Analytical Sociology is a branch of sociology concerned with mechanism-based explanations of collective outcomes and their dynamics—e.g., segregation, inequality, and the diffusion of innovation. According to Analytical Sociology, a proper explanation must identify the social processes through which the collective outcomes to be explained are brought about. This typically requires explicit reference to the micro-level entities—individuals, families, firms, etc.—who are involved in the process, the activities they engage in, and the nature of the interdependencies that exist between them. The digital and computational revolution have proved to be of considerable importance for Analytical Sociology because it offers population-scale datasets with rich, high-dimensional information about individuals, their activities, interdependencies, and social environments, and computational tools needed for analysing such data.
