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Chapter 35
On Sociological Theories of the Middle
Range [1949]
Robert K. Merton
Like so many words that are bandied about, the word theory threatens to become meaningless. Because its referents are so diverse - including everything from minor working hypotheses, through comprehensive but vague and unordered speculations, to axiomatic systems of thought - use of the word often obscures rather than creates understanding. The term sociological theory refers to logically interconnected sets of proposi- tions from which empirical uniformities can be derived. Throughout we focus on what I have called theories of the middle range: theories that lie between the minor but necessary working hypotheses that evolve in abundance during day-to-day research and the all-inclusive systematic efforts to develop a unified theory that will explain all the observed uniformities of social behavior, social organization, and social change. Middle-range theory is principally used in sociology to guide empirical inquiry. It is intermediate to general theories of social systems which are too remote from par- ticular classes of social behavior, organization, and change to account for what is observed and to those detailed orderly descriptions of particulars that are not gener- alized at all. Middle-range theory involves abstractions, of course, but they are close enough to observed data to be incorporated in propositions that permit empirical testing. Middle-range theories deal with delimited aspects of social phenomena, as is indicated by their labels. One speaks of a theory of reference groups, of social mobil- ity, or role-conflict and of the formation of social norms just as one speaks of a theory of prices, a germ theory of disease, or a kinetic theory of gases. The seminal ideas in such theories are characteristically simple: consider Gilbert on magnetism, Boyle on atmospheric pressure, or Darwin on the formation of coral atolls. Gilbert begins with the relatively simple idea that the earth may be conceived as a magnet; Boyle, with the simple idea that the atmosphere may be conceived as a "sea of air"; Darwin, with the idea that one can conceive of the atolls as upward
Robert K. Merton, "On SociologicalTheoriesof the Middle Range," pp. 39-53 from Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (NewYork:Simon& Schuster,The FreePress, 1949).
and outward growths of coral over islands that had long since subsided into the sea. Each of these theories provides an image that gives rise to inferences. To take but one case: if the atmosphere is thought of as a sea of air, then, as Pascal inferred, there should be less air pressure on a mountain top than at its base. The initial idea thus suggests specific hypotheses which are tested by seeing whether the inferences from them are empirically confirmed. The idea itself is tested for its fruitfulness by noting the range of theoretical problems and hypotheses that allow one to identify new characteristics of atmospheric pressure. In much the same fashion, the theory of reference groups and relative deprivation starts with the simple idea, initiated by James, Baldwin, and Mead and developed by Hyman and Stouffer, that people take the standards of significant others as a basis for self-appraisal and evaluation. Some of the inferences drawn from this idea are at odds with common-sense expectations based upon an un examined set of "self- evident" assumptions. Common sense, for example, would suggest that the greater the actual loss experienced by a family in a mass disaster, the more acutely it will feel deprived. This belief is based on the unexamined assumption that the magnitude of objective loss is related linearly to the subjective appraisal of the loss and that this appraisal is confined to one's own experience. But the theory of relative deprivation leads to quite a different hypothesis - that self-appraisals depend upon people's com- parisons of their own situation with that of other people perceived as being compa- rable to themselves. This theory therefore suggests that, under specifiable conditions, families suffering serious losses will feel less deprived than those suffering smaller losses if they are in situations leading them to compare themselves to people suffer- ing even more severe losses. For example, it is people in the area of greatest impact of a disaster who, though substantially deprived themselves, are most apt to see others around them who are even more severely deprived. Empirical inquiry sup- ports the theory of relative deprivation rather than the common-sense assumptions: "the feeling of being relatively better off than others increases with objective loss up to the category of highest loss" and only then declines. This pattern is reinforced by the tendency of public communications to focus on "the most extreme sufferers [which] tends to fix them as a reference group against which even other sufferers can compare themselves favorably." As the inquiry develops, it is found that these pat- terns of self-appraisal in turn affect the distribution of morale in the community of survivors and their motivation to help others.1 Within a particular class of behavior, therefore, the