Chapter 4

Formal Theory Construction: Developing

Sociological Theory as Part of a Scientific
Enterprise

As shown in the last two chapters, from the beginning several different approaches
have been adopted to establish sociology as a scientific discipline. Should sociology
be considered a science? If yes, what justifies this claim? And how does the knowledge
it provides differ from our everyday life, common-sense knowledge as skilled partici-
pants in the social world?
This chapter demonstrates the major steps involved in theory construction as a
formal part of a scientific enterprise. In doing so, we will see how sociological theo-
ries differ from the implicit theories of everyday life. One of the sharpest contrasts
is whether the focus should be on discovering uniform relationships between objec-
tive social facts (as Durkheim insisted) or whether it must be concerned primarily
with understanding subjective meanings which vary in different cultural contexts
(as Weber argued).
Regardless of whether our focus is on objective facts or subjective meanings, the
scientific method requires concepts and ideas to be established with sufficient clar-
ity and precision that they can be used to guide research and evaluated in the light
of research findings as well as everyday life experience. Since we are concerned in
this book with already existing theories, our goal will not be to construct theories
from scratch but to show how already existing theories can be formalized. Following
are the specific points to be covered in this chapter:
● The challenge of linking theoretical analysis and empirical research
● Objective versus subjective dimensions of the social world
● Explanation through prediction versus interpretation “after the fact”
● Strategies for theory construction—This section (the heart of the chapter)
emphasizes the importance of developing theories as explicitly and systemati-
cally as possible so they can be used to guide research. Special emphasis is given
to the following:
● Concepts, variables, and classification systems—The challenge is to identify
and define concepts, variables, and categories as precisely as possible so that
they can be clearly applied to specific features of the social world.
● Propositions: statements of expected relationships among specific variables,
and the conditions under which they are expected—This is the foundation for
specific research hypotheses or questions.

D.P. Johnson, Contemporary Sociological Theory: An Integrated Multi-Level Approach. 81

© Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008
82 4 Formal Theory Construction: Developing Sociological Theory

● Explaining causes versus consequences

● The challenge of causal explanation
● Deductive versus inductive forms of research and theory development
● Multiple paradigms—This section highlights the variations among different
theoretical schools in terms of underlying beliefs and assumptions.

Linking Theoretical Analysis and Empirical Research

Theorists often focus their attention on ideas expressed in texts by other theorists.
At the same time, but along different tracks, researchers seek to contribute to the
cumulative expansion of scientific knowledge in the field by devoting themselves
to the collection and analysis of various types of empirical data. Although research
projects are typically grounded in an appropriate theoretical framework, their
results are often not clearly related to the kinds of general issues and questions that
are the concern of theory specialists who focus on comprehensive and systematic
theory development as such.
There are some areas where general theory and empirical research are closely
related and show cumulative development of knowledge (see Knottnerus and
Prendergast, 1994). But research projects often seem to move along independent
specialty tracks that seem somewhat unrelated very clearly to the overall cumula-
tive development of the field as a whole, despite the contributions they make to
particular substantive areas. At the same time general sociological theory seems to
move along its own specialized tracks, with theory specialists dealing primarily
with basic questions regarding the fundamental nature of the social world and how
we can best understand its essential properties and current trends in terms that often
seem too abstract to guide research. One result of this lack of a clear linkage
between general theoretical discourse on the one hand and basic research and data
analysis on the other is the high level of fragmentation in the field, described by
Bernard Phillips (2001) as a “tower of Babel” that makes overall progress in the
discipline difficult to assess.
This fragmentation of sociology into highly specialized areas with their own
particular theoretical perspectives, plus the insulation between general theoreti-
cal discourse and empirical research, is probably more characteristic of sociol-
ogy in the United States than in Europe. Many European social theorists seem to
regard sociology as being close to a philosophical form of discourse. Although
deeply committed to understanding and explaining the social world, their style
tends to involve philosophical reflection and critique as much as empirical
investigation.
For theory to stimulate and guide research it is important to formulate key
theoretical ideas in explicit propositional statements from which specific research
questions and hypotheses can be derived. Among contemporary theorists,
Jonathan Turner (1993, 2003; Turner, Beeghley, and Powers, 2002) has consist-
ently devoted much of his work to formalizing the arguments of various theories