Merton’s Uses of the European Sociological Tradition

When Merton came to intellectual maturity in the thirties, the American sociological enterprise was in a most unsatisfactory state. Robert K. Merton has written relatively little that deals directly with European sociological theories. "Social Structure and Anomie," perhaps Merton's most famous essay, reveals a somewhat different aspect of Merton's reliance upon the European tradition. The immediate impetus for its writing is surely to be found, as in the last case, in the circumstances and the social and cultural conditions of the thirties. Merton's indebtedness to at least two general traditions of European theorizing, those of the sociology of knowledge and those of functional analysis, is so well known that it hardly needs extended commentary. Merton seizes upon European theoretical ideas in order to refine and reformulate his empirical data through theoretical analysis and is led to new data, which in turn led him to ask questions that originated in the European theoretical tradition

Epistemology · Social science · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Philosophy