theory of relative deprivation directs us to a set of hypotheses that can be empirically tested. The confirmed conclusion can then be put simply enough: when few are hurt to much the same extent, the pain and loss of each seems great; where many are hurt in greatly varying degree, even fairly large losses seem small as they are compared with far larger ones. The probability that comparisons will be made is affected by the differing visibility of losses of greater and less extent. The specificity of this example should not obscure the more general character of middle-range theory. Obviously, behavior of people confronted with a mass disas- ter is only one of an indefinitely large array of particular situations to which the theory of reference groups can be instructively applied, just as is the case with the theory of change in social stratification, the theory of authority, the theory of insti- tutional interdependence, or the theory of anomie. But it is equally clear that such
leads directly to certain analytical problems. The notion of the role-set at once leads to the inference that social structures confront men with the task of articulating the components of countless role-sets - that is, the functional task of managing somehow to organize these so that an appreciable degree of social regularity obtains, sufficient to enable most people most of the time to go about their business without becoming paralyzed by extreme conflicts in their role-sets. If this relatively simple idea of role-set has theoretical worth, it should generate distinctive problems for sociological inquiry. The concept of role-set does this. It raises the general but definite problem of identifying the social mechanisms - that is, the social processes having designated consequences for designated parts of the social structure - which articulate the expectations of those in the role-set suffi- ciently to reduce conflicts for the occupant of a status. It generates the further problem of discovering how these mechanisms come into being, so that we can also explain why the mechanisms do not operate effectively or fail to emerge at all in some social systems. Finally, like the theory of atmospheric pressure, the theory of role-set points directly to relevant empirical research. Monographs on the workings of diverse types of formal organization have developed empirically-based theoreti- cal extensions of how role-sets operate in practice. The theory of role-sets illustrates another aspect of sociological theories of the middle range. They are frequently consistent with a variety of so-called systems of sociological theory. So far as one can tell, the theory of role-sets is not inconsistent with such broad theoretical orientations as Marxist theory, functional analysis, social behaviorism, Sorokin's integral sociology, or Parsons' theory of action. This may be a horrendous observation for those of us who have been trained to believe that systems of sociological thought are logically close-knit and mutually exclusive sets of doctrine. But in fact, as we shall note later in this introduction, comprehen- sive sociological theories are sufficiently loose-knit, internally diversified, and mutu- ally overlapping that a given theory of the middle range, which has a measure of empirical confirmation, can often be subsumed under comprehensive theories which are themselves discrepant in certain respects. This reasonably unorthodox opinion can be illustrated by reexamining the theory of role-sets as a middle-range theory. We depart from the traditional concept by assuming that a single status in society involves, not a single role, but an array of associated roles, relating the status-occupant to diverse others. Second, we note that this concept of the role-set gives rise to distinctive theoretical problems, hypothe- ses, and so to empirical inquiry. One basic problem is that of identifying the social mechanisms which articulate the role-set and reduce conflicts among roles. Third, the concept of the role-set directs our attention to the structural problem of identi- fying the social arrangements which integrate as well as oppose the expectations of various members of the role-set. The concept of multiple roles, on the other hand, confines our attention to a different and no doubt important issue: how do indi- vidual occupants of statuses happen to deal with the many and sometimes conflict- ing demands made of them? Fourth, the concept of the role-set directs us to the further question of how these social mechanisms come into being; the answer to this question enables us to account for the many concrete instances in which the
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role-set operates ineffectively. (This no more assumes that all social mechanisms are functional than the theory of biological evolution involves the comparable assump- tion that no dysfunctional developments occur.) Finally, the logic of analysis exhib- ited in this sociological theory of the middle range is developed wholly in terms of the elements of social structure rather than in terms of providing concrete histori- cal descriptions of particular social systems. Thus, middle-range theory enables us to transcend the mock problem of a theoretical conflict between the nomothetic and the idiothetic, between the general and the altogether particular, between general- izing sociological theory and historicism. From all this, it is evident that according to role-set theory there is always a potential for differing expectations among those in the role-set as to what is appro- priate conduct for a status-occupant. The basic source of this potential for conflict
