Generally Speaking : An Invitation to Concept-Driven Sociology

In Generally Speaking, Eviatar Zerubavel introduces a method of theorizing designed to reveal abstract social patterns. He examines the theoretical and methodological process by which generic social patterns can be distilled from the culturally, historically, and situationally specific contexts. Zerubavel further draws on numerous examples from diverse cultural contexts, historical periods, and social domains to show what constitutes data in formal theorizing, how to collect that data, and how this approach works in concert with ethnography and historical forms of social inquiry.

In this invitation to "concept-driven" sociology, defying the conventional split between "theory" and "methodology" (as well as between "quantitative" and "qualitative" research), Eviatar Zerubavel introduces a yet unarticulated "Simmelian" method of theorizing specifically designed to reveal fundamental, often hidden social patterns. Insisting that it can actually be taught, he examines the theoretico-methodological process (revolving around the epistemic and analytical acts of focusing, generalizing, "exampling," and analogizing) by which concept-driven researchers can distill generic social patterns from the culturally, historically, and domain-specific contexts in which they encounter them empirically. Disregarding conventionally noted substantive variability in order to uncover conventionally disregarded formal commonalities, Generally Speaking draws on cross-cultural, cross-historical, cross-domain, and cross-level analogies in an effort to reveal formal parallels across disparate contexts. Using numerous examples from culturally and historically diverse contexts and a wide range of social domains while also disregarding scale, Zerubavel thus introduces a pronouncedly transcontextual "generic" sociology.