Middle-Range Theory

For the past decade, several archaeologists have advocated the development of middle-range theory as a way to give objective meaning to the archaeological record (e.g., Bettinger 1987; Binford 1977, 1983b; Thomas 1983, 1989; Torrence 1986). They argue that we must translate the static archaeological record into behaviorally dynamic terms by documenting causal linkages between relevant behaviors and their static material by-products.
This is accomplished, they argue, by making observations today that establish signature patterns allowing the unambiguous recognition of particular dynamics from their static by-products, and inferring past dynamics from identification of signature patterns in the archaeological record. Further, it has been emphasized that the operations and products of middle-range theory must remain logically independent of the general theory we use to explain the past to avoid automatically confirming our ideas about the past through a tautology. This approach to middle-range research is flawed in two major respects. First, the justification of inferences relies on the establishment of universal behavioral laws and unambiguous signature patterns to validate the use of uniformitarian assumptions, neither of which can be accomplished in the manner proposed. Second, the tautological relationship between description and explanation is not only an unavoidable, but also a necessary aspect of science. Solutions to these problems lie in using the physical characteristics of the archaeological record itself as our source of knowledge about the past rather than translating the record into untestable behavioral reconstructions.

The research-teaching nexus has been the issue of several studies, from different fields and their varying theoretical perspectives. This wide array of findings have gathered important insights in the relationship of research and teaching. But reciprocal use of this knowledge is difficult, because of the incompatible underlying theoretical paradigms. I suggest an approach to overcome this obstacle by reformulating the examined phenomena on basis of Niklas Luhmanns Systemtheory, including a suitable method to aim at the nexus of research and teaching itself. The goal is a theory of the middle range trough the combined use of the funktionale Analyse and the grounded theory methodology. This includes a discussion on a philosophical level about this decision, and a profound discussion of the methodological consequences. The Paper ends with how to access the empirical field.

The Blockchain has evoked the interest of practitioners and academics alike. Frequently only being perceived as the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, various innovative applications have highlighted its potential to disrupt, revolutionize, and restructure many industries, including the whole supply chain (SC) and logistics sector. Although major industry players are already investing huge amounts of money to build, test, and deploy disruptive solutions that bear the potential to substantially transform existing supply chains, there remains a dearth of literature in leading academic journals which closely investigates the Blockchain and uses theory to analyze, explain, and predict current as well as future developments. This conceptual paper strives to close this research gap and presents a framework that is built on four established economic theories (principal agent theory, transaction cost analysis, resource-based view, network theory) that can be used to derive relevant theory-based research questions. Additionally, the functionality of the Blockchain is briefly explained and some use cases are presented. This paper is intended to initiate and stimulate academic discussion on the potential impact of the Blockchain and introduces a framework for middle-range theorizing together with several potential research questions.

During the past decade, social mechanisms and mechanism-based ex- planations have received considerable attention in the social sciences as well as in the philosophy of science. This article critically reviews the most important philosophical and social science contributions to the mechanism approach. The first part discusses the idea of mechanism- based explanation from the point of view of philosophy of science and relates it to causation and to the covering-law account of explanation. The second part focuses on how the idea of mechanisms has been used in the social sciences. The final part discusses recent developments in analytical sociology, covering the nature of sociological explananda, the role of theory of action in mechanism-based explanations, Merton’s idea of middle-range theory, and the role of agent-based simulations in the development of mechanism-based explanations.

I review several bodies of empirical urban theory relevant to the archaeological analysis of ancient cities. Empirical theory is a type of "middlerange theory" (following Robert Merton): sets of concepts and methods that are less abstract, and have greater empirical content, than high-level social theory. The categories of theory reviewed here include environment-behavior theory, architectural communication theory, space syntax, urban morphology, reception theory, generative planning theory, normative theory, and city size theory. Most of these approaches originated in the fields of architecture, planning, and geography, and they directly link the urban-built environment to the actions of people within cities.

Based on a critical assessment of previous scholarship, this paper tries to establish a new conceptual framework to deal with processes of transfer, reception and adaption in Roman architecture. The main goal is to propose an integrated methodology which is robust enough to deal with both the structural and the processual aspects of the built environment. Focusing on Middle Range Theory and human agency, I suggest to replace the old meta-historical assumptions of ‘travelling workshops’ and diffusionist ‘cultural areas’ with a complex network of social, political, legal and economic conditions which constantly shaped Roman architecture between the imperial and the local.

