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Theory Construction
Theory construction is the process of developing theories in accord with criteria for their production and analysis. A number of texts offer methods for constructing sociological theories; however, at the present time, the field of sociology has no widely agreed-upon set of criteria for building and evaluating theories.
This entry presents criteria for theory construction and theory analysis that are consistent with some of the sociological prescriptions and, more important, with criteria that are widely accepted in other sciences. Before doing so, it is first necessary to discuss briefly some broader issues.
The Context of Theories
Theories are repositories of general knowledge. Through testing and refinement, scientific theories change over time in ways that lead them to provide increasingly accurate explanations for ever-widening ranges of phenomena. Their accumulated ...
- Topics and Concepts in Social Theory
- Affect Control Theory
- AGIL
- Alienation
- Anomie
- Authority
- Body
- Bureaucracy
- Capital
- Capitalism
- Celebrity
- Citizenship
- Civil Society
- Civility
- Civilizing Processes
- Collective Conscience
- Collective Memory
- Commitment
- Compulsory Heterosexuality
- Consumer Culture
- Crime
- Cultural Capital
- Culture and Civilization
- Deconstruction
- Democracy
- Deviance
- Dialectic
- Discourse
- Disneyization
- Distributive Justice
- Dramaturgy
- Emergence
- Emotion Work
- Enchantment/Disenchantment
- Essentialism
- Exchange Coalitions
- Exchange Networks
- Exploitation
- Family Wage
- Feminism
- Feminist Epistemology
- Feminist Ethics
- Film
- Fordism and Post-Fordism
- Frame Analysis
- Gender
- Genealogy
- Generalized Exchange
- Globalization
- Governmentality
- Graph Theoretic Measures of Power
- Green Movements
- Habitus
- Herrschaft (Rule)
- Hollywood Film
- Holocaust
- Hyperreality
- Ideal Type
- Identity
- Imperialism
- Impression Management
- Individualism
- Industrial Society
- Internet and Cyberculture
- Intimacy
- Lesbian Continuum
- Levels of Social Structure
- Lifeworld
- Logocentrism
- Madness
- Male Gaze
- Maternal Thinking
- Matrix of Domination
- McDonaldization
- Means of Consumption
- Means of Production
- Metatheory
- Modernity
- Morality and Aesthetic Judgement
- Nationalism
- Negotiated Order
- Outsider-Within
- Paradigm
- Patriarchy
- Political Economy
- Popular Music
- Pornography and Cultural Studies
- Postcolonialism
- Postmodernism
- Postsocial
- Power
- Power-Dependence Relations
- Procedural Justice
- Professions
- Public Sphere
- Rationalization
- Reform
- Relational Cohesion
- Religion
- Religion in French Social Theory
- Revolution
- Risk Society
- Sacred and Profane
- Scottish Enlightenment
- Secularization
- Self and Self-Concept
- Sexuality and the Subject
- Simulation
- Simulations
- Social Capital
- Social Class
- Social Dilemma
- Social Facts
- Social Interaction
- Social Market Economy (Soziale Markwirtschaft)
- Social Movement Theory
- Social Rationality
- Social Space
- Social Studies of Science
- Social Worlds
- Socialism
- Sport
- State
- Statics and Dynamics
- Status Relations
- Stratification
- Strength of Weak Ties
- Structuration
- Surveillance and Society
- Television and Social Theory
- Time and Social Theory
- Total Institutions
- Trust
- Urbanization
- Utopia
- Verstehen
- Video and Computer Games
- Vocabularies of Motives
- Theorists
- Žižek, Slavoj
- Alexander, Jeffrey
- Althusser, Louis
- Anzaldua, Gloria
- Augé, Marc
- Bartky, Sandra Lee
- Bataille, Georges
- Baudrillard, Jean
- Bauman, Zygmunt
- Beauvoir, Simone de
- Beck, Ulrich
- Becker, Howard
- Bell, Daniel
- Bellah, Robert
- Benjamin, Jessica
- Benjamin, Walter
- Berger, Joseph
- Blau, Peter
- Blumberg, Rae
- Blumer, Herbert
- Bonald, Louis de
- Bourdieu, Pierre
- Butler, Judith
- Cassirer, Ernst
- Castoriadis, Cornelius
- Certeau, Michel de
- Chafetz, Janet
- Chodorow, Nancy
- Coleman, James
- Collins, Patricia Hill
- Collins, Randall
- Comte, Auguste
- Cook, Karen
- Cooley, Charles Horton
- Coser, Lewis
- Dahrendorf, Ralf
- Davis, Angela
- Debord, Guy
- Deleuze, Gilles
- Derrida, Jacques
- Dilthey, Wilhelm
- Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt (W. E. B)
- Durkheim, Émile
- Eisenstadt, Shmuel N.
