The Prismatic Model: Conceptualizing Transitional Societies

A distinguished authority on methodology in the social sciences has written: “We are using models, willingly or not, whenever we are trying to think systematically about anything at all.”² As used here, a model refers to any “structure of symbols and operating rules” which we think has a counterpart in the real world. A circle, for example, may be used as a model to characterize the shape of a bowl or a crown. Governments are often described in terms of a model of the family, the ruler being likened to a father, the people to children. In one sense, a model is simply an elaborated simile or paradigm.