Preprint (18 August 2024), forthcoming in Die Praxis soziologischer Theoriebildung eds. Fabian Anicker & André Armbruster Springer 1 Unchain the beast! Pluralizing the method of theorizing Mikael Carleheden Department of sociology University of Copenhagen mc@soc.ku.dk Abstract: Today most sociologists claim to be theorizing or use theory in one sense or the other. However, it is often unclear what is meant by this claim and how the theorizing is conducted. A sociologist is a scientist sitting on a stool with three legs: social theory, qualitative research and quantitative research. If one of the legs is in bad shape, the stool might break and the sociologist will fall down. Thus, even though these main subfields of sociology differ in many aspects, they are interdependent. In this paper, I will focus on the theoretical dimension of this interdependence. My claim is that all three subfields include practices of theorizing, which typically are different in kind. This difference, however, has the form of “know-how” rather than “know-that”. I will therefore try to explicate the different methods implicated by these different ways of theorizing. The general aim is to show that the different methods of theorizing can accomplish different things, which are all crucial for sociology as a discipline. Thus, the paper is call for theoretical pluralism. Keywords: Theorizing, theory, method, sociology, pluralism In a fascinating article, Richard Swedberg (2019) presents and analyzes a graduate course that Robert Merton taught at Columbia from 1942 until 1952. The material of the course is stored in archives at the library of Columbia University and has, according to Swedberg, no counterpart in Merton’s published work. When introducing the course to his students, Merton said that it is neither about: “history of social theory, nor substantive content of theory, but what may in essence be a new kind of ‘beast’ – the counterpart of methodology in field of research procedures; method of theorizing, which consists of operations just as collection of social data consists in operation.” (Swedberg 2019, p. 88) However, for a long time it has been surprisingly quiet about this topic. It seems to have been stacked away together with the course material in the archives of Columbia University. Not until the last decade, the “beast” has begun to move and today one might even claim that methods of theorizing are on the verge of becoming a field of inquiry of its own - primarily thanks to the work of Swedberg. I am, however, partly critical about especially Merton’s, but also Swedberg’s, notion of this beast. Merton’s method of theorizing is tightly connected to what he calls “sociological theory” (Merton 1945) or “theories of the middle range" (Merton 1968). His notion might very well be the most influential notion of theorizing in sociology. My aim in this paper is to contribute to the liberation of the beast from the chains of Merton’s conception and formulate a more pluralistic notion.