[lbo-talk] URPE Summer Conference -- Aug 15-18 -- REGISTERNOW!ORGANIZE A PANEL!

shag shag at cleandraws.com
Sun Jul 13 18:12:13 PDT 2008


maybe it's 'cause i went to a department that specialized in social and sociological theory -- there were only a few that do, since theory isn't thought of too highly in empirically-based discplines -- but the different meanings of theory are precisely part of what we had to master in our comprehensive exams.

it wasn't just the department, since the major texts we used discussed the issues described below.

what was the name/authors of that infamous article published in the 70s or 80s, about the 110 different meansings of culture? anyone remember?

shag

At 04:50 PM 7/13/2008, B. wrote:
>[From Gabriel Abend's "The Meaning of 'Theory,"
>_Sociological Theory_, Vol. 26, No. 2, June, 2008.
>Abend speaks specifically about sociologists but the
>ideas imo could apply to any of the social sciences
>(just replace "sociologists" below with
>"anthropologists" or "economists" and I suspect the
>result would be much the same). Also, errors in
>paraphrasing are mine, not Abend's. The abstract of
>Abend's piece is here with a link to the whole thing
>that you may have to pay for:
>http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120088937/abstract
> -B.]
>
>
>"[S]uppose that A, B, and C are three sociologists,
>and they engage in a discussion about the question,
>'how should theory be judged?' Now, when A speaks of
>'theory' she mainly thinks of an ongoing dialogue with
>some classic texts. When B speaks of 'theory' she
>mainly thinks of the construction of propositions of
>the form 'if p then q.' And when C speaks of 'theory'
>she mainly thinks of the development of lexica and
>schemata with which to talk about the social world.
>Not surprisingly, A, B, and C find it impossible to
>come to an agreement about the question under
>discussion. Yet the most reasonable interpretation of
>this situation is not that A, B, and C have a
>substantive disagreement about how theory should be
>judged, but rather that they are talking about
>different things. That they are indeed talking about
>different things should not be obscured by the fact
>that they happen to use the same English word ...."

...


>-B.
>
>
>
>
>Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>"Could you paraphrase? I'm curious."
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

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