Chapter 35 On Sociological Theories of the Middle Range [ 1949 ]

Like so many words that are bandied about, the word theory threatens to become meaningless. Because its referents are so diverse including everything from minor working hypotheses, through comprehensive but vague and unordered speculations, to axiomatic systems of thought use of the word often obscures rather than creates understanding. The term sociological theory refers to logically interconnected sets of propositions from which empirical uniformities can be derived. Throughout we focus on what I have called theories of the middle range: theories that lie between the minor but necessary working hypotheses that evolve in abundance during day-to-day research and the all-inclusive systematic efforts to develop a unified theory that will explain all the observed uniformities of social behavior, social organization, and social change. Middle-range theory is principally used in sociology to guide empirical inquiry. It is intermediate to general theories of social systems which are too remote from particular classes of social behavior, organization, and change to account for what is observed and to those detailed orderly descriptions of particulars that are not generalized at all. Middle-range theory involves abstractions, of course, but they are close enough to observed data to be incorporated in propositions that permit empirical testing. Middle-range theories deal with delimited aspects of social phenomena, as is indicated by their labels. One speaks of a theory of reference groups, of social mobility, or role-conflict and of the formation of social norms just as one speaks of a theory of prices, a germ theory of disease, or a kinetic theory of gases. The seminal ideas in such theories are characteristically simple: consider Gilbert on magnetism, Boyle on atmospheric pressure, or Darwin on the formation of coral atolls. Gilbert begins with the relatively simple idea that the earth may be conceived as a magnet; Boyle, with the simple idea that the atmosphere may be conceived as a "sea of air"; Darwin, with the idea that one can conceive of the atolls as upward