- Elias, Norbert
- Emerson, Richard
- Foucault, Michel
- Freud, Sigmund
- Garfinkel, Harold
- Giddens, Anthony
- Gilligan, Carol
- Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
- Goffman, Erving
- Goldstone, Jack
- Gouldner, Alvin
- Gramsci, Antonio
- Habermas, Jürgen
- Hall, Stuart
- Harding, Sandra
- Hartsock, Nancy
- Hawley, Amos
- Heller, Agnes
- Homans, George
- Hughes, Everett
- Irigaray, Luce
- Jameson, Frederic
- Kristeva, Julia
- Lévi-Strauss, Claude
- Lacan, Jacques
- Latour, Bruno
- Lawler, Edward
- Lefebvre, Henri
- Lindenberg, Siegwart
- Lorde, Audre
- Luhmann, Niklas
- Lukács, György
- Maistre, Joseph de
- Mann, Michael
- Mannheim, Karl
- Markovsky, Barry
- Marx, Karl
- Mead, George Herbert
- Merton, Robert
- Mills, C. Wright
- Minnich, Elizabeth
- Molm, Linda
- Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat
- Pareto, Vilfredo
- Park, Robert
- Parsons, Talcott
- Rieff, Philip
- Ritzer, George
- Rorty, Richard
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
- Rubin, Gayle
- Ruddick, Sara
- Sartre, Jean-Paul
- Saussure, Ferdinand de
- Schütz, Alfred
- Scheler, Max
- Simmel, Georg
- Smelser, Neil
- Smith, Dorothy
- Sombart, Werner
- Sorokin, Pitirim A.
- Spencer, Herbert
- Strauss, Anselm
- Sumner, William Graham
- Tönnies, Ferdinand
- Taylor, Charles
- Thomas, William Isaac
- Tilly, Charles
- Tocqueville, Alexis de
- Touraine, Alain
- Turner, Bryan
- Turner, Jonathan
- Veblen, Thorstein
- Virilio, Paul
- Wallerstein, Immanuel
- Weber, Marianne
- Weber, Max
- White, Harrison
- Willer, David
- Wright, Erik Olin
- Wuthnow, Robert
- Znaniecki, Florian Witold
- Schools and Theoretical Approaches
- Annales School
- Actor Network Theory
- Behaviorism
- Cognitive Sociology
- Collège de Sociologie and Acéphale
- Complexity Theory
- Conflict Theory
- Conversation Analysis
- Cosmopolitan Sociology
- Critical Pedagogy
- Cultural Marxism and British Cultural Studies
- Cultural Studies and the New Populism
- Ecofeminism
- Ecological Theory
- Elementary Theory
- Ethnomethodology
- Evolutionary Theory
- Feminism
- Feminist Cultural Studies
- Figurational Sociology
- Frankfurt School
- Game Theory
- General Systems Theory
- German Idealism
- Hermeneutics
- Historical and Comparative Theory
- Historical Materialism
- Historicism
- Institutional Theory
- Labeling Theory
- Learning Theory
- Liberal Feminism
- Marxism
- Media Critique
- Neo-Kantianism
- Network Exchange Theory
- Network Theory
- Phenomenology
- Philosophical Anthropology
- Political Economy
- Positivism
- Post-Marxism
- Postmodernism
- Postsocial
- Poststructuralism
- Pragmatism
- Psychoanalysis and Social Theory
- Queer Theory
- Radical Feminism
- Rational Choice
- Rhetorical Turn in Social Theory
