ABSTRACT
It has been seen that sociological debates easily become trapped along one or other of two conceptual dimensions. Protagonists either argue the merits and demerits of society based on notions of order and conflict; or they split over whether people and their society should be understood ‘subjectively’ or ‘objectively’. The trick worked by Burrell and Morgan (1979) was to combine these two dimensions. They squared them and generated four paradigms, producing a strong grid with powerful analytical properties. The result is described in Figure 6.1. The framework’s four distinct paradigms help analyze social theory.