Robert Merton's essays on theories of the middle range and his essays on functional explanation and the structural approach are among the most inf1uential in the history of sociology. But their import is a puzzle. He explicitly allied himself with some of the most extreme scientistic formalists and contributed to and endorsed the Columbia model of theory construction. But Merton never responded to criticisms by Ernest Nagel of his arguments or acknowledged the rivalry between Lazarsfeld and Herbert Simon, rarely cited the philosophical and methodological literature, and responded to critics with ambiguous concessions, leaving the Mertonian legacy profoundly ambiguous.

Description of the historical - 'ethnographic' Thucydidean method. The Middle-Range Theory and its multiple meanings. The Binford design and its origin. Modern associations between the Thucydidean method of retrospective history and ethnography. August/2013.

Revised and improved September/2014

This paper discusses the principle of symmetry for archaeology in light of the discipline’s theoretical legacy. At the core, this principle involves a reconfiguration of how the relationship between humans and things is characterized. Advocating the recognition of mixtures of what are routinely parsed into categories of nature and society, a symmetrical archaeology centres itself upon the equitable study of the discipline’s defining ingredients. It is argued that such symmetry of humans and things undercuts many pesky dualisms exhibited throughout the recent history of archaeological theory and practice. The article summarizes the salient formulations of this relationship in archaeological thinking and suggests that a symmetrical focus on ontological mixtures removes the reliance upon multiplying epistemological settlements that fragment the discipline. An example is given of how heritage might be rethought.

Small bone fragments have often been interpreted as the residues of stews or grease extraction. In international historical archaeological research, stew interpretations have often focused on enslaved or underclass groups or on those who had limited access to sufficient amounts of food or faced nutritional deficiencies. These analyses have widely been uncritical, and the small fragment sizes can be better explained as the products of taphonomic processes such as weathering, trampling, and carnivore scavenging. This work presents results from experimentally chopped long bones from cows, sheep, goats, and pigs that identify butchery and fracture patterns that can be used to evaluate past stew interpretations and provide comparative models for future analyses.

(The paper is written in Finnish)

Poetics as a Middle-Range Theory. Meta-Theoretical Perspectives on Twentieth-Century Theories of Poetics

This paper examines three prominent twentieth-century theories of poetics from a meta-theoretical point of view, asking whether they can be understood as empirically oriented middle-range theories. One of the starting points for the paper is Brian McHale’s essay “Whatever happened to descriptive poetics?” (1994), in which he suggests that the descriptive poetics of the Tel Aviv theorist Benjamin Harshav (previously Hrusovski) should be understood as a middle-range theory that gives detailed descriptions of literary phenomena. In addition to reviewing McHale’s suggestion, the paper also examines whether two other twentieth-century poetical theories, one by the Russian Formalist Boris Eichenbaum and another by the French Structuralist Tzvetan Todorov, can be characterized as such.

The theoretical texts under study are “The Theory of the Formal Method” (1925) by Eichenbaum, “La poetique structurale” (1968) by Todorov, and “Poetics, criticism, science: Remarks on the fields and responsibilities of the study of literature” (1976) by Harshav. The paper argues that Eichenbaum’s account of Russian Formalism satisfies the criteria for middle-range theories, whereas Todorov’s model also exhibits characteristics of high theories especially in its ideas of an abstract literary discourse and of the study of possible works. The paper concludes that even if poetics is generally understood as an alternative to hermeneutics, text analysis is a practice in which the results and concepts of poetics serve a hermeneutic purpose: the analysis and interpretation of a text. 

Keywords: poetics, synchronic poetics, descriptive poetics, middle-range theory, Russian Formalism, French Structuralism, Tel Aviv School of poetics and semantics.

»Middle range« bezeichnet nicht einfach einen Typ soziologischer Theorie (etwa zwischen universell und empirisch) und bezieht sich auch nicht auf eine Eigenschaft des untersuchten Gegenstands (etwa zwischen »mikro«
und »makro«). Aber was bezeichnet »middle range« dann? Merton arbeitet zur näheren Bestimmung mit dem Begriff des Paradigmas (den er enger als Thomas S. Kuhn verstanden wissen will), der eine Codifizierung der soziologischen Theorie bezeichnet. In diesem Zusammenhang ist das Betreiben einer Middle-Range-Theorie ein Paradigma; und zwar ein Paradigma, das sich dadurch auszeichnet, dass es mit einer mittleren Anzahl von Freiheitsgraden rechnen kann.