- Role Theory
- Scottish Enlightenment
- Semiology
- Situationists
- Social Constructionism
- Social Darwinism
- Social Exchange Theory
- Social Studies of Science
- Sociologies of Everyday Life
- Standpoint Theory
- Structural Functionalism
- Structuralism
- Structuralist Marxism
- Structuration
- Symbolic Interaction
- World-Systems Theory
- Cultural Theory
- Žižek, Slavoj
- Althusser, Louis
- Bellah, Robert
- Benjamin, Walter
- Bourdieu, Pierre
- Butler, Judith
- Celebrity
- Civility
- Civilizing Processes
- Collective Memory
- Consumer Culture
- Critical Pedagogy
- Cultural Capital
- Cultural Marxism and British Cultural Studies
- Cultural Studies and the New Populism
- Culture and Civilization
- Debord, Guy
- Deleuze, Gilles
- Derrida, Jacques
- Dilthey, Wilhelm
- Discourse
- Disneyization
- Eisenstadt, Shmuel N.
- Elias, Norbert
- Feminist Cultural Studies
- Film
- Frankfurt School
- Genealogy
- Gramsci, Antonio
- Hall, Stuart
- Hermeneutics
- Hollywood Film
- Hyperreality
- Individualism
- Internet and Cyberculture
- Jameson, Frederic
- Latour, Bruno
- Lukács, György
- McDonaldization
- Means of Consumption
- Media Critique
- Morality and Aesthetic Judgement
- Popular Music
- Pornography and Cultural Studies
- Postcolonialism
- Postmodernism
- Postsocial
- Risk Society
- Semiology
- Sexuality and the Subject
- Simulation
- Situationists
- Social Studies of Science
- Sport
- Television and Social Theory
- Turner, Bryan
- Utopia
- Video and Computer Games
- Virilio, Paul
- Wuthnow, Robert
- Marxist and Neo-Marxist Theory
- Žižek, Slavoj
- Alienation
- Althusser, Louis
- Bartky, Sandra Lee
- Benjamin, Walter
- Bourdieu, Pierre
- Capital
- Capitalism
- Castoriadis, Cornelius
- Cultural Marxism and British Cultural Studies
- Davis, Angela
- Dialectic
- Exploitation
- Frankfurt School
- Gramsci, Antonio
- Heller, Agnes
- Historical Materialism
- Imperialism
- Jameson, Frederic
- Lefebvre, Henri
- Lukács, György
- Marx, Karl
- Marxism
- Means of Consumption
- Means of Production
- Mills, C. Wright
- Political Economy
- Post-Marxism
- Reform
- Revolution
- Social Class
- Socialism
- Structuralist Marxism
- World-Systems Theory
- Wright, Erik Olin
- Feminist Theory
- Anzaldua, Gloria
- Bartky, Sandra Lee
- Beauvoir, Simone de
- Benjamin, Jessica
- Blumberg, Rae
- Body
- Butler, Judith
- Chafetz, Janet
- Chodorow, Nancy
- Collins, Patricia Hill
- Compulsory Heterosexuality
- Davis, Angela
- Ecofeminism
- Essentialism
- Family Wage
- Feminism
- Feminist Cultural Studies
- Feminist Epistemology
- Feminist Ethics
- Gender
- Gilligan, Carol
- Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
- Harding, Sandra
- Hartsock, Nancy
- Irigaray, Luce
- Kristeva, Julia
