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Robert K. Merton (RKM) was an important figure in the mid-nineteenth development of sociology in terms of social theory, methodology and several substantive areas key to understanding modern societies - the sociologies of science, media, professions and bureaucracy. This book reveals the different components of RKM's work and how each relates to the other.
List of contents
List of Figures and Tables; Chapter One Introduction: Merton's Self-Exemplifying Classical Sociological Contributions; Charles Crothers, Lorenzo Sabetta, and Lawrence Stern; Chapter Two Skeptical Faith, Left Politics, and the Making of Young Robert K. Merton; Peter Simonson, Chapter Three Theorist's Progress: Young Robert K. Merton, 1941-1949; Kenneth Fox, Chapter Four Taking a Seminar with Merton; Richard Swedberg, Chapter Five The Development of Mertonian Status-and-Role Theory; Charles Crothers, Chapter Six Theory as an Option or Theory as a Must? The Bearing of Methodological Choices on the Role of Sociological Theory; Antonio Fasanella and Lorenzo Sabetta, Chapter Seven "Interviews of a Special Type": Robert K. Merton and Codification of the Focused Interview; Raymond M. Lee, Chapter Eight Science as a Culture; Eric Malczewski, Chapter Nine "Providing Puzzles": Science as Norms and Values; Michel Dubois, Chapter Ten A Mertonian Breviary for Cultural Sociologists; Christian Fleck, Chapter Eleven The Unpublished Robert K Merton; Harriet Zuckerman, Author Biographies; Index
About the author
Charles Crothers is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. He taught previously at Universities of Auckland, Wellington, and Natal.
Lorenzo Sabetta is a postdoctoral researcher at Sapienza University of Rome and an adjunct professor of sociology at LUISS University.
Summary
Robert K. Merton (RKM) was an important figure in the mid-nineteenth development of sociology in terms of social theory, methodology and several substantive areas key to understanding modern societies – the sociologies of science, media, professions and bureaucracy. This book reveals the different components of RKM’s work and how each relates to the other.