Over the last decade, we have conducted an actualistic taphonomic research program in the Humid Pampas of Argentina, in order to build a corpus of information about the taphonomic agents and processes characterizing this sub-region. In this paper, we present a summary of our results after ten years of actualistic taphonomic studies in the Pampas. Our program includes both naturalistic and experimental research. Some of the controlled experiments consist of studies with different-aged guanaco bones, including sub-aerial weathering in a controlled environment, and water transport with disarticulated bones. Other studies were conducted at a local zoo, where we offered different types of prey to native small-sized carnivores (canids, felids, mustelids, and mephitids). Our naturalistic observations include the development of taphonomic transects in different environments. Through this method, we were able to study different topics among which some of the more significant are the movement of bones by small-sized carnivores and the distribution of beached Magellanic penguin specimens along the coast. Particular studies included the analyses of the content of dens occupied by small carnivores, the effects of a grassland fire in a vertebrate assemblage, the modifications produced by a local rodent-vizcacha-in the landscape, and the damage generated by pumas in guanaco carcasses. After ten years of systematic research we contributed to identify the potential mixture between modern bones and the archaeological record in relation to the environment; to determine bone preservation biases according to the properties of the record; to recognize agents responsible of bone accumulation and alteration; and to establish diagnostic criteria in order to differentiate cultural from natural patterns.

Tringham, Ruth (1978) Experimentation, Ethnoarchaeology and the Leapfrogs in Archaeological Methodology. In Explorations in Ethnoarchaeology, edited by R. Gould, pp. 169-199. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

The main agenda of this essay is that observation of and experimentation with archaeological materials cannot be separated from hypothesis building and testing, and, as a corollary, that basic research in archaeological materials is as much an integral part of archaeological question answering as the philosophical model building of Binford, Plog, and Clarke.

The two aspects of archaeological research discussed here­ - ethnoarchaeological and experimental archaeology - both manifest many of the attributes of traditional empirical investigation and have been spurned and belittled by the philosophers of archaeology as peripheral to the New Methodology, as unscientific, and as having only specific time-space utility. This chapter examines the methodological procedures by which these two aspects of our discip­line may be transformed to play an integral part in hypothesis testing and in the formulation of probability statements in archaeological research.

We can define ethnoarchaeology as the structure for a series of observations on behavioral patterns of living societies which are designed to answer archaeologically oriented questions. "Experimental archaeology" - that is, experiments as part of archaeological investigations - on the other hand, comprises a series of observations on behavior that is artificially induced. Both may involve more or less rigorously controlled conditions and recorded results.

Both are important aspects of a materialist study of behavior, pertinent to the study not only of past behavior but also of that of the present and the future. Theoretically, both ethnoarchaeological and experimental observations should provide valuable resources for test­ing hypotheses concerning archaeological data. Ethnoarchaeological observations are not in competition with experimental observations in providing valuable data on behavior; their information is of a different kind, and this distinction should be made self-consciously when using these data, since it affects conclusions and the confirmation of hypotheses.

The stress in this chapter falls on the side of experiments in archaeology, since my own research has been directly concerned with this aspect of archaeological testing. But my argument will emphasize that both sources of information, although separate, increase their value in interpreting archaeological data when one recognizes and takes advantage of their close interrelationship and interdependence.
https://www.ruthtringham.com/project/experimentation-ethnoarchaeology-leapfrogs-1978/

Sosiologi Robert K. Mertonin mukaan keskitason teoriat sijoittuvat empiirisessä tutkimuksessa välttämättömien työhypoteesien ja kaiken kattavien sosiologisten teoriajärjestelmien välisen jatkumon keskelle. Tässä artikkelissa täsmennän ja kehittelen eteenpäin keskitason teorian käsitettä Mertonin kirjoitusten analyysin ja kommentaarikirjallisuuden pohjalta. Vastoin monia aiempia tulkintoja esitän, että keskitason teorian käsite ei ole toivottoman monitulkintainen ja että se on mahdollista määritellä suhteellisen täsmällisesti. Argumentoin myös, että teorianmuodostuksen kontekstissa keskitason teoriat on hedelmällisempää ymmärtää dynaamisiksi, empiirisen tutkimuksen yhteydessä kehittyviksi entiteeteiksi kuin väitelauseiden staattisiksi järjestelmiksi. Havainnollistan keskitason teorian käsitettä ja siihen liittyvää teorianmuodostuksen dynamiikkaa tarkastelemalla Mertonin ja Alice S. Rossin kehittelemää viiteryhmäteoriaa. Artikkelin johtopäätös on, että täsmennetty keskitason teorian käsite ja dynaaminen käsitys teorianmuodostuksesta muodostavat hedelmällisen tavan kytkeä sosiologiset teoriat ja empiirinen analyysi toisiinsa.

