Blackwell Reference Online

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Peter Blau is one of the most influential figures in post-war American sociology. His long career and range of substantive interests span the range from small-groups and social exchange theory to organizational theory, the analysis of status attainment, and finally general sociological theory. One significant legacy is his macrostructural theory, or as he referred to it in his landmark book Inequality and Heterogeneity (1977), his “primitive theory of social structure.” Blau began his sociological training with a Parsonian interest in broad theoretical systems. However, his orientation toward theory was significantly transformed during the course of his training at Columbia University under the tutelage of Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton. From Merton and Lazarsfeld he developed a concern with the measurement of abstract concepts and their connection to theory. Blau is sometimes considered the last great “grand theorist” of twentieth-century American sociology. His notion of grand theoretical sociology as primarily a general, explanatory, and empirical form of doing science continues to form the core of mainstream sociological theory and research into the twenty-first century. In spite of its apparent “heterogeneity,” it can be argued that a single strand runs through Blau's diverse body of work. For Blau, the study of the structural limits posed by large-scale distributions ... log in or subscribe to read full text