Robert K. Merton | Sociology Optional for UPSC (Notes) PDF Download

Biographical Sketch

• Robert K. Merton was born in 1910 in Philadelphia as Meyer Robert Schkolnick into a family of Yiddish-speaking Russian Jews who had immigrated to the United States in 1904. Merton's family lived in strained circumstances after his father's shop burned down. His father later became a carpenter's assistant to support the family. Even though Merton grew up fairly poor, however, he believed that he had been afforded many opportunities.
• He adopted the name Robert K. Merton initially as a stage name for his magic performances.
• He started his sociological career under the guidance of George E. Simpson at Philadelphia's Temple University. Under Simpson's leadership, Merton attended an American Sociological Association meeting where he met Pitrim A. Sorokin, the founding chair of the Harvard University Sociology Department. Merton applied to Harvard and went to work as a research assistant to Sorokin.
• Merton went on to graduate from Harvard with an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology. By the end of his student career in 1938, he had already begun to embark on works that made him renowned in the sociological field, publishing his first major study, Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth Century England, which helped create the sociology of science.
• He taught at Harvard until 1938, when he became professor and chairman of the Department of Sociology at Tulane University. In 1941 he joined the Columbia University faculty, where he spent the vast majority of his teaching career. Over his five decades at Columbia University he held numerous prestigious titles. He was named to the university's highest academic rank, University Professor, in 1974 and became a Special Service Professor, a title reserved by the trustees for emeritus faculty who "render special services to the University", upon his retirement in 1979. He was an adjunct faculty member at Rockefeller University. He withdrew from teaching in 1984. In recognition of his lasting contributions to scholarship and the university, Columbia established the Robert K. Merton Professorship in the Social Sciences in 1990.
• Over his career, Merton published some 50 papers in the sociology of science. Merton received many national and international honors for his research. He was one of the first sociologists elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the first American sociologist to be elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences . He was also a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which awarded him its Parsons Prize, the National Academy of Education and Academica Europaea. Merton is also credited as the creator of the focus group research method.
• More than twenty universities awarded him honorary degrees, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Chicago, and abroad, the Universities of Leiden, Wales, Oslo and Kraków, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Oxford. In 1994, Merton was awarded the US National Medal of Science, for "founding the sociology of science and for his pioneering contributions to the study of social life, especially the self-fulfilling prophecy and the unintended consequences of social action". He was the first sociologist to receive the prize.

Robert Merton’s Structural Functionalism

Although Talcott Parsons is the most important structural-functional theorist, his student Robert Merton authored some of the most important statements on structural functionalism in sociology. Merton criticized some of the more extreme and indefensible aspects of structural functionalism. But equally important, his new conceptual insights helped give structural functionalism a continuing usefulness.
Although both Merton and Parsons are associated with structural functionalism, there are important differences between them. For one thing, while Parsons advocated the creation of grand, overarching theories, Merton favored more limited, middle- range theories. For another, Merton was more favorable toward Marxian theories than Parsons was. In fact, Merton and some of his students (especially Alvin Gouldner) can be seen as having pushed structural functionalism more to the left politically.