- and it is important to note once again that on this point we are at one with such disparate general theorists as Marx and Spencer, Simmel, Sorokin and Parsons - is found in the structural fact that the other members of a role-set are apt to hold various social positions differing from those of the status-occupant in question. To the extent that members of a role-set are diversely located in the social structure, they are apt to have interests and sentiments, values, and moral expectations, dif- fering from those of the status-occupant himself. This, after all, is one of the prin- cipal assumptions of Marxist theory as it is of much other sociological theory: social differentiation generates distinct interests among those variously located in the struc- ture of the society. For example, the members of a school board are often in social and economic strata that differ significantly from the stratum of the school teacher. The interests, values, and expectations of board members are consequently apt to differ from those of the teacher who may thus be subject to conflicting expectations from these and other members of his role-set: professional colleagues, influential members of the school board and, say, the Americanism Committee of the Ameri- can Legion. An educational essential for one is apt to be judged as an educational frill by another, or as downright subversion, by the third. What holds conspicuously for this one status holds, in identifiable degree, for occupants of other statuses who are structurally related through their role-set to others who themselves occupy dif- fering positions in society. As a theory of the middle range, then, the theory of role-sets begins with a concept and its associated imagery and generates an array of theoretical problems. Thus, the assumed structural basis for potential disturbance of a role-set gives rise to a double question (which, the record shows, has not been raised in the absence of the theory): which social mechanisms, if any, operate to counteract the theoretically assumed instability of role-sets and, correlatively, under which circumstances do these social mechanisms fail to operate, with resulting inefficiency, confusion, and conflict? Like other questions that have historically stemmed from the general ori- entation of functional analysis, these do not assume that role-sets invariably operate with substantial efficiency. For this middle-range theory is not concerned with the historical generalization that a degree of social order or conflict prevails in society but with the analytical problem of identifying the social mechanisms which produce a greater degree of order or less conflict than would obtain if these mechanisms were not called into play.
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Another route has been followed by sociologists in their quest to establish the intellectual legitimacy of their discipline: they have taken as their prototype systems of scientific theory rather than systems of philosophy. This path too has sometimes led to the attempt to create total systems of sociology - a goal that is often based on one or more of three basic misconceptions about the sciences. The first misinterpretation assumes that systems of thought can be effectively developed before a great mass of basic observations has been accumulated. Accord- ing to this view, Einstein might follow hard on the heels of Kepler, without the intervening centuries of investigation and systematic thought about the results of investigation that were needed to prepare the terrain. The systems of sociology that stem from this tacit assumption are much like those introduced by the system- makers in medicine over a span of 150 years: the systems of Stahl, Boissier de Sauvages, Broussais, John Brown and Benjamin Rush. Until well into the nineteenth century eminent personages in medicine thought it necessary to develop a theoret- ical system of disease long before the antecedent empirical inquiry had been ade- quately developed. These garden-paths have since been closed off in medicine but this sort of effort still turns up in sociology. It is this tendency that led the bio- chemist and avocational sociologist, L. J. Henderson, to observe:
A difference between most system-building in the social sciences and systems of thought and classification in the natural sciences is to be seen in their evolution. In the natural sciences both theories and descriptive systems grow by adaptation to the increasing knowledge and experience of the scientists. In the social sciences, systems often issue fully formed from the mind of one man. Then they may be much discussed if they attract attention, but progressive adaptive modification as a result of the concerted efforts of great numbers of men is rare.
