Theory as an Option or Theory as a Must? The Bearing of Methodological Choices on the Role of Sociological Theory

Highly valued, taught, and sought-after, the interplay of social theory and social research has virtually no critic, and this general agreement makes the oft-lamented lack of integration between the two somehow baffling. Robert Merton was one of the first and most prominent advocates of this marriage of empirical and epistemic relevance of sociological knowledge: this chapter starts by reviewing his original proposal, claiming that it has been more successful in convincing scholars of the inevitable empirical character of social theory than in showing how social research has a theoretical nature – to Merton, equally inevitable. Arguing that such interpenetration can be methodologically promoted or prevented, we thus analyze how non-theoretical (i.e., methodological and procedural) decisions affect the role of theorizing in social research, either minimizing or boosting this role. Two opposite modes (“theoretical self-binding” and “self-sufficient techniques”) of bringing theory and evidence together are illustrated, and the series of methodological alternatives they imply is discussed. Recognized here as largely Mertonian, the model of theoretical self-binding entails a pre-commitment to theorizing and the conviction that data-gathering techniques cannot run, or even begin to, without an appropriate subject-matter foundation. We conclude by discussing the significance of this approach, at once ill-timed and auspicious in the current end-of-theory climate.