Causation, statistics, and sociology

Three different understandings of causation, each importantly shaped by the work of statisticians, are examined from the point of view of their value to sociologists: causation as robust dependence, causation as consequential manipulation, and causation as generative process. The last is favoured as the basis for causal analysis in sociology. It allows the respective roles of statistics and theory to be clarified and is appropriate to sociology a s a largely non-experimental social science in which the concept of action is central.