The second misconception about the physical sciences rests on a mistaken assumption of historical contemporaneity - that all cultural products existing at the same moment of history have the same degree of maturity. In fact, to perceive dif- ferences here would be to achieve a sense of proportion. The fact that the discipline of physics and the discipline of sociology are both identifiable in the mid-twentieth century does not mean that the achievements of the one should be the measure of the other. True, social scientists today live at a time when physics has achieved com- paratively great scope and precision of theory and experiment, a great aggregate of tools of investigation, and an abundance of technological by-products. Looking about them, many sociologists take the achievements of physics as the standard for self-appraisal. They want to compare biceps with their bigger brothers. They, too, want to count. And when it becomes evident that they neither have the rugged physique nor pack the murderous wallop of their big brothers, some sociologists despair. They begin to ask: is a science of society really possible unless we institute a total system of sociology? But this perspective ignores the fact that between twen- tieth-century physics and twentieth-century sociology stand billions of man-hours of sustained, disciplined, and cumulative research. Perhaps sociology is not yet ready for its Einstein because it has not yet found its Kepler - to say nothing of its Newton, Laplace, Gibbs, Maxwell or Planck.
Third, sociologists sometimes misread the actual state of theory in the physical sciences. This error is ironic, for physicists agree that they have not achieved an all- encompassing system of theory, and most see little prospect of it in the near future. What characterizes physics is an array of special theories of greater or less scope, coupled with the historically-grounded hope that these will continue to be brought together into families of theory. As one observer puts it: "though most of us hope, it is true, for an all embracive future theory which will unify the various postulates of physics, we do not wait for it before proceeding with the important business of science."5 More recently, the theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman, reported without dismay that "today our theories of physics, the laws of physics, are a mul- titude of different parts and pieces that do not fit together very we11."6But perhaps most telling is the observation by that most comprehensive of theoreticians who devoted the last years of his life to the unrelenting and unsuccessful search "for a unifying theoretical basis for all these single disciplines, consisting of a minimum of concepts and fundamental relationships, from which all the concepts and relation- ships of the single disciplines might be derived by logical process." Despite his own profound and lonely commitment to this quest, Einstein observed:
The greater part of physical research is devoted to the development of the various branches in physics, in each of which the object is the theoretical understanding of more or less restricted fields of experience, and in each of which the laws and concepts remain as closely as possible related to experience.
These observations might be pondered by those sociologists who expect a sound general system of sociological theory in our time - or soon after. If the science of physics, with its centuries of enlarged theoretical generalizations, has not managed to develop an all-encompassing theoretical system, then a fortiori the science of sociology, which has only begun to accumulate empirically grounded theoretical generalizations of modest scope, would seem well advised to moderate its aspira- tions for such a system.
Utilitarian Pressures for Total Systems of Sociology
The conviction among some sociologists that we must, here and now, achieve a grand theoretical system not only results from a misplaced comparison with the physical sciences, it is also a response to the ambiguous position of sociology in contemporary society. The very uncertainty about whether the accumulated knowl- edge of sociology is adequate to meet the large demands now being made of it - by policy-makers, reformers and reactionaries, by business-men and government-men, by college presidents and college sophomores - provokes an overly-zealous and defensive conviction on the part of some sociologists that they must somehow be equal to these demands, however premature and extravagant they may be. This conviction erroneously assumes that a science must be adequate to meet all demands, intelligent or stupid, made of it. This conviction is implicitly based on the sacrilegious and masochistic assumption that one must be omniscient and
I On Sociological Theories of the Middle Range Dill
But the mate requires time (and sustenance) if he is to attain the size and vigor needed to meet the demands that will be made upon him. This book's orientation toward the relationship of current sociology and practi- cal problems of society is much the same as its orientation toward the relationship of sociology and general sociological theory. It is a developmental orientation, rather than one that relies on the sudden mutations of one sociologist that suddenly bring solutions to major social problems or to a single encompassing theory. Though this orientation makes no marvellously dramatic claims, it offers a reasonably realistic assessment of the current condition of sociology and the ways in which it actually develops.
