ABSTRACT
In Germani’s work the process of operationalization, or the measurement of concepts based on the development of indicators (Boudon and Fillieule 2002; Corbetta 2003), is less explicit as a cognitive goal (but not indiscernible) and regards the methodological environment, in particular the procedure by which to translate the concept of marginality into empirically measurable dimensions. The attention paid by Germani to the need to link theory and empirical reality is similar to that of Blumer (1986), who claims that theory has meaning for the empirical sciences only to the extent that it manages to enter into profitable contact with the empirical world: the concepts are tools, the only means of maintaining a similar connection (ibid.). Undoubtedly the problem at this level of analysis is measuring the concepts that constitute “the building blocks of theory” (Corbetta 2003) and its relative hypotheses, testing their validity at an empirical level. The difference between Germani and Blumer is that the former appears much closer to neopositivist quantitative research, the latter to qualitative research, where the process of operationalization (measurement of concepts based on specially designed indicators) is not an a priori construct but instead something created during the research process.
