How Do you Make Sociology out of Data? Robert K. Merton’s Course in Theorizing (Soc 213–214)

How do you use theory effectively in empirical research; and how can you learn to do this in a practical way? This is a crucial question to answer for any sociologist; and it is addressed in this article by presenting and analyzing the contents of a course on theorizing that Robert K. Merton taught during 1942–1954 at Columbia University. In teaching this class Merton was probably the first sociologist to single out the topic of theorizing as...