But I find it hard to reconcile Bierstedt's appraisal of
Weber's monograph [The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism] with
the rhetoric that would banish theories of the middle range as sickly and
pale and singularly unambitious. For surely this monograph is a prime
example of theorizing in the middle range; it deals with a severely delimited
problem--one that happens to be exemplified in a particular historical
epoch with implications for other societies and other times; it employs
a limited theory about the ways in which religious commitment and economic
behavior are connected; and it contributes to a somewhat more general theory
of the modes of interdependence between social institutions (1968, p. 63).
Second, Bierstedt seems to assume that middle-range theory completely
excludes macrosociological inquiry in which a particular theory generates
specific hypotheses to be examined in the light of systematically assembled
data. As we have seen, this assumption is unfounded. Indeed,
the main work in comparative macrosociology today is based largely on specific
and delimited theories of the interrelations between the components of
social structure that can be subjected to systematic empirical test using
the same logic and much the same kinds of indicators as those employed
in microsociological research (1968, p. 64).