- Lesbian Continuum
- Liberal Feminism
- Lorde, Audre
- Male Gaze
- Maternal Thinking
- Matrix of Domination
- Minnich, Elizabeth
- Outsider-Within
- Patriarchy
- Postmodernist Feminism
- Queer Theory
- Radical Feminism
- Rubin, Gayle
- Ruddick, Sara
- Sexuality and the Subject
- Smith, Dorothy
- Standpoint Theory
- Weber, Marianne
- French Social Theory
- Annales School
- Althusser, Louis
- Anomie
- Augé, Marc
- Bataille, Georges
- Baudrillard, Jean
- Beauvoir, Simone de
- Bonald, Louis de
- Bourdieu, Pierre
- Certeau, Michel de
- Collège de Sociologie and Acéphale
- Collective Conscience
- Comte, Auguste
- Debord, Guy
- Deconstruction
- Deleuze, Gilles
- Derrida, Jacques
- Discourse
- Durkheim, Émile
- Foucault, Michel
- Genealogy
- Governmentality
- Habitus
- Hyperreality
- Irigaray, Luce
- Kristeva, Julia
- Lévi-Strauss, Claude
- Lacan, Jacques
- Latour, Bruno
- Lefebvre, Henri
- Logocentrism
- Maistre, Joseph de
- Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat
- Poststructuralism
- Religion in French Social theory
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
- Sacred and Profane
- Sartre, Jean-Paul
- Saussure, Ferdinand de
- Semiology
- Situationists
- Social Facts
- Statics and Dynamics
- Structuralism
- Structuralist Marxism
- Tocqueville, Alexis de
- Touraine, Alain
- Virilio, Paul
- German Social Theory
- Authority
- Beck, Ulrich
- Benjamin, Walter
- Cassirer, Ernst
- Cosmopolitan Sociology
- Culture and Civilization
- Dahrendorf, Ralf
- Dilthey, Wilhelm
- Frankfurt School
- German Idealism
- Green Movements
- Habermas, Jürgen
- Hermeneutics
- Herrschaft (Rule)
- Historicism
- Holocaust
- Ideal Type
- Lifeworld
- Luhmann, Niklas
- Marx, Karl
- Neo-Kantianism
- Phenomenology
- Philosophical Anthropology
- Positivismusstreit (Positivist Dispute)
- Risk Society
- Scheler, Max
- Simmel, Georg
- Social Action
- Social Market Economy (Soziale Markwirtscaft)
- Sombart, Werner
- Tönnies, Ferdinand
- Verstehen
- Weber, Marianne
- Weber, Max
- Werturteilsstreit (Value Judgment Dispute)
- British Social Theory
- American Social Theory
- AGIL
- Alexander, Jeffrey
- Anzaldua, Gloria
- Bartky, Sandra Lee
- Becker, Howard
- Behaviorism
- Bell, Daniel
- Bellah, Robert
- Benjamin, Jessica
- Berger, Joseph
- Blau, Peter
- Blumer, Herbert
- Butler, Judith
- Chafetz, Janet
- Chodorow, Nancy
- Coleman, James
- Collins, Patricia Hill
- Collins, Randall
- Conversation Analysis
- Cook, Karen
- Cooley, Charles Horton
- Coser, Lewis
- Davis, Angela
- Dramaturgy
- Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt (W. E. B)
- Emerson, Richard
- Ethnomethodology
- Fordism and Post-Fordism
- Frame Analysis
- Garfinkel, Harold
- Gilligan, Carol
- Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
