Individualism in Social Science

Professor Bhargava carefully disentangles the different forms of methodological individualism, and then identifies the key assumption of its most plausible version: that beliefs are attitudes individuated entirely in terms of what lies within the individual mind. He argues that once this assumption is challenged it is possible to rehabilitate a non-individualist methodology which permits a contextual study of beliefs and actions, and even a study of social context relatively independent of the beliefs and actions of individuals.