Full Title
PARADIGMI
Publisher
FrancoAngeli
ISSN
1120-3404 (Printed Journal)
2035-357X (Online Journal)
Journal Issue Number
1
Journal Issue Designation
1
Journal Issue Date
2011
Full Title
Causal Webs in Epidemiology
By (author)
First Page
67
Last Page
97
Language of text
English
Publication Date
2011/04
Copyright
2011 FrancoAngeli srl
Introduction or preface
The notion of "causal web" emerged in the epidemiological literature in the early Sixties and had to wait until the Nineties for a thorough critical appraisal. Famously, Nancy Krieger argued that such a notion isn't helpful unless we specify what kind of spiders create the web. This means, according to Krieger, (i) that the role of the spiders is to provide an explanation of the yarns of the web and (ii) that the sought spiders have to be biological and social. This paper contributes to the development of the notion of causal web, elaborating on the two following points: (i) to catch the spiders we need multi-fold evidence - specifically, mechanistic and difference-making - and (ii) for the eco-social approach to be explanatory, the web has to be mechanistic in a sense to be specified.