- Goffman, Erving
- Goldstone, Jack
- Gouldner, Alvin
- Harding, Sandra
- Hartsock, Nancy
- Hawley, Amos
- Hollywood Film
- Homans, George
- Hughes, Everett
- Jameson, Frederic
- Labeling Theory
- Lawler, Edward
- Learning Theory
- Liberal Feminism
- Lorde, Audre
- Markovsky, Barry
- McDonaldization
- Mead, George Herbert
- Merton, Robert
- Minnich, Elizabeth
- Molm, Linda
- Park, Robert
- Parsons, Talcott
- Pragmatism
- Rieff, Philip
- Ritzer, George
- Rorty, Richard
- Rubin, Gayle
- Ruddick, Sara
- Smelser, Neil
- Strauss, Anselm
- Structural Functionalism
- Sumner, William Graham
- Symbolic Interaction
- Thomas, William Isaac
- Tilly, Charles
- Turner, Jonathan
- Veblen, Thorstein
- Wallerstein, Immanuel
- White, Harrison
- Willer, David
- Wright, Erik Olin
- Wuthnow, Robert
- Other/Multiple National Traditions
- Micro-Interactionist Theory
- Becker, Howard
- Blumer, Herbert
- Cognitive Sociology
- Collective Memory
- Conversation Analysis
- Cooley, Charles Horton
- Crime
- Deviance
- Dramaturgy
- Emotion Work
- Ethnomethodology
- Frame Analysis
- Garfinkel, Harold
- Goffman, Erving
- Hughes, Everett
- Identity
- Impression Management
- Lifeworld
- Mead, George Herbert
- Negotiated Order
- Phenomenology
- Pragmatism
- Rieff, Philip
- Role Theory
- Sartre, Jean-Paul
- Schütz, Alfred
- Self and Self-Concept
- Simmel, Georg
- Smith, Dorothy
- Social Constructionism
- Social Interaction
- Social Studies of Science
- Social Worlds
- Sociologies of Everyday Life
- Strauss, Anselm
- Symbolic Interaction
- Total Institutions
- Verstehen
- Znaniecki, Florian Witold
- Microbehaviorist Theory
- Affect Control Theory
- Behaviorism
- Berger, Joseph
- Blau, Peter
- Coleman, James
- Commitment
- Cook, Karen
- Distributive Justice
- Elementary Theory
- Emerson, Richard
- Exchange Coalitions
- Exchange Networks
- Game Theory
- Generalized Exchange
- Graph Theoretic Measures of Power
- Homans, George
- Lawler, Edward
- Lindenberg, Siegwart
- Markovsky, Barry
- Molm, Linda
- Network Exchange Theory
- Network Theory
- Power-Dependence Relations
- Procedural Justice
- Rational Choice
- Relational Cohesion
- Simulations
- Social Dilemma
- Social Exchange Theory
- Social Rationality
- Status Relations
- Strength of Weak Ties
- Trust
- Willer, David
- Macrosociological Theories
- Annales School
- AGIL
- Alexander, Jeffrey
- Bell, Daniel
- Bellah, Robert
- Blumberg, Rae
- Capital
- Capitalism
- Chafetz, Janet
- Collective Conscience
- Collins, Randall
- Conflict Theory
- Coser, Lewis
- Culture and Civilization
- Dahrendorf, Ralf
- Disneyization
- Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt (W. E. B)
- Durkheim, Émile
- Ecological Theory
- Eisenstadt, Shmuel N.
