Varieties of ‘rationality’ and the question of their continued theoretical relevance

Abstract

The notion of ‘rationality’ has always been one of the more controversial social-scientific ideas. Today there exist many conceptual varieties of rationality which are often less than clearly distinguished and the precise intellectual import of which likewise tends to be opaque. In this article I draw on classical and contemporary examples from sociology, political science and economics in the effort to clarify the many meanings of the notion and to demonstrate that it is more useful as well as more legitimate for explanatory purposes than some canonical critiques suggest. As the behavioral economics revolution has made clear, many varieties of rationality are both empirically and theoretically limited or outright falsified. However, although it is now certain that rationality cannot be the singular basis of a universal, general theory of social behavior, I argue it can and should form one important part of a larger conceptual toolbox upon which a social theorist can draw when devising tractable theoretical explanations of social phenomena.