Metatheory

The prefix meta connotes “after,” “about,” and “beyond,” and is often used to describe “second-order” studies. Let S denote a given type of phenomena. The study of S constitutes the first-order study S1, and the study of S1 constitutes the second-order study S2. Second-order studies are thus the study of studies. However, not all studies of studies fall into the category of metastudy. A given S1 can be a legitimate subject of such fields as history, literature, logic, and philosophy. Metastudy differs from other types of secondorder studies in that it entails a high level of reflexivity embodied in the critical self-examination by those engaged in the first-order studies. Examples of discipline-wide metastudies include metaphysics, metaanalysis, metaethnography, and metasociology.

Metastudies are mostly conducted to examine the problems encountered in the first-order studies. Thomas Kuhn, an eminent philosopher of science, pointed out that science progresses in a succession of paradigm replacement, which takes place in a discipline when the existing research tradition has failed to meet the challenges of emergent research problems. Metastudies are the conscious efforts made by the practitioners of a troubled field to reexamine, reflect on, and redirect the stalled first-order studies in the field. In other words, metastudy is “a reflective return to the foundation of science and the making explicit of the hypotheses and operations which make it possible” (Bourdieu 1971:181).

[Page 501]Metatheory is a subtype of metastudy that focuses on the examination of theory and theorizing. The rise of metatheory in social science was primarily the result of the persistent failure of social science to uncover the general laws of society that can be used for social prediction, design, and engineering. Such failure had been initially attributed to the deficiencies in the methodology of theorizing, which led to the emergence of a theory construction movement aiming to model social theorizing after theory formation in natural science. When the allegedly improved techniques of theory construction again failed to produce the desired outcome, social scientists began to look beyond the issues of methodology to engage in metatheoretical reflections.

While metatheorizing takes place in virtually all fields of social science, it has been particularly common in sociology. The prevalence of metatheorizing in sociology is believed to be related to the following factors. First, sociological phenomena are culturally diverse and historically specific, such that they disallow the formation of nomological or deductive theories. Second, sociologists themselves are members of the society they attempt to theorize, and the vested interests and engrained values the theorists hold impede their efforts to attain scientific objectivity in theorization. Third, sociological theory is constitutive of social reality, for the acceptance of a theory can transform what that theory bears on. The combination of these three factors has made metatheorizing a constant condition of theory construction in sociology.

The beginning of metatheorizing in sociology can be traced to the work of Auguste Comte, who announced the birth of sociology in his metaphysical reflections on the trajectory of the progress of human knowledge. Paul Furfey (1965) played an important role in defining a unique disciplinary space for metasociology, which consisted of a metatheoretical component. Metatheorizing as a distinctive subfield within sociology was formalized in the early 1990s. In 1988, George Ritzer published an article in Sociological Theory, delineating for the first time the parameters of metatheory as a subdomain in sociology. The subsequent years witnessed the publication of a series of articles and books on the same subject, which gave rise to the coming of age of sociological metatheorizing.

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