Predictions

Prediction is a notoriously complex task in the social sciences. In sociology, many are opposed to it. After all, social processes of all kinds are complex and emergent. This means that their outcomes are hard to forecast. Social processes are also complicated because of contingency. Because of this, some methodologists have argued that the only effective means of prospectively evaluating the outcomes of social processes is by employing simulations of different kinds. These constitute ideal type social processes, based on rules (simulated norms), which can run through many thousands of iterations and reveal interesting features of self-organising systems.

Although sociologists have tended to treat predictive studies with scepticism, arguing either that they are methodologically impossible, or that they are not the business of sociology, prediction is the Holy Grail of all of the social sciences. One reason that I am interested in Normalization Processes is because they seem to suggest some basic criteria for forecasting the outcome of implementation processes. I say forecasting rather than predicting because it seems to me a looser term. Absolute prediction is a problem in all sciences that involve the analysis of complex systems, partly because it is not clear what is to be predicted. The interesting problem to me is that many social processes are both self-organising and self-confounding. Sometimes organisation and confounding are simultaneous, and simultaneously include the same actors and actants. In this context, forecasting might be more possible. After all, some humans seem to be able to make correct judgements about the outcomes of social processes on the basis of limited information and without foreknowledge of disorganising factors, future contingencies, and external confounders.