Ricerc@Sapienza

This article intends to juxtapose (in an unprecedented way) the Robert K. Merton sociological approach to that of Pierre Bourdieu, within a systematics framework, and with the aim of overcoming canonic oppositions. The analysis is not proposed as schematically comprehensive: a detailed reconsideration of each consonance between Merton and Bourdieu will not be provided, nor are all the inevitable differences which run between the two authors examined.

Robert K. Merton defines a self-fulfilling prophecy as a false definition of a situation, which causes a behavior that, in turn, makes the initial false conception come true. As a general representation of a specific relation between beliefs and reality, the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy is useful to describe and analyzemanifoldkinds of psychological and social phenomena.

Reading one’s own biography on the basis of the same criteria used to analyse other subjects can offer a unique evidence of sociological inquiry. Influential demonstrations of this have been provided by Pierre Bourdieu and Robert K. Merton: in order to develop a sociological self-analysis of their own life-paths, they reflexively employed all the results and methodologies of their own previous research, giving rise to a peculiar personal exercise in the sociology of scientific knowledge.