Il piacere della scoperta in tempi di pessimismo, ovvero su Teoria e struttura sociale di Robert K. Merton

Abstract

The text presented here was delivered as a testimonial conference by the Author, invited by the students of Università di Trento in Spring 2013. Here he shows how Merton’s masterpiece, Social Theory and Social Structure, has introduced and guided him – as a truly anti-ideological instrument – into the sociological analysis within the context of the storms of the Sixties Movements. Moreover, he highlights how this book can methodologically arise and move sociological curiosity still today, in the age of pessimism, thus acting as an antidote against retreatism and rebellion.