RECONSTRUCTING THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

It is curious that sociologists have never engaged in any serious or sustained discourse on the criteria for constituting histories of sociological theory-thought, though the interest in such history generally dates back at least to Giddings and Small. From the earliest volume by Bristol on Social Adaptation in 1915 up to Turner's and Beeghley's The Emergence ofSociologi-cal Theory in 1981, the prefaces, prologues, and introductions are conspicuously devoid of any consideration of the general problem of just how such undertakings are to be constituted. Other literature is pervasively lacking in the treatment of the problem. Even Merton's chapter "On the History and Systema-tics of Sociological Theory, " which introduces his On Theoretical Sociology in 19.67, does not directly tackle the problem. And with the exception of one roundtable in 1978, the same void has been characteristic of the American Sociological Associatio