- Enchantment/Disenchantment
- Evolutionary Theory
- Fordism and Post-Fordism
- General Systems Theory
- Giddens, Anthony
- Globalization
- Goldstone, Jack
- Gouldner, Alvin
- Hawley, Amos
- Heller, Agnes
- Historical and Comparative Theory
- Historical Materialism
- Ideal Type
- Imperialism
- Industrial Society
- Institutional Theory
- Luhmann, Niklas
- Mann, Michael
- Marx, Karl
- Marxism
- McDonaldization
- Merton, Robert
- Mills, C. Wright
- Modernity
- Nationalism
- Park, Robert
- Parsons, Talcott
- Rationalization
- Revolution
- Risk Society
- Ritzer, George
- Secularization
- Smelser, Neil
- Social Class
- Social Darwinism
- Social Facts
- Social Market Economy
- Social Movement Theory
- Sorokin, Pitirim
- Spencer, Herbert
- State
- Statics and Dynamics
- Structural Functionalism
- Sumner, William Graham
- Tönnies, Ferdinand
- Tilly, Charles
- Turner, Jonathan
- Urbanization
- Wallerstein, Immanuel
- Weber, Max
- White, Harrison
- World-Systems Theory
- Wright, Erik Olin
- Wuthnow, Robert
- Comparative and Historical Theory
- Civilizing Processes
- Elias, Norbert
- Giddens, Anthony
- Globalization
- Goldstone, Jack
- Historical and Comparative Theory
- Ideal Type
- Industrial Society
- Institutional Theory
- Mann, Michael
- Nationalism
- Revolution
- Smelser, Neil
- Social Movement Theory
- Sorokin, Pitirim
- State
- Tilly, Charles
- Tocqueville, Alexis de
- Wallerstein, Immanuel
- Weber, Max
- World-Systems Theory
- Psychoanalytic Theory
- Postmodern Theory
- Žižek, Slavoj
- Body
- Butler, Judith
- Deconstruction
- Deleuze, Gilles
- Derrida, Jacques
- Discourse
- Essentialism
- Foucault, Michel
- Genealogy
- Governmentality
- Hyperreality
- Jameson, Frederic
- Lacan, Jacques
- Logocentrism
- Postcolonialism
- Post-Marxism
- Postsocial
- Poststructuralism
- Rorty, Richard
- Simulation
- Situationists
- Social Constructionism
- Virilio, Paul
- Politics and Government
- Alexander, Jeffrey
- Authority
- Bonald, Louis de
- Castoriadis, Cornelius
- Citizenship
- Civil Society
- Cosmopolitan Sociology
- Cultural Marxism and British Cultural Studies
- Cultural Studies and the New Populism
- Democracy
- Distributive Justice
- Governmentality
- Gramsci, Antonio
- Green Movements
- Habermas, Jürgen
- Herrschaft (Rule)
- Historical and Comparative Theory
- Identity Politics
- Imperialism
- Maistre, Joseph de
- Marxism
- Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat
- Nationalism
- Political Economy
- Post-Marxism
- Power
- Procedural Justice
- Public Sphere
- Reform
- Revolution
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
- Scottish Enlightenment
- Socialism
- State
- Taylor, Charles
- Tilly, Charles
- Tocqueville, Alexis de
- Touraine, Alain
- Utopia
- Method and Metatheory
- Agency-Structure Integration
- Collins, Randall
- Dilthey, Wilhelm
- Essentialism
- Feminist Epistemology
- Genealogy
- German Idealism
- Hermeneutics
- Historicism
- Levels of Social Structure
- Metatheory
- Micro-Macro Integration
- Paradigm
- Positivism
- Positivismusstreit (Positivist Dispute)
- Postmodernism
- Rhetorical Turn in Social Theory
- Ritzer, George
- Rorty, Richard
- Structuration
- Taylor, Charles
- Theory Construction
- Turner, Jonathan
- Verstehen
- Werturteilsstreit (Value Judgment Dispute)
- Economic Sociology
- Capital
- Capitalism
- Consumer Culture
- Exploitation
- Family Wage
- Fordism and Post-Fordism
- Game Theory
- Historical Materialism
- Imperialism
- Industrial Society
- Marx, Karl
- Marxism
- Means of Consumption
- Means of Production
- Pareto, Vilfredo
- Political Economy
- Post-Marxism
- Rational Choice
- Reform
- Scottish Enlightenment
- Social Class
- Social Market Economy
- Socialism
- Sombart, Werner
- Stratification
- Veblen, Thorstein
- Wallerstein, Immanuel
- Weber, Max
- World-Systems Theory
- Wright, Erik Olin
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