Total Systems of Theory and Theories of the Middle Range
From all this it would seem reasonable to suppose that sociology will advance insofar as its major (but not exclusive) concern is with developing theories of the middle range, and it will be retarded if its primary attention is focused on devel- oping total sociological systems. So it is that in his inaugural address at the London
School of Economics, T. H. Marshall put in a plea for sociological "stepping-stones
in the middle distance. ,,10 Our major task today is to develop special theories applic- able to limited conceptual ranges - theories, for example, of deviant behavior, the unanticipated consequences of purposive action, social perception, reference groups, social control, the interdependence of social institutions - rather than to seek im- mediately the total conceptual structure that is adequate to derive these and other theories of the middle range. Sociological theory, if it is to advance significantly, must proceed on these inter- connected planes: (1) by developing special theories from which to derive hypo- theses that can be empirically investigated and (2) by evolving, not suddenly revealing, a progressively more general conceptual scheme that is adequate to con- solidate groups of special theories. To concentrate entirely on special theories is to risk emerging with specific hypotheses that account for limited aspects of social behavior, organization, and change but that remain mutually inconsistent. To concentrate entirely on a master conceptual scheme for deriving all subsidiary theories is to risk producing twentieth-century sociological equivalents of the large philosophical systems of the past, with all their varied suggestiveness, their archi- tectonic splendor, and their scientific sterility. The sociological theorist who is exclu- sively committed to the exploration of a total system with its utmost abstractions runs the risk that, as with modern dec01~the furniture of his mind will be bare and uncomfortable. The road to effective general schemes in sociology will only become clogged if, as in the early days of sociology, each charismatic sociologist tries to develop his own general system of theory. The persistence of this practice can only make for the balkanization of sociology, with each principality governed by its own theoreti- cal system. Though this process has periodically marked the development of other
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sciences - conspicuously, chemistry, geology, and medicine - it need not be repro- duced in sociology if we learn from the history of science. We sociologists can look instead toward progressively comprehensive sociological theory which, instead of proceeding from the head of one man, gradually consolidates theories of the middle range, so that these become special cases of more general formulations. Developments in sociological theory suggest that emphasis on this orientation is needed. Note how few, how scattered, and how unimpressive are the specific soci- ological hypotheses which are derived from a master conceptual scheme. The pro- posals for an all-embracing theory run so far ahead of confirmed special theories as to remain unrealized programs rather than consolidations of theories that at first seemed discrete. Of course, as Talcott Parsons and Pitirim Sorokin (in his Socio- logical Theories of Today) have indicated, significant progress has recently been made. The gradual convergence of streams of theory in sociology, social psychol- ogy and anthropology records large theoretical gains and promises even more. Nonetheless, a large part of what is now described as sociological theory consists of general orientations toward data, suggesting types of variables which theories must somehow take into account, rather than clearly formulated, verifiable statements of relationships between specified variables. We have many concepts but fewer confirmed theories; many points of view, but few theorems; many "approaches" but few arrivals. Perhaps some further changes in emphasis would be all to the good. Consciously or unconsciously, men allocate their scant resources as much in the production of sociological theory as they do in the production of plumbing sup- plies, and their allocations reflect their underlying assumptions. Our discussion of middle-range theory in sociology is intended to make explicit a policy decision faced by all sociological theorists. Which shall have the greater share of our collective energies and resources: the search for confirmed theories of the middle range or the search for an all-inclusive conceptual scheme? I believe - and beliefs are of course notoriously subject to error - that theories of the middle range hold the largest promise, provided that the search for them is coupled with a pervasive concern with consolidating special theories into more general sets of concepts and mutually consistent propositions. Even so, we must adopt the provisional outlook of our big brothers and of Tennyson:
Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be.
NOTES
1 Allen Barton, Social Organization Under Stress: A Sociological Review of Disaster Studies (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences - National Research Council, 1963). 2 Robert K. Merton, 1957, "The Role Set: Problems in Sociological Theory," The British Journal of Sociology 8: 106-20. 3 Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945), p. 834.
