Lazarsfeld’s Metasociology

The reader of this Philosophie des sciences sociales should not expect to find a comprehensive selection of Lazarsfeld’s works. A collection of readings presupposes that every aspect of an author’s output is taken into account. In the present volume, an entire portion of the output has been deliberately excluded, naturally with the author’s permission. Even so, the reader may well be surprised that there are no extracts from The People’s Choice, Voting, Personal Influence or the Academic Mind. We have chosen not to include any extracts from these major sociological studies of consumption, electoral behaviour and the sociology of education although they have achieved wide recognition among social science specialists, not to mention a general audience, for they have been widely translated, but not unfortunately into French.