Forgetting the Founders? The Uses of Classical Theory Today

It is commonly held that the most laudable research is constructed around a healthy interplay among theories, methods, and data. Despite this long-standing consensus, many scholars have voiced concerns that theoretical frameworks are too often given inadequate attention and are generally underdeveloped. This impression has yet to be expressed with an empirical basis. For this reason, we evaluate this apparent disciplinary situation by creating a dataset made up of 217 articles from general sociology journals, as well as 22 US graduate-level classical theory syllabi. Through various means, we assess how often and to what extent sociologists apply classical theory in their research. Rather than intensive theorizing and/or earnestly striving to elevate historical consciousness, we find that sociologists typically reduce the theoretical dimensions of their analyses to thin commemorations of foundational texts. To our knowledge, this is the first empirically based assessment of the degree to which classical theory is used and cited in sociological research.