基本説明
Covers both classical and contemporary social thought.
Full Description
This book connects theorists and their work to larger themes and ideas. All too often, in the opinion of the authors, theory texts focus too much on individual theorists and insufficiently on the relationship between their theories, and how these have contributed, in turn, to the evolution of ideas concerning social life. Treatment of individual theories and theorists is balanced with the development of key themes; ideas about social life (introduced in Chapter 1) which then reappear in the discussion of individual theorists and their work.
A key organizing principle of this text is to trace major schools of thought over the past 150 years as they appear and reappear in different chapters. Section 1 introductions help remind students of the "big picture" within which any given theory or theorist is only one part. A consistent organization and presentation within chapters helps provide students with a context for learning and a means of much more easily comparing and contrasting theorists and their ideas.
Important, new voices in a text for social theory: In Chapter 2, Harriet Martineau is introduced as one of sociology's founders. From then on, the views of women theorists and others are represented in far more than token fashion. Examples include W.E.B. DuBois, Marianne Weber, Charlotte Gilman, Rosa Luxemburg, Joseph Schumpeter, V. I. Lenin, Niklas Luhmann, Theda Skocpol, Erik Wright, Elman Service, Arlie Hochschild, Dorothy Smith, Patricia Hill Collins, and Immanual Wallerstein. · A timeline showing when social theorists lived and wrote and connecting their biographies to important social events over 300 years is at the back of the text.
"The organization of every chapter along similar lines provides a consistency in presentation that encourages comparisons among the theorists...[The authors] do a very good job presenting overlooked theorists and making their relevance to social theorizing /doing sociology clear."
--Joan Alway, formerly University of Miami
"The strengths of this text are the breadth of theories covered, the integration of gender-related topics--family, work, religion; the use of substantial quotes from primary texts; the consistent inclusion of methodological issues; ...and the goals of the project to provide an expansive and readable theory text. I have no doubt that it will find a solid position in the field of popular theory texts for undergraduate course use."
--Kathleen Slobin, North Dakota State University
Contents
Introduction
PART ONE: THE EUROPEAN ROOTS OF SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
The Origins of Sociological Theory
Theorizing after the French Revolution - Saint-Simon, Comte and Martineau
PART TWO: CONSERVATIVE THEORIES
Evolutionism and Functionalism - Spencer and Sumner
Social Realism and Functionalism Extended - Durkheim
PART THREE: RADICAL THEORY
Radical Anti-Capitalism - Marx and Engels
Marxism Extended - Lenin and Luxemburg
PART FOUR: SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF COMPLEXITY AND FORM
Social Action and Societal Complexity - Max Weber and Marianne Weber
The Sociology of Form and Content - Simmel
PART FIVE: SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
Political Sociological Theories - Pareto and Michels
Economic Sociological Theories - Veblen and Schumpeter
PART SIX: OTHER VOICES IN SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIZING
Society and Gender - Gilman and Webb
Sociological Theory and Race - Du Bois
Society, Self and Mind - Cooley, Mead and Freud
PART SEVEN: TWENTIETH-CENTURY FUNCTIONALISM AND BEYOND
Twentieth-Century Functionalism - Parsons and Merton
Systems, Structuration and Modernity - Luhmann and Giddens
PART EIGHT: CRITICISM, MARXISM AND CHANGE
Critical Theory
The Frankfurt School and Habermas
Marxism since 1930
Socio-Cultural Change
Evolution, World Systems and Revolution
PART NINE: TRANSITIONS AND CHALLENGES
Mid-Twentieth-Century Sociology
Symbolic Interactionism - Blumer, Goffman and Hochschild
Rational Choice and Exchange - Coleman
Feminist Sociological Theory - Smith and Collins
Knowledge, Truth and Power
Foucault's Discourse and the Feminist Response
Final Thoughts on Sociological Theorizing
