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К 100-ЛЕТИЮ Р. К. МЕРТОНА
Редакция продолжает получать материалы, посвященные знаменательной дате, а также отклики на 4-й номер журнала «Социология науки и технологий» (главный редактор специального выпуска журнала, посвященного 100-летию Р. К. Мертона, Н. А. Ащеулова). Мы рады предложить вниманию наших читателей письмо Х. Закер-ман, размышления о теоретических идеях Р. К. Мертона, представленные известной американской исследовательницей Л. Л. Лубрано, а также статью Э. М. Мирского, посвященную социологии науки в перспективе XXI века.
My dear Editor, It has just come to my attention that you have recently published a special issue of the journal, The Sociology of Science and Technology in honor of the 100th anniversary of Robert Merton’s birth. Professor Merton was my husband, my teacher, my research partner and often my co-author. I am, of course, absolutely delighted to learn of this new honor you have conferred on him. Would it be at all possible for you to send me a copy of the journal (I would be pleased to cover the costs of the copy and of the mailing)? It would be a splendid addition to the extensive archive of his papers, letters, and books now residing in the Special Collections Library at Columbia University.
I note in the table of contents which was sent to me that two sociologists I met many years ago, Igor S. Kon and Dmitiri Shalin have contributed papers to the issue. Would you be kind enough to extend my thanks to them for their contributions and my very best greetings. I also note in the table of contents that there was a special round table held in Moscow honoring my husband’s work as well as another discussion on Mertonian issues at the International Sociological Association. If any of these papers from these sessions are ava ilable, most particularly in English (to my regret, I have no Russian), I would greatly appreciate having copies of them.
You may be interested to learn that Robert Merton’s work continues to resonate around the world. A recent volume, entitled: Robert K. Merton Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science was published under the editorship of Craig Calhoun (Columbia University Press) and another volume, Robert K. Merton: Concepts and the Social Order, edited by Yehuda Elkana (Central European University Press, Budapest), is to appear shortly. A special issue of the Berliner J. Soziologie, dedicated to Robert Merton’s work, was also just published. I had the pleasure of contributing a paper on “Sociological Semantics” (my husband’s long term interest in the sociological analysis of language) to the first. I hope you will alert the author of the paper on the Matthew
Effect that the second and third volumes include another paper I wrote on the Matthew Effect and its diffusion through the scholarly literature and public press.
It gives me enormous satisfaction and happiness to learn that you and your fellow sociologists find my husband’s work stimulating and worthy of careful study. I know he would have been so pleased that his Russian colleagues remain interested in his work.
Sincerely Harriet Zuckerman Professor Emerita of Sociology, Columbia University Senior Vice President Emerita and Senior Fellow, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Linda Lucia Lubrano
PhD in Political Science Professor of Comparative and Regional Studies School of International Service American University Washington, D. C. e-mail: [email protected]
Building research agendas in the 1970s: Reflections on Robert K. Merton
Robert K. Merton was very interested in the way his ideas affected the sociology of science as it was developing within Russia in the 1970s. He was also interested in how those of us outside Russia could build upon his concepts in our scholarship on Russian science and scientists. He discussed this with me on several occasions, and I learned a great deal from him. My own graduate training at Indiana University (1963-1968) was in political science with a concentration on political theory, comparative politics, Russian area studies, and a minor in history. I had a strong interest in science studies going back to my high school days in the 1950s. I wanted to incorporate this interest into my dissertation research and was fortunate to be in the first course taught at Indiana by Loren R. Graham, who had recently completed his doctorate at Columbia University. Graham was an inspirational teacher; his lectures encouraged me to combine research on science with research on Russian history, while still keeping political science as my primary discipline. The challenge was to find an appropriate analytical framework.
Since I was strongly influenced by the behavioralism movement that was redefining the field of comparative politics at the time, I wanted to study Russian scientists through the same concepts and frameworks that were used to study scientists in the United States and other countries. Scholarship in the sociology of science, under the leadership of Merton (Merton, 1968, 1973), provided a starting point for me to look at roles and social structure in Russian science, moving on from there to career patterns and Russian science
