Constructing Social Theories

Constructing Social Theories

Constructing Social Theories presents to the reader a range of strategies for constructing theories, and in a clear, rigorous, and imaginative manner, illustrates how they can be applied. Arthur L. Stinchcombe argues that theories should not be invented in the abstract—or applied a priori to a problem—but should be dictated by the nature of the data to be explained. This work was awarded the Sorokin prize by the American Sociological Association as the book that made an outstanding contribution to the progress of sociology in 1970.

Constructing Social Theory

Constructing Social Theory discusses the nature of social theory and theoretical orientations. Organized by forty-three theoretical orientations in seven domains-exchange, power, adaptation/reinforcement, social bond, altruism, functionalism, and identity-the text includes a tutorial on how to identify an appropriate theoretical orientation and create a theory given a particular research question. Bell separates the theoretical orientation of causal logic from theory itself, illuminating the mechanisms of scientific revolutions where new theoretical orientations are created, and the procedures of normal science, in which theories are developed using the logic of existing theoretical orientations.

Constructing Social Theories