Arthur Stinchcombe on method in the social sciences
In my sophomore year at Johns Hopkins I took a course in social theory taught by Arthur Stinchcombe. It was one of those courses designed for first-year graduate students, but also open to advanced undergraduates and others “by permission.” We may have read an essay or two by Talcott Parsons, I don’t really recall, but I’m sure that we read a number of chapters from Robert Merton’s Social Theory and Social Structure, especially the famous chapter on “theories of the middle range.”
What I particularly remember from the class is the term-paper assignment. We had to pick ...