System, lifeworld and gender: Associational versus counterfactual thinking

The paper raises some problems caused by 'associational thinking' in social science by reference to examples from the literature on economic organisat ion and gender. Associational thinking focuses on common associations betwe en social phenomena, such as the gendering of organisations, without asking counterfactual questions about the status of these relationships, for exam ple, whether organisations are unavoidably gendered or only contingently so . II is argued these questions have been inadequately resolved in the liter ature, as a consequence of a reluctance to engage in counterfactual reasoni ng and abstraction, and a neglect of the extent to which systems - as oppos ed to the lifeworld - are 'identity-blind' These questions are pursued thro ugh discussions of whether markets and bureaucracies are inherently gendere d. It is argued further that associational thinking has also clouded the no rmative judgements implicit in the critiques of gendered organisations.