A Structural-Functional Model

• Merton criticized what he saw as the three basic postulates of functional analysis as it was developed by  anthropologists such as Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. The first is the postulate of the functional unity of society. This postulate holds that all standardized social and cultural beliefs and practices are functional for society as a whole as well as for individuals in society. This view implies that the various parts of a social system must show a high level of integration. However, Merton maintained that although it may be true of small, primitive societies, this generalization cannot be extended to larger, more complex societies.
• Universal functionalism is the second postulate. That is, it is argued that all standardized social and cultural forms and structures have positive functions. Merton argued that this contradicts what we find in the real world. It is clear that not every structure, custom, idea, belief, and so forth, has positive functions. For example, rabid nationalism can be highly dysfunctional in a world of proliferating nuclear arms.
• Third is the postulate of indispensability. The argument here is that all standard- ized aspects of society not only have positive functions but also represent indispensable parts of the working whole. This postulate leads to the idea that all structures and functions are functionally necessary for society. No other structures and functions could work quite as well as those that are currently found within society. Merton’s criticism, following Parsons, was that we must at least be willing to admit that there  are various structural and functional alternatives to be found within society.
• Merton’s position was that all these functional postulates rely on nonempirical assertions based on abstract, theoretical systems. At a minimum, it is the responsibility of the sociologist to examine each empirically. Merton’s belief that empirical tests, not theoretical assertions, are crucial to functional analysis led him to develop his “para- digm” of functional analysis as a guide to the integration of theory and research.
• Merton made it clear from the outset that structural-functional analysis focuses on groups, organizations, societies, and cultures. He stated that any object that can be subjected to  structural-functional analysis must “represent a standardized (that is, pat- terned and repetitive) item”. He had in mind such things as “social roles, institutional patterns, social processes, cultural patterns, culturally patterned emotions, social norms, group organization, social structure, devices for social control, etc.”.
• Early structural functionalists tended to focus almost entirely on the functions of one social structure or institution for another. However, in Merton’s view, early analysts tended to confuse the subjective motives of individuals with the functions of structures or institutions. The focus of the structural functionalist should be on social functions rather than on individual motives. Functions, according to Merton, are defined as “those observed consequences which make for the adaptation or adjustment of a given system” (1949/1968:105). However, there is a clear ideological bias when one focuses only on adaptation or adjustment, for they are always positive consequences. It is important to note that one social fact can have negative consequences for another social fact. To rectify this serious omission in early structural functionalism, Merton developed the idea of a dysfunction. Just as structures or institutions could contribute to the maintenance of other parts of the social system, they also could have negative consequences for them. Slavery in the southern United States, for example, clearly had positive consequences for white southerners, such as supplying cheap labor, support for the cotton economy, and social status. It also had dysfunctions, such as making southerners overly dependent on an agrarian economy and therefore unprepared for industrialization. The lingering disparity between the North and the South in industrialization can be traced, at least in part, to the dysfunctions of the institution of slavery in the South.
• Merton also posited the idea of nonfunctions, which he defined as consequences that are simply irrelevant to the system under consideration. Included here might be social forms that are “survivals” from earlier historical times.  Although they may have had positive or negative consequences in the past, they have no significant effect on contemporary society. One example, although a few might disagree, is the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement.
• To help answer the question of whether positive functions outweigh dysfunctions, or vice versa, Merton developed the concept of net balance. However, we never can simply add up positive functions and dysfunctions and objectively determine which outweighs the other, because the issues are so complex and are based on so much subjective judgment that they cannot be calculated and weighed easily. The usefulness of Merton’s concept comes from the way it orients the sociologist to the question of relative significance. To return to the example of slavery, the question becomes whether, on balance, slavery was more functional or dysfunctional to the South. Still, this question is too broad and obscures a number of issues (for example, that slavery was functional for groups such as white slaveholders).
• To cope with problems like these, Merton added the idea that there must be levels of functional analysis. Functionalists had generally restricted themselves to analysis of the society as a whole, but Merton made it clear that analysis also could be done on an organization, institution, or group. Returning to the issue of the functions of slavery for the South, it would be necessary to differentiate several levels of analysis and ask about the functions and dysfunctions of slavery for black families, white families, black political organizations, white political organizations, and so forth. In terms of net balance, slavery was probably more functional for certain social units and more dysfunctional for other social units. Addressing the issue at these more specific levels helps in analyzing the functionality of slavery for the South as a whole.

Manifest and Latent functions

• Merton also introduced the concepts of manifest and latent functions. These two terms have also been important additions to functional analysis. In simple terms, manifest functions are those that are intended, whereas latent functions are unintended. The manifest function of slavery, for example, was to increase the economic productivity of the South, but it had the latent function of providing a vast underclass that served to increase the social status of southern whites, both rich and poor. This idea is related to another of Merton’s concepts— unanticipated consequences. Actions have both intended and unintended consequences. Although everyone is aware of the intended consequences, sociological analysis is required to uncover the unintended consequences; indeed, to some this is the very essence of sociology. Peter Berger (1963) has called  this “debunking,” or looking beyond stated intentions to real effects.
  
