Can causality be opposed to explanation?

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Greetings from Toronto, where I gave some talks and had a great time with the archaeologists at the University of Toronto.

Actually, I don't particularly like epistemology.

I just read AmericanAnthropologist’s 2012 review article on archaeological publications in 2011 (Hauser 2012). I came away confused about authorMark Hauser’s epistemology. I can’t seem to translate his approach into my ownunderstanding of social science concepts of explanation and causality. Likemany archaeologists, Hauser seems reluctant to discuss these things clearly andexplicitly, leaving readers to puzzle them out from fragmentary and cryptic phrases.
I was particularly confused by two statements inHauser’s paper:
·       “addressing long-standing questions about agriculturewith new data require a shift fromcausality to explanations of process in specified contexts.” (p. 185)
·       “One major shift was a general move from the search for causes to explanation ofcultivation, domestication, and farming.” (p. 186).
I find this puzzling, because to me, explanation meansfinding the cause for something. So what does Hauser mean by a shift fromcausality to explanation? His phrasing suggests that causality is the old andbad way of looking at things, while explanation is a new and good approach.This statement might give a clue:
·       “interpretive narratives find their expressions insituated explanations—a grounding in the messy idiosyncrasies ofevidence—context—culture—history that run counter to more ambitiousinclinations to craft explanatory models of history at larger scales.” (p.184)
Leaving aside the confusing conjunction of four wordswith hyphens, this statement suggests that Hauser is advocating explanation ata small scale. But does he mean a smaller spatial scale (we should concentrateon explaining a particular event in a particular place, not a large-scalespatial process like an empire or world system)? Or does he mean a smalleranalytical scale (we should explain this particular household, and nothouseholds in general)? In my view, we need to explain things at a variety of spatialand analytical scales, and it doesn’t make much sense to prefer one level over another.It depends on the research question one is asking.
To me, talk of explanations at different scalessuggests the concepts of proximate and ultimate causality. These concepts werefirst articulated in biology by Ernst Mayr (Mayr1961). Proximate causes concern immediate factors such as ontogeny, andultimate causes produce evolutionary explanations. While new work in biologyhas complicated this dichotomy, the basic distinction remains important in thatfield (Laland et al. 2011). The proximate-ultimate distinction in causality isalso important in the social sciences:
·       “ultimate explanations are concerned with why abehavior exists, and proximate explanations are concerned with how it works.”(Scott-Phillips et al. 2011:38)
Some writers parallel the approach of Laland et al inbiology by advocating a more complex concept of social causation, but retainingthe basic insight of the proximate/ultimate distinction. John Gerring (2005, 2012), for example, talks about “causaldistance”: how far is the cause from the event it generates? Lieberson and Lynn(2002) use the phrases “underlyingconditions” and “precipitating conditions” for these concepts.
But I don’t think this is the kind of thing Hauser hasin mind, since he seems hostile to (or at least dismissive of) the concept ofcausality.
OK, let’s step back and look at what kinds ofexplanatory models are available in the social sciences (and, by extension, inarchaeology). I always return to Charles Tilly for this kind of thing. I’m nota very good abstract thinker, and Tilly clarifies many epistemological issuesin terms I can understand. According to Tilly, five explanatory strategies areavailable in the social and historical sciences. The following is myparaphrasing of: Tilly (2001:365) andTilly and Goodin (2006:12-13); see alsoTilly (2008). The text following *** aremy own comments.
1.    Skepticism.The world is too complex to explain. *** I think this would be the strongpostmodern position.2.    Law-seeking accounts. Social life is said to exhibit empirical regularitiesthat at their highest level take the form of laws; explanation then consists ofsubsuming particular cases under broadly validated empirical generalizations oreven universal laws. *** This  is “logical positivism,” a framework associatedwith Carl Hempel. Binford and the new archaeologists promoted this approach toexplanation, EVEN THOUGH IT HAD ALREADY BEEN DISCREDITED FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE BYPHILOSOPHERS OF SCIENCE! This was one of the biggest mistakes of Binford andthe new archaeology, and it set archaeological epistemology back for decades!3.    Propensity accounts. Social units are seen as self-directing, whether driven by emotions,motives, interests, rational choices, genes, or something else. Explanationthen consists of reconstructing the state of the social unit—for example, anindividual’s beliefs at a given point in time and space—and plausibly relatingits actions to that state.  *** Mostexamples of propensity accounts follow methodological individualism, or thestandard model in economics that says social phenomenon can be explained by thegoals, decisions, and behavior of individuals. But other individual-levelapproaches, such as phenomenology, probably fit here as well.4.    Systemic explanations. Particular features of social life are explained byspecifying their connections with putative larger entities: societies,cultures, mentalities, capitalist systems, and the like. Explanation thenconsists of locating elements within systems. Functional explanation is asubcategory of systemic explanations. *** This includes both culturalexplanations and explanations invoking large structural features such as socialclasses or world systems.5.    Mechanism-based accounts. This approach claims that explanation consists ofidentifying in particular social phenomena reliable causal mechanisms andprocesses of general scope. Causal mechanisms are events that alter relationsamong some set of elements. Processes are frequent (but not universal)combinations and sequences of causal mechanisms. *** This is the way I thinkabout explanation and causality. To explain an event is to identify themechanisms responsible for bringing about that event. There is a BIG literatureoutside of anthropology on causal mechanisms. Some good starting points are:  (Bunge 2004),(Hedström and Ylikoski 2010), (Sampson 2011), and various works by Tilly, e.g.(Tilly 2008). Or check out Daniel Little’s blog, “Understanding Society” and search it for mechanisms.
When I started thinking about Hauser’s puzzlingstatements on causality and explanation, I thought Tilly’s scheme of the five explanatoryapproaches would clarify the situation, but now I’m not so sure. I still can’tfigure out what Hauser’s explanatory position is, or how he can oppose theterms causality and explanation. I have almost given up trying to understandarchaeological writing in this genre, that might be called “postmodern-light.”  I guess I will just have to admit defeat here.
My broader point is that archaeologists need todiscuss epistemology more frequently, more explicitly, and more in tune withthe relevant social science literature. Our own field has a rather poor trackrecord in this area, and cultural anthropology is not much better. If thisstuff is new to you, check out Tilly or Bunge or some of the other sourcesbelow. When I find myself in a conceptual difficulty, I often ask myself, “whatwould Tilly say about this?” Maybe you should ask that question too.

