Sort each research practice by whether it belongs to the Chicago tradition or to structural functionalism.
Groups: Chicago tradition · Structural functionalism
- Specifying the functional problems any social system must solve
- Mapping a city into rings around a central business district
- Building one conceptual scheme intended to cover every society
- Living in a neighbourhood in order to describe how it works
Hints
- One column is full of things a researcher does in a city; the other is full of things done at a desk.
- Pattern variables and functional prerequisites belong to the same project.
Show the answer
Chicago tradition: Mapping a city into rings around a central business district, Living in a neighbourhood in order to describe how it works
Structural functionalism: Specifying the functional problems any social system must solve, Building one conceptual scheme intended to cover every society
The contrast is not qualitative against quantitative. Chicago mapped and counted heavily. It is bottom-up against top-down: whether concepts are built to fit a case and then tested elsewhere, or specified in advance for all societies and then applied. Merton’s middle range was an explicit attempt to occupy the ground between.
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