  A sociologist is well-equipped to find latent functions
• Merton made it clear that unanticipated consequences and latent functions are not the same. A latent function is one type of unanticipated consequence, one that is functional for the designated system. But there are two other types of unanticipated consequences: “those that are dysfunctional for a designated system, and these comprise the latent dysfunctions,” and “those which are irrelevant to the system which they affect neither functionally or dysfunctionally . . . non-functional consequences”.
• As further clarification of functional theory, Merton pointed out that a structure may be dysfunctional for the system as a whole yet may continue to exist. One might make a good case that discrimination against blacks, females, and other minority groups is dysfunctional for American society,  yet it continues to  exist because it is functional for a part of the social system; for example, discrimination against females is generally functional for males. However, these forms of discrimination are not without  some dysfunctions, even for the group for which they are functional. Males do suffer from their discrimination against females; similarly, whites are hurt by their discriminatory behavior toward blacks. One could argue that these forms of discrimination adversely affect those who discriminate by keeping vast numbers of people underproductive and by increasing the likelihood of social conflict.
• Merton contended that not all structures are indispensable to the workings of the social system. Some parts of our social system can be eliminated. This helps functional theory overcome another of its conservative biases. By recognizing that some structures are expendable, functionalism opens the way for meaningful social change. Our society, for example, could continue to exist (and even be improved) by the  elimination  of discrimination against various minority groups.
• Merton’s clarifications are of great utility to sociologists (for example, Gans) who wish to perform structural-functional analyses.

Reference Group

• Reference group as a concept first appeared in Archives of Psychology of Herbert Hyman, but it was Merton who added a functional dimension in his Contribution to the Theory of Reference Group Behaviour, 1950. This theory was primarily inspired from the Samuel Stouffer’s The American Soldier, 1949 which highlights the feeling of relative deprivation of a soldier despite no apparent deprivation in terms of actual hardship.
• Reference Group is defined as a group, with which, one always makes a comparison, in order to evaluate ones achievement, aspirations, role performance and ambition. They act as normative standards for the individual. Merton later distinguished between Reference Group and Interaction Group. Interaction groups are a more general part of the individuals social environment but may neither set normative standards for individual nor serve as a standard of comparison. On the other hand, reference group is the aspirational group and is defined in normative terms as a standard of comparison. It implies that relative deprivation is also akin to reference group behaviour.
  

Reference groups can be of two types -

• Membership Groups
• Non-Membership Groups

Further, according to Merton, reference groups can be of two more types positive and negative reference groups. Positive reference groups are the ones that individual wishes to join; negative are those which individual wishes to avoid.
He also gives the concept of anticipatory socialisation in which individual starts to behave in a manner in which members of aspirational reference group behave. It leads to change in the value system of individual and it facilitates easy merger of individual in the aspirational group.
He also sees some dysfunctional aspects of anticipatory socialisation in case of closed systems. In such a situation, an individual becomes a pariah in his own social group and also fails to gain entry into reference group and is reduced to a marginal man.
It is totally up to an individual to decide what reference group one will make. So, a membership group may not be a reference group, but a non-membership group can be.

Merton also suggested some factors which are decisive in making a group, a reference group -

• Power and prestige
• Isolation in membership group
• Open vs closed group
• Reference individuals or role models in a group

Further, reference groups don’t remain the same always. The choice of reference groups depends on the nature and quality of norms and values one is interested in and as interests change, reference groups also change. One’s reference group in political field may not be same as those in the religious field. As the choice of reference group is entirely upon an individual, often, there is a considerable difference in the type of groups chosen by different generations. This, to some extent, explains the phenomenon of Generation Gap.
Cricketers are an influential reference group for many Indians. Advertising plays up such aspirations.

Merton’s theories and concepts are considered relevant, especially while developing a concept of holistic explanation in terms of both intended and unintended consequences. Social problems can be approached in a more pragmatic way, undertaking its manifest and latent analysis. By using Merton’s functional paradigm, a number of middle range theories were formulated, which have strengthened the understanding of the society. For example, his theory of deviance has led to the development of a number of sub-cultural theories of deviance. The study of limited phenomenon is followed till now. He also made a contribution to make Sociology more inter-disciplinary. He gave some other concepts like Self-fulfilling Prophecy which have become a part of common vocabulary, along with his other concepts like Reference Group.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy 

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that becomes true, due to the very fact that it is a prophecy and because of a purported positive feedback mechanism between behaviour of the actor and belief of the prophecy maker. For example, if a teacher in a class openly says that a student X will top, there are chances that student may actually tops the class. A corollary of this is that subjects often perform according to the social expectations attached to them. This concept is also applicable in sociology of work.

