Abstract
Since World War II methods have advanced very quickly in sociology and social science, while this has not been the case with theory. In this article I suggest that one way of beginning to close the gap between the two is to focus on theorizing rather than on theory. The place where theorizing can be used in the most effective way, I suggest, is in the context of discovery. What needs to be discussed are especially ways for how to develop theory before hypotheses are formulated and tested. To be successful in this, we need to assign an independent place to theorizing and also to develop some basic rules for how to theorize. An attempt is made to formulate such rules; it is also argued that theorizing can only be successful if it is done in close unison with observation in what is called a prestudy. Theorizing has turned into a skill when it is iterative, draws on intuitive ways of thinking, and goes beyond the basic rules for theorizing.
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Notes
The quote comes from one of Peirce’s unpublished manuscripts at the Houghton Library, Harvard University (MS 692; Brent 1993, p. 72).
For encouragement, help, and suggestions I first of all would like to thank Mabel Berezin. I am also grateful to two anonymous reviewers for Theory and Society and to Margareta Bertilsson, Angie Boyce, Mikael Carleheden, Nicolas Eilbaum, Laura Ford, Omar Lizardo, Darcy Pan, Roland Paulsen, Jennifer Platt, Eric Schwartz, and Hans Zetterberg. I have learned a lot from the students who have participated in my classes in theorizing at Cornell University, Copenhagen University, and Stockholm University. The key ideas in my approach to theorizing were first presented in 2009 and 2010 in Perspectives, the newsletter of the Theory Section at the American Sociological Association (Swedberg 2009a, 2010). For a fuller version of how I view theorizing, see my forthcoming book Discovery: Learning the Art of Theorizing in the Social Sciences (Princeton University Press).
As a sign of how little attention has been paid to theorizing, compared to theory, it can be mentioned that while references to “theory” were made 120,502 times in sociological journals from the 1890 s to 2010, according to JSTOR, the equivalent number for “theorizing” and “theorize” is 16,087 (based on a search in JSTOR in April 2011). But even if there does not exist a distinct body of literature on theorizing, there do exist some writings that are very suggestive and helpful in this context. Among these I especially recommend the works by the following authors (all of whom are referred to in this article): Karl Weick, C. Wright Mills, Everett C. Hughes, Jim March, Andrew Abbott, and Howard Becker. There also exist a small number of very suggestive social scientists who write in what can be called a theorizing style, such as Thomas Schelling and Albert O. Hirschman. Philosopher Herbert Dreyfus has also much interesting to say on the topic of theorizing.
It should be mentioned at this point that there is an important difference between producing social science studies of theoretical creativity and developing rules for how an individual can theorize in a creative way. This difference is not clear from the statements of Reichenbach and Popper but is crucial to their argument.
The quote comes from Weber 1946, p. 136.
For an example of Zetterberg’s imaginative take on social science, see his recent muti-volume work The Many-Splendored Society (2009).
The classical foothold of theory-driven research in the social sciences can be found in mainstream economics. During the last few years, however, an empirical type of economics has begun to emerge. As an example of this, see, e.g., the following comment by Paul Krugman: “The profession has shifted towards nitty-gritty empirical investigation using lots of data. Unless you have a brand-new insight, the best you can do is to find evidence that hasn’t been exploited. Maybe that will suggest new theoretical insights, but the starting point is the data” (Busso 2010, p. 132; emphasis added).
A pilot study can be described as a small-scale try-out, executed before the main study. Its general task is to ensure that the research design is sound and to make changes in it before it is too late. It is also common that questions in a questionnaire are tried out in advance, again so they can be changed before the main study is carried out. This means that what primarily distinguishes a prestudy from a pilot study is that while a prestudy is focused on the context of discovery, a pilot study is not. Theorizing has no more of a place in a research design that includes a pilot study than it does in one that does not. The literature on pilot studies is meager, perhaps because they tend not to be reported (e.g., van Teijlingen and Hundley 2001). I am grateful to Jennifer Platt for her thoughts on the topic of pilot studies.
Is not old-fashioned “theory” smuggled in through the back door, so to speak, by referring in this manner to certain core ideas in social science? My answer is “no”; there is still a need for theorizing to complement theory. While acknowledging that more discussion deserves to be devoted to this question than is done in this article, I suggest that theorizing can either involve the core ideas of social science or one can accept these ideas as valid when engaging in research. Since the latter case is clearly the most common, this article is devoted to it. When theorizing in contrast is directed at the core ideas in social science, it is mainly done without reference to empirical facts, a bit like theorizing is traditionally done in philosophy. For a discussion of some of the theoretical presuppositions of social science, see, e.g., Sociology as a Craft: Epistemological Preliminaries by Bourdieu et al. (1991).
Kierkegaard writes, for example, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript: “It is impossible to exist without passion, unless existing means just any sort of so-called existence. For this reason every Greek thinker was essentially a passionate thinker. I have often wondered how one might bring a man to passion. So I have thought I might seat him on a horse and frighten the horse into a wild gallop, or still better, in order to bring out the passion properly, I might take a man who wants to go somewhere as quickly as possible (and so was already in a sort of passion) and seat him on a horse that can barely walk” (Kierkegaard [1846] 1941, p. 276).
The quote comes from Doyle [1891] 2001, p. 14.
Heidegger describes theorizing in the following way: “Thus it follows that theōrein is thean horan, to look attentively on the outward appearance wherein what presences becomes visible and, through such sight—seeing—to linger with it” (Heidegger 1977, p. 163). According to Lawrence Scaff, the Greek word theōrein is “a compound of thea, the view or look of something; horan, to see a thing attentively; and the name theoros, the attentive observer or the emissary sent to observe foreign practices and to ‘theorize’ about them—that is, to construct rational explanations of the strange and unexpected” (Scaff 2011, p. 11). The theorizer, in short, goes away to study and observe, and then thinks about it and explains it. For an attempt at a sociology of knowledge explanation of the Greek version of theorizing, see Sandywell (2000).
In a well-known letter to Lady Welby from December 23, 1908, Peirce wrote, “I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by anything else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former” (Peirce 1963, p. 29).
While the purpose of having concepts, typologies, explanations, and so on in the context of discovery or prestudy is essentially heuristic, in the context of justification or the main study they often need to be justified on empirical grounds.
Montesquieu writes in The Spirit of the Laws, “I have had new ideas; new words have had to be found or new meanings given to old ones” (Montesquieu [1748] 1989, p. xi).
See note 3. While JSTOR allows you to track whether a certain word appears in the title, the abstract, or the text of an article, it only covers certain journals and not books at all. I have been unable to find a full book on theorizing in sociology or any other social science. What literature there does exist typically focuses on a special and very cognitive version of theorizing, either bypassing the initial phase of empirical fact gathering or being primarily interested in constructing hypotheses and how these can be falsified.
Oxford English Dictionary Second edition, 1989; online version November 2010. http://www.oed.com:80/Entry/200430; accessed on February 13, 2011.
Peirce 1998, p. 335. The term “personalism” was popularized by Emanuel Mounier during the interwar period in France and became part of the Catholic Worker movement. For the manifesto of the personalist movement, in which the dignity and responsibility of the individual person is at the center, see, e.g., Mounier’s Be Not Afraid: Studies in Personalist Sociology (Mounier 1954).
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Swedberg, R. Theorizing in sociology and social science: turning to the context of discovery. Theor Soc 41, 1–40 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-011-9161-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-011-9161-5