Classic Sociological Theory (1848-1950)

Sociology G93.2111

Fall 2003

Craig Calhoun & Robert Max Jackson

How to "Question" a Theory

Here are some questions to ask of all theories.  Many others are possible, but these should give a good start. 

• What is the principal question(s) being asked?
• This will usually take the (often implicit) form: why or how does some social process or outcome exist when it does, as strong as it does.
• Consider both the main empirical examples the theorist uses as a starting point and the generalized abstract theoretical problem (e.g. Tocqueville's wish to make sense of American democracy and his desire to explain how democracy in general might escape a vulnerability to verge toward despotism)

• What, in simplest terms, is the author's answer to the principle question?

• What, are the competing possible answers?
• Which alternatives are explicitly recognized by the author?
• Which alternatives does the author consider the main competition?
• Are important alternatives neglected by the author?

• How does the author contend that the privileged accounts (the correct answer, according to the author) are superior to the alternative accounts?
• What empirical evidence is used?
• What are the explicit comparisons?
• What logical arguments are entertained?
• What rhetorical devices are brought into play?
• How compelling is the support for the author's position?

• What critical initial assumptions, explicit and implicit, direct the ideas?

• How does the intellectual environment, prevailing and preceding, seem to have influenced the author's ideas?
• What limits did it produce?
• What innovations in the author's ideas stem directly from this environment? (No one can create a theory about corporations until we have corporations.)

• How has the theory fared against subsequent historical events?

• Can you reconstruct the theory as a series of statements declaring related causal assumptions and propositions?

• Can you reconstruct the theory as an abstract model embracing adequately defined social actors, relationships, processes, conditions, and rules?

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