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Introduction This volume is many things in one. First of all, it is, as Yehuda Elkana has expressed in the Preface, a tribute to the scope of Robert K. Merton ’s work and the influence he has had on both the work and life of sociologists around the world. This is reflected in each chapter, showing the range of fields Merton has contributed to and the personal impact he has had on sociologists. The volume thus provides an introduction to Merton the sociologist and Merton the man. The combination of the personal and the scientific makes this also a study about the sociology of sociological knowledge. That is, to paraphrase Anna Wessely in chapter two, a social practice approach to doing sociology. Based on a workshop that brought together colleagues who have been collaborating for many years, the volume provides an insight into knowledge production in the field of sociology. This in itself is a tribute to Merton, as an analysis of knowledge production through the lens of a contextualized review of an author’s life’s work would be a very Mertonian enterprise. The volume begins with a personal reflection by Arnold Thackray, juxtaposing his own and Yehuda Elkana’s career paths with that of Robert Merton. This personal history is also a fragmentary history of the field, presented through “Paradoxes of Robert Merton.” The paradoxes show how Merton’s life mirrors his work, and vice versa, thus presenting the final paradox: that the historical and social context in which Merton lived is reflected in his own work, including his rejection of relativism and his simultaneous faith in scientific objectivity. Through the next three chapters, the volume continues with history and social context, an exploration of sociology in three very different countries, different in the way their scientific communities have developed and evolved. First, Anna Wessely provides a picture of sociology and the role of Merton’s influence—or lack thereof—in communist Hungary. One of the themes of this book, as it is clear from Yehuda Elkana’s Preface and the concept of the workshop, is the extent to which the phrase coined by Merton, obliteration by incorporation, holds true in Merton’s own work—paradox 2 of chapter one. Wessely shows that this, indeed, applied in the case of Hungarian sociology, while pointing out key particulars in the way the field developed. In the third chapter, Jean-Louis Fabiani opens with a similar question: “Why do French sociologists seldom quote Robert K. Merton?” In order to explain, Fabiani takes us on a tour of French sociology during the post–World War II period, describing what he calls the “double rejection of Durkheim” and “the history of science á la Française.” His conclusion is similar to Wessely’s: “Although [Merton] is almost absent from contemporary debates in France, his concepts have permeated the practices and the implicit epistemologies of many of us. We are Mertonian without even knowing it…” But what is also evident from the two chapters taken together is the dividing line between European and American sociology. While Merton tried to bridge the gap between the two, Wessely says that he “[failed to serve] up the European heritage of the sociology of knowledge in a dish that could whet the appetites of American […] students...” and Fabiani notes that in Europe “[h]is work was implicitly included in a very nebulous vision of ‘American sociology’” and thus, on the face of it, ignored. ̒In another country, on another continent, the history of sociology takes yet a different turn. Dhruv Raina, in chapter four, explains how in India, the history of sociology was embedded in the country’s colonial heritage. Even after independence, the intellectual links with Britain were too strong to give any significant space to other influences . Raina suggests that in addition, Merton’s concerns, at least until the 1970s, did not overlap with the concerns of sociologists in India, thus leaving Indian sociology largely free of Merton’s influence. While sociologists were left cold by Merton, technocrats developing India’s science policy were very much attracted by two related but separate Mertonian concepts: The first, that science is both a social and an autonomous institution, suggested to them “the promise of ensuring … the immanent development of science and society.” The second, scientometrics , developed from Merton and Sorokin’s work (1935), provided a tool to evaluate and award scientific research. Through the rest of the chapter, Raina adapts the Mertonian question on the relation between science...

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