Today, most sociologists claim to be theorizing or use theory in one sense or
the other. However, it is often unclear what this claim means and how such
theorizing is conducted. A sociologist is a scientist sitting on a stool with
three legs: social theory, qualitative research, and quantitative research. If one
of the legs is in bad shape, the stool might break and the sociologist will fall
down. Thus, these main subfields of sociology differ in many aspects, but are
interdependent. In this paper, I will focus on the theoretical dimension of this
interdependence. My claim is that all three subfields include practices of theorizing, which typically are different in kind. This difference, however, has the
form of “know-how” rather than “know-that.” I will therefore try to explicate
the different methods implicated by these different ways of theorizing. The
general aim is to show how the different methods of theorizing can accomplish
different things, all of which are crucial for the sociology discipline.
Thus, the paper calls for theoretical pluralism.