How are middle-range theories about causal mechanisms built from case studies in the social sciences? My aim is to answer this question by analyzing and improving Derek Beach and Rasmus Brun Pedersen’s descriptions of the foundations and guidelines for theory-building process-tracing. After having introduced the basic issues and concepts, I discuss their account of how new middle-range theories about causal mechanisms are built through process-tracing in single-case research designs. Then I identify some ambiguities and problems in their notions of middle-range theory and causal mechanism. In the latter part of the paper, I provide accounts of causal mechanisms and middle-range theories that aim to resolve the problems and ambiguities in Beach and Pedersen’s work. I close the paper by outlining an improved approach to theory-building process-tracing that employs these accounts.

Open-air sites are ubiquitous signatures on most archaeological landscapes. When they are appropriately recorded, well-preserved and are single-component occupations, they provide access to high-resolution occupation data that is often not available from rock-shelter sites. These sites are, however, commonly affected by a number of post-depositional factors that are not adequately studied in archaeology. This paper presents the results of an open-air experiment conducted in northeastern Botswana. Two surface scatters modelled on known Bushman open-air camp sites were created to investigate the taphonomic factors affecting such sites. The scattered materials at these sites included stone tools, ostrich eggshell fragments, ceramic sherds, glass beads and faunal remains. Two scatters were laid out consisting of a nested square design; one site was excavated after four months and the other after twelve. The results show little horizontal material movement at these scatters and an initial, rapid, vertical period of mobility, after which the majority of surface artefacts are protected from subsequent movement, preserving the general scatter structures. This experiment suggests that open-air sites can offer detailed spatial information relevant to human settlement structure that is often not accessible at rock-shelter sites.

Against the backdrop of TAG’s conspicuous success, this paper explores the relevance of the expressed anxiety surrounding the supposed death of archaeological theory at Durham TAG’s plenary in 2009. Initially a concise description of recent developments in the perceived character of TAG and the meeting’s likeness to the conduct of current archaeological theorising is given. From this it is identified that archaeological theory appears to be fragmented both geographically in terms of the conference and disciplinarily in terms of the many emerging niches. These are important aspects of the state of archaeological theory and the perception of a loss of overarching relevance. Moreover the paper demonstrates that explicit instances of theorising are primarily limited to epistemological commentaries or of a polemic nature. Consequently it will be argued that instead of thinking in terms of particularist and general theory, a simultaneous consideration of how we do theory and what theory should do for us is needed. A case is made for connecting fundamental concerns to empirical theory as a cogent way forward, as exemplified by the built environment. This is placed in relation to current theoretical debates on prominent aspects of archaeology. Using Durham TAG’s alert as a catalyst this paper aims to make some thought provoking comments and recommendations in order to refocus archaeological theorising.

This article develops a novel account of middle‐range theories for combining theoretical and empirical analysis in explanatory sociology. I first revisit Robert K. Merton's original ideas on middle‐range theories and identify a tension between his developmental approach to middle‐range theorizing that recognizes multiple functions of theories in sociological research and his static definition of the concept of middle‐range theory that focuses only on empirical testing of theories. Drawing on Merton's ideas on theorizing and recent discussions on mechanism‐based explanations, I argue that this tension can be resolved by decomposing a middle‐range theory into three interrelated and evolving components that perform different functions in sociological research: (i) a conceptual framework about social phenomena that is a set of interrelated concepts that evolve in close connection with empirical analysis; (ii) a mechanism schema that is an abstract and incomplete description of a social mechanism; and (iii) a cluster of all mechanism‐based explanations of social phenomena that are based on the particular mechanism schema. I show how these components develop over time and how they serve different functions in sociological theorizing and research. Finally, I illustrate these ideas by discussing Merton's theory of the Matthew effect in science and its more recent applications in sociology.

Tentando refletir criticamente sobre a natureza da abordagem qualitativa, e os estudos de caso como estratégia particular, o presente trabalho procura analisar as práticas científicas no campo sociológico. Com este objetivo, proponho dois caminhos: I) examinar as lógicas de amostragem nos estudos qualitativos, suas potencialidades e limitações e II)  discutir a atividade de produção de conhecimento científico necessariamente inserida dentro de um campo especifico, com regras que lhe são próprias. O intuito deste trabalho é tentar identificar quais mecanismos e/ou regras de produção de conhecimento científico habilitam que o saber produzido em estudos de caso, com suas características específicas, possa entrar em diálogo, refutar e/ou fortalecer formulações teóricas amplas e abrangentes. Procura-se assim evidenciar, no desenvolvimento mesmo da explanação, a complexidade da articulação dos níveis de conhecimento metodológicos, epistemológicos e teóricos.