Causal attributions make it possible to understand the social world, to engineer it, and to ascribe responsibilities. Research at the intersection of philosophy and psychology increasingly examines this double role of causal attribution as a cognitive and moral tool.

This paper draws on this work and applies their questions and conceptual distinctions to the historical epistemology of Switzerland’s poverty knowledge. The comparative analysis of publications from poor relief experts from the mid-19th and the early 20th century reveals that the repertoires of causes and the epistemological infrastructure have changed. The paper argues that how poor relief experts distinguished causes from background conditions has fundamentally changed. These findings are in line with historical and sociological research on changing interpretations of poverty, but the paper theorizes these changes as shifting horizons of normality. Drawing on work within the philosophy of causation, the paper develops the concept of normality horizon as the set of epistemological and ontological assumptions that allow actors to draw boundaries between causes and background conditions.

While mid-19th century experts distinguished between natural/unnatural, in the early 20th century, the distinction between individual/social was adopted. The change in the horizon of normality enabled experts in the early 20th century to separate the attribution of causes from the attribution of responsibility. Empirically, the paper contributes to the debate on the interplay of religious and economic thought in 19th-century poor relief reform, revealing a shared horizon of normality among different actors. Theoretically, it underscores the value of a renewed sociology of causal attribution informed by contemporary philosophy and psychology.