Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP - Archives
Practice Module on This File

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: November 6, 2002
Latest Update: November 6, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Theory construction: Some Basics

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, November 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

Several of you have been in to talk about theory construction recently, and that is particularly appropriate given the Dear Habermas team on thesis projects. Usually your first question is: how do we start? Well, I've done a little of that already, but I haven't yet put up theory construction notes. We could technically skip that part, because we are a project, which sort of intimates that we're lots more into praxis that theory construction. But we shouldn't skip this chance to figure our where theory construction would fit into our work. No time to put up a practice module just now, but here are some readings that might help, especially if we talk abou them this week before I head for Chicago. jeanne November 6, 2002.

• THEORY CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH DESIGN Website Links for SOCIOLOGY 371. St. Olaf website. Link added November 6, 2002.

  Unit 10: Structural-Functionalism: Durkheim, Parsons, Davis-Moore Theories of Class and Stratification Notice that issues of equality fall here under class and stratification. Make a list for yourself of parallel terms that you could use for Web searches. Link added November 6, 2002.

  Adaptation by social learning University of California at Riverside, course on theory construction. Because of our theoretical orientation, we will be looking for social learning theories, not empirical testing and experimentation theories. Here's an example for Prof. Robert Hanneman's UCR course. To find this scroll to the end of the linked file:

  "This is really a brief reprise. Many of the agent models have more or less explicit theories of how actors change in response to stimuli arising from their interactions with other actors. Simple copying, information averaging, migration toward or away from individuals or groups on the basis of similarity, mimicing high status actors, etc. are all examples of how more "sociological" analysists have approached the question of how actors and systems "adapt" or change over time.

  "It should now be apparent that the "intelligence" of "artificial societies" is multi-layered and multifaceted, and may well involve many dynamics occurring simultaneously at different levels. There is a great deal of work still to be done on understanding how human systems are 'intelligent.'

  This will make lots more sense as we choose a concrete example and construct a theoretical approach for that analysis. For now, I just want to familiarize you with ideas and concepts from theory construction.