Bunge, Mario2004    HowDoes It Work?: The Search for Explanatory Mechanisms. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34(2):182-210.
Gerring, John2005    Causation:A Unified Framework for the Social Sciences. Journal of Theoretical Politics 17:163-198.
2012    Social Science Methodology: A UnifiedFramework. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, New York.
Hauser, Mark W.2012    TheYear in Review, Archaeololgy: Messy Data, Ordered Questions. American Anthroologist 114(2):184-195.
Hedström, Peter and Petri Ylikoski2010    CausalMechanisms in the Social Sciences. AnnualReview of Sociology 36:49-67.
Laland, Kevin N., Kim Sterelny, JohnOdling-Smee, William Hoppitt, and Tobias Uller2011    Causeand Effect in Biology Revisited: Is Mayr's Proximate-Ultimate Dichotomy StillUseful? Science 334:1512-1515.
Lieberson, Stanley and Freda B. Lynn2002    Barkingup the Wrong Branch: Scientific Alternatives to the Current Model ofSociological Science. Annual Review ofSociology 28:1-19.
Mayr, Ernst1961    Causeand Effect in Biology. Science134:1501-1506.
Sampson, Robert J.2011    NeighborhoodEffects, Causal Mechanisms and the Social Structure of the City. In AnalyticalSociology and Social Mechanisms, edited by Pierre Demeulenaere, pp.227-249. Cambridge Universitiy Press, New York.
Scott-Phillips, Thomas C., Thomas E.Dickins, and Stuart A. West2011    EvolutionaryTheory and the Ultimate–Proximate Distinction in the Human Behavioral Sciences.Perspectives on Psychological Science6(1):38-47.
Tilly, Charles2001    RelationalOrigins of Inequality. AnthropologicalTheory 1(3):355-372.
2008    Explaining Social Processes. ParadigmPublishers, Boulder, CO.
Tilly, Charles and Robert E. Goodin2006    ItDepends. In Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, edited by RobertE. Goodin and Charles Tilly, pp. 3-32. Oxford University Press, New York.