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What is Wrong with Social Theory?

Volume 13|Issue 51| Winter 2025 |Translation

Abstract

​Herbert Blumer asserts that concept formation is of paramount importance for arriving at valid research results that reflect the reality under study. However, the relationship between the concept and the empirical social reality is a common methodological problem in social research. In this paper, presented in August 1953 at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Blumer addresses this relationship between theories (concepts) and data (the empirical reality), and explains the problem of the "ambiguous nature of concepts" in social theory, and offers suggestions for overcoming it. Among these suggestions is the reliance on sensitizing rather than definitive concepts, since sensitizing concepts gain their usefulness and importance from typical relationships rather than from quantifiable associations.

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​American Sociologist (1900-1987).

​President of the Academic Center for Social Studies (Centre académique d'études sociales), Morocco, Researcher and Translator. He holds a PhD in Sociology from Mohammed V University in Rabat. He is the head of the Moroccan Book Prize (Prix du Maroc du livre) jury. His research interests are in social theory, sociology of organizations, environmental ethnography, and social science philosophy. His latest books include: An Introduction to Sociology: Theories, Methods, and Contemporary Issues (2021); and his most recent translation is A Genealogical History of Society by Miguel Cabrera (2021).

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