Sociological theory: A case of multiple personality disorder

Abstract

Theory, as a distinct specialty in sociology, is characterized by multiple, often isolated, and mostly dysfunctional personalities. Most of these personalities appear largely irrelevant to sociologists who do not define themselves as "theorists," and to students required to study them. Much good theory, however, is produced by scholars who do not label themselves as such or affiliate with the theory organs of the discipline (e.g., the ASA Theory Section, the ASA journal, Socio logical Theory, and theory annuals such as Current Perspectives in Social Theory.) The results are that our discipline fails to provide adequate theoretical training for students; cumulative theoretical development is impeded as we constantly reinvent an often four-sided wheel by a multitude of different names; and research is substantially atheoretical (albeit dressed up with the requisite "theoretical discussion"). At least five different personalities coexist, often uncomfortably and usually unprofitably, within the beast called "sociological theory": 1) the Talmudic exegesis of classics by long dead scholars and their minor revisions to fit more contemporary concerns (e.g., what did Marx, Weber, Parsons, etc. "really mean?" or, how can their ideas be stretched to relate to each other or something else?); 2) the paraphrasing ("showing the relevance") of contemporary, mostly European, in evitably pretentious, often incomprehensible and typically "anti-positivistic" metatheories (e.g., Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, Semiotics, Hermeneutics, Discourse and Critical Theory); 3) abstract epistemological and ontological na vel-gazing (e.g., the relationship between agency/micro and structure/macro, theory as discourse, text as reality, all the "how to theorize about" papers); 4) conceptual development and (sometimes) application; and closely related to this, 5) substantive, explanatory theory. I am sufficiently antediluvian to take seriously the word "science" in "social sciences." I accept as a matter of working faith (in practice, if not as a matter of TRUTH) the possibility that we can develop relatively general, abstract ex planations of why and how empirically observed regularities in the social world occur. Moreover, these explanations are amenable to some form of empirical testing, to some manner of deciding that a given set of ideas is more credible