LIFE AND WORKS OF R.K.MERTON
Robert King Merton’s name is very much familiar in the field of
social thought. Ablest disciple of Talcott Parsons, he by virtue of
his scholarly knowledge had the privilege of taking the position of his illustrious teacher in Harvard University According to Morgaret Wilson Vine, Robert K. Merton was one of the ablest social thinkers that America Produced.
Robert King Merton, an eminent American sociologist, was born on July 5, 1910, in the slums of South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father was a carpenter and truck driver. He grew up with a passion for knowledge and learning. At the age of eight he had discovered the local public library and started to read books of many fields. He was more interested to read biography. Merton did his graduation from the South Philadelphia High School for Boys in February 1927. He won a scholarship at Temple University and immediately distinguished himself by the calibre of his academic year in the same year.
He developed his interest in philosophy with the interaction of James Dunham, the dean of Temple University and a professor of philosophy. Later, he got inspiration in sociology from George E. Simpson who was a young and enthusiastic instructor in this university. In 1931, at the age of twenty-one, Merton won a followship that took him to Harvard and graduate work in Sociology. In Harvard, Merton got the opportunity to study with distinguished scholars such as Talcott Parsons, George Sarton, Pitrim Sorokin and L.J. Henderson. Merton began to publish articles in various journals such as Social Forces, the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Sociology and Social Research, Isis and the Scientific Monthly. In 1934, Merton became an instructor and tutor at Harvard. In the same year, he married Suzanne M. Car hart, a social worker who had also been a student at Temple University.
He received a doctorate from Harvard University, where he was one of Parsons earliest and most important graduate student. Parsons stated on the relationship with graduate students at Harvard, “the most important single one was with Robert Merton”. He adds, “For a considerable time, Merton and I came to be known as the leaders of a structural-functional school among American sociologists.” His doctorate work was first published in Osiris in 1938 as Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England.
In 1939, he was appointed associate professor at Harvard University and thereafter professor at Tulane University. In Tulane University, he also served as the chairman of the department. Two years later, in 1941, he accepted appointment as assistant professor of sociology at Columbia University.
In 1947, he became a professor at the same University and was named a Giddings professor in 1963. He also served as president of the American Sociological Association in 1956-1957 and president of the Eastern Sociological Society in 1968-69. He was also an associate director of the University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research from 1942-71. Merton, in fact, holds honorary degrees from Temple, Emory, Loyola (Chicago), Kalamazoo, Western Reserve, Chicago, Tulane, Colgate. Yale, Layden, Wales, and Harvard. He currently holds the titles of special service professor and University Professor Emirates. At Harvard, Merton was influenced by Pitrim Sorokin for large-scale theorising, empirical research and statistical studies. At This time he worked closely with another sociologist, Paul Lazarsfeld. Paul Lazarsfeld influenced Merton to become active in empirical research.
As a sociologist, Merton’s interest has been in diverse field, such as sociology of science and the professions, sociological theory and mass communication, and so on. He has widely written on science, housing, mass persuasion, the interview, business administrations, the student-physician, the freedom to read, social problems, Durkheim, Le Bon, Arabian intellectual development, invention, military technique, civilisation, population, time, the sociology of knowledge, bureaucracy, personality, crime, the family, questionnaires and scale, radio and film propaganda, discrimination, mass communication, public opinion polling, influence, research policy, epidemiology, friendship, medical school, professions, the corporations, quantifications, genius, nursing, anomy, leadership, and aging. Despite his wide range of work, he never produced a systematic theory or a system of sociology. He has not written any book on society.
Social Theory and Social Structure (1949) is considered as Merton’s major contribution in the field of sociology. In this book, he has written two classic essays on the relationship between sociological theory and empirical research and advocated a structural functional approach to the study of society and has given the concepts of manifest and latent-function and dysfunction. Besides functional analysis he has also discussed the concept of anomie and theory of reference group in this book. Other major work in the field of sociology are middle-range theory, and his work on role-sets.
Important Sociological Works
– Science, Technology and Society in 17th Century England, (1938)
– Mass Persuasion, (1946)
– The Focussed Interview, (1956)
– Social Theory and Social Structure, (1957)
– Contemporary Social Problems (with Nisbet), (1961)
– On the Shoulders of Giants, (1965) On Theoretical Sociology, (1967) Social Theory and Functional Analysis, (1969)
– The Sociology of Science, (1973)
– Sociological Ambivalence, (1976)