ISS 320 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Robert K. Merton, Abstract And Concrete, Verstehen
17 Jul 2019
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
" we seek to understand how people attribute meaning to their actions" Econ imp but also status political groups: not just economy, multi-sided. Introduces the idea that sociology is more interpretive. Interpretive sociology (verstehen) systematic interpretive process in which an outside observer of a culture attempts to relate to it and understand others macro vs micro sociology. Early soc tended to be macro: comparing societies with one another, looking over long historical perids, most contemporary macro-sociology is scaled-back somewhat. Micro-later: studies face-to-face interactions, take weber"s concern with understanding meaningful action to interpersonal behaviors middle-range theory merton, robert aimed at integrating theory and empirical research de facto dominant approach to sociological theory construction. Middle-range theory starts with an empirical phenomenon (as opposed to a broad abstract entity like the social system) and abstracts from it to create general statements that can be verified by data.