Conformity and Deviance

• Merton argued that deviance resulted from the culture and structure of society itself. He began from the standard functionalist position of value consensus that is, all members of society share the same values. However, since members of society are placed in different positions in the social structure (for example, they differ in terms of class position), they do not have the same opportunity of realising the shared values. This situation can generate deviance. In Merton’s words,‘ the social and cultural structure generates pressure for socially deviant behaviour upon people variously located in that structure’.
  
  Drug Addiction is a form of deviance

Cultural goals and institutionalized means

• Using the USA as an example, Merton outlined his theory as follows. Members of American society share the major values of American culture. In particular they share the goal of success, for which they ail strive and which is largely measured in terms of wealth and material possessions. The ’American Dream’ states that all members of society have an equal opportunity of achieving success, of owning a Cadillac, a Beverly Hills mansion and a substantial bank balance. In all societies there are institutionalised  means of reaching  culturally  defined goals. In America the accepted ways of achieving success are through educational qualifications, talent, hard work, drive, determination and ambition.
• In a balanced society an equal emphasis is placed upon both cultural goals and institutionalised means, and members are satisfied with both. But in America great importance is attached to success, and relatively little importance is given to the accepted ways of achieving success .As such, American society is unstable and unbalanced. There is a tendency to reject the rules of the game' and to strive for success by any available means. The situation becomes like a game of cards in which winning becomes so important that the rules are abandoned by some of the players.
• When rules cease to operate, a situation of normlessness or anomie results. In this situation of 'anything goes', norms no longer direct behaviour, and deviance is encouraged. In Merton s theory anomie involves an overemphasis on the cultural goals of success and lack of emphasis on culturally accepted means of achieving success (adhering to the norms and laws of society).It leads to a breakdown in norms. Merton used the gangster Al Capone as an example: he became rich through organised crime.
• Individuals will respond to a situation of anomie in different ways. In particular, their reaction will be shaped by their position in the social structure.

Responses to cultural goals
Merton outlined five possible ways in which members of American society could respond to success goals:

• The first and most common response is conformity. Members of society conform both to success goals and to the normative means of reaching them. They strive for success by means of accepted channels.
• A second response is innovation. This response rejects normative means of achieving success and turns to deviant means, in particular, crime. Merton argues that members of the lower social strata are most likely to select this route to success. They are least likely to succeed via conventional channels, and so there is greater pressure upon them to deviate. Their educational qualifications are usually low and their jobs provide little opportunity for advancement. In Merton s words, they have little access to conventional and legitimate means for becoming  successful'. Since their way  is blocked, they innovate, turning to crime, which promises greater rewards than legitimate means.
  Merton stressed that membership of the lower strata is not, in itself, sufficient to produce deviance. Only in societies such as the USA, where all members share the same success goals, does the pressure to innovate operate forcefully on the lower classes. Merton argues that those who innovate have been imperfectly socialized so that they abandon institutional means while retaining success-aspirations.
• The third possible response is ritualism. Those who select this alternative are deviant because they have largely abandoned the commonly held success goals. The pressure to adopt this alternative is greatest for members of the lower middle class whose occupations provide less opportunity for success than those of other members of the middle class. However, compared with members of the working class, they have been strongly socialised to conform to social norms. This prevents them from turning to crime. Unable to innovate, and with jobs that offer little opportunity for advancement, their only solution is to scale down or abandon their success goals.
  Merton paints the following picture of typical lower middle-class ritualists. They are low-grade bureaucrats, ultra-respectable but stuck in a rut. They are sticklers for the rules, cling to red tape, conform to the outward standards of middle-class respectability,  but have given up  striving for success. Ritualists are deviant because they have rejected the success goals held by most members of society.
  
• Merton terms the fourth, and least common, response, retreatism. It applies to psychotics, pariahs, outcasts, vagrants, vagabonds, tramps, chronic drunkards and drug addicts. They have strongly internalised both the cultural goals and the institutionalised means, yet are unable to achieve success. They resolve this conflict by abandoning both the goals and the means of reaching them. They‘ drop out’ of  society, defeated and resigned to their failure. They are deviant in two ways: they have rejected both the cultural goals and the institutionalised means. Merton does not relate retreatism to social class position.
• Rebellion forms the fifth and final response. It is a rejection of both the success goals and the institutionalised means, and it replaces them with different goals and means. Those who adopt this alternative wish to create a new society. Merton argues that ‘it is typically members of a rising class rather than the most depressed strata who organize the resentful and rebellious into a revolutionary group’.
  To summarise, Merton claimed his analysis showed how the culture and structure of society generate deviance. The overemphasis upon the cultural goals of financial success and high status in American society, at the expense of institutionalised means, creates a tendency towards anomie. This tendency exerts pressure for deviance, a pressure which varies depending on a person's position in the class structure.

