““We have had no polemic interest in writing this book. It would be foolish to deny, however, that our enthusiasm for the present state of sociological theory is markedly restrained. For one thing, we have tried to show, by our analysis of the interrelations between institutional processes and the legitimating symbolic universes, why we must consider the standard versions of functionalist explanations in the social sciences a theoretical legerdemain. Furthermore, we hope we have shown cause for our conviction that a purely structural sociology is endemically in danger of reifying social phenomena. Even if it begins by modestly assigning to its constructs merely heuristic status, it all too frequently ends by confusing its own conceptualizations with the laws of the universe. In””
