass violence and relative calm. That would be consequential, useful, and important. But the relevant question here is, does this specific tactic indicate a more comprehensive strategy? Does a curfew help us understand what can be done to address why tensions have reached a boiling point and what could be done to fundamentally change this dynamic, or is it merely a last-ditch ploy to temporarily vent pressure and buy time?

This basic distinction between kinds of causes suggests that the meaning or possibility of a problem-solving sociology needs an argument—instead of an assumption—about how the generation of new causal knowledge can spiral toward the generative roots of a social problem. The failure to address this connection risks conflating meliorating fundamental problems with accommodating them (e.g., see McMahon and Allen-Meares 1992; Corley and Young 2018).

On the other hand, there is a good argument for why we shouldn’t expect that all new causal knowledge relevant to a social problem tracks its resolution. The basic problem with the implicitly flat view of causality on offer is that, while causality is conjunctural instead of discrete, it is also practically infinite and, therefore, does not add up to a complete picture or automatically track a resolution. Because a social problem is a moving target and can develop in qualitatively new directions, we cannot even say that identifying causes that do not track resolutions brings us closer, through a process of elimination, to generating knowledge of those that do. In brief, it is possible to stay respectfully busy generating new causal knowledge that does not track resolutions to social problems, which could continue unabated or even balloon in dimension or scale.

If it cannot be assumed that all new causal knowledge tracks a resolution to fundamental problems—if this is not something automatic—then a strategy is needed for addressing this. Such a metatheoretical problem confronts what it even means to solve social problems (i.e., how it is possible). Addressing it requires a method for orienting problem-solving research toward root causes. And so, the question becomes, how can we methodologically incorporate causal depth into the project of problem-solving sociology?

Pragmatist Social Theory

The notion of causal depth reviewed in this essay is not new to sociology, but methodologically integrating such an analysis as a routine part of postpositivist social science continues to present a challenge. My primary goal has been to draw attention to this general problem. A robust account of how to resolve it is beyond the scope of this intervention, and it is even possible that definitive accounts are simply incompatible with postpositivism (e.g., see Wilson and Mayrl 2024:11). For these reasons, I limit my discussion to two broad points that I think offer a productive way forward for a plurality of possible interventions. They concern a general obstacle in the way of integration and a qualification specific to the project of problem-solving sociology. Together, they might be summarized as an advocacy for a pragmatist recuperation of social theory.

Conclusion

The project of problem-solving sociology captures the spirit of postpositivism well, but it also conceals a vestigially positivist assumption about causality that is impractical. Viewing the imperative to generate new causal knowledge in terms of causal depth calls into question an implicit assumption of finite causality. The basic tenets of postpositivism—open-ended development, contingency, conjunctural causality—all imply that causality is practically infinite. Because we cannot simply assume that all new causal knowledge necessarily tracks resolutions to social problems, we need some method for orienting problem-solving research toward root causes. Although there could be multiple ways to incorporate causal depth into sociological theory, doing so will mean learning to approach problematics more systematically. It will also mean recuperating a general kind of social theory that can bring root causes into focus, thereby providing a counterbalance to middle-range theory. While this is compatible with an instrumental framework, I have argued for a pragmatist recuperation of social theory that also extends the important challenge of causal depth to include the role of reflexive knowledge and an engagement with public sociology.