Evaluation of Merton’s Theory of Deviance

• Critics have attacked Merton's work for neglecting the power relationships in society as a whole, within which deviance and conformity occur. Laurie Taylor (1971) criticised Merton for not carrying his analysis far enough: for failing to consider who makes the laws and who benefits from them. In Taylor’s analogy, the whole game may have been rigged by the powerful with rules that guarantee their success: the laws of society.
• Merton has also been criticised for assuming that there is a value consensus in American society and that people only deviate as a result of structural strain. His theory fails to explain why some people who experience the effects of anomie do not become criminals or deviants.
• Some critics believe that Merton's theory over-predicts and exaggerates working-class crime, and under-predicts and underestimates middle-class or white-collar crime.
• Taylor, Walton and Young ( 1973) believe that Merton’s theory cannot account for politically motivated criminals (such as freedom fighters) who break the law because of commitment to their cause rather than the effects of anomie.
• Some  sociologists  defend  Merton's  theory.  Robert  Reiner  (1984)  points  out  that   Merton acknowledged that not all Americans accept the success goals of the American Dream, though such goals are sufficiently widespread in the lower strata to account for their deviance.
• Reiner also notes that' Merton was well aware both of the extensiveness of white-collar crime in the suites, and of the way that official statistics disproportionately record crimes in the streets’. Merton explained white-collar crime by suggesting that American society placed no upper limit on success.
• However wealthy people were, they might still want more. Nevertheless, Reiner supports Merton's view that there was more working-class crime, since those failing to become wealthy in legal ways will be under more pressure to find alternative routes to success. Reiner also believes that Merton s theory can  be developed to  accommodate most of the criticisms. Thus Taylor et o/.  s political criminals could be included in Merton s rebellion adaptation.
• Subculture theorists have also criticised Merton. However, as Reiner points out, their work represents an attempt to refine and develop Merton's theory rather than rejecting it altogether.
• According to Interactionists like Howard Becker in his article Labelling Theory Reconsidered, 1974, deviance is not the intrinsic quality of behaviour itself. One is labelled as a deviant and one r not deviant. Same person may not be labelled as deviant by one group, but can be by another group.
• Lemert in his Human Deviance, Social Problems and Social Control, 1972 as well as Laurie Taylor in his Deviance and Society, 1971 argue that those who wield power also decide who will be deviant. Definitions of deviance don t reflect consensus of society, but views of the powerful.
• Merton refers to only goals and means, there may be other aspects of social structure which may cause anomie. Albert Cohen in his Deviance and Control, 1966 argues that deviance is due to a specific subculture that members of particular subgroups develop. Hence, it is collective in nature and not at an individual level as Merton has tried to prove.
• Albert Cohen further argues that Merton has failed to take into account non-utilitarian crimes such as vandalism, which don’t produce any rewards that can be explained by the idea of a subculture, but not by goals-means dichotomy, as proposed by Merton.
• Chicago School also develops a distinctive explanation of deviance in the form of an ecological approach according  to which, in a given city  or town, deviance levels vary  from area to area depending upon relative economic prosperity and other factors.
• A person at different times may respond to the same type of social impetus differently. It shows that anomic behaviour depends on the individual as well.
• Hannon and Defronzo provide some empirical support for Merton. In a study of 406 metropolitan counties in the USA they found that those with higher levels of welfare provision had lower levels of crime. They argued that the welfare provision opened up opportunities for people to achieve the goal of material success through legitimate means and therefore reduced anomie and the crime which could result from it.
• Despite the criticisms, Merton's theory remains one of the more plausible attempts to explain crime rates in whole societies. Joachim J.Savelsberg (1995) argues that Merton’s strain theory can help to explain the rapid rises in the crime rate in post-communist Poland, former Czechoslovakia, eastern Germany and Russia. Poland is an example of how dramatic these rises sometimes were. Poland had its first free elections in 1989. Between 1989 and 1990 the official crime rate in Poland increased by no less than 69 per cent.
• Merton's work, however, can hardly explain all crime. Since his original work, other sociologists have modified and built on his theory in order to try to develop more complete explanations for crime and delinquency.