Description
Book Synopsisaeo A comprehensive and up--to--date collection from possibly the worlds most prestigious social theory publisher. aeo Contains readings from the leading figures in the field. aeo Designed as an introductory text for students. aeo Contains an introduction and explanatory materials for each main section of the book.
Trade Review'A useful ... teaching resource ... these short extracts immerse the readers into some of the important contemporary issues ... a welcome addition to the introductory literature, especially since it surveys such a wide range of influential work across the spectrum of contemporary social theory.'
John Newton Hewitt, the University of Melbourne Table of ContentsPart I: Some Schools of Social Theory: Marx and Weber to Gadamer and Ricoeur. 1. Capitalism and Socialism: Weber's Dialogue with Marx (Wolfgang J. Mommsen).
2. Georg Simmel: Modernity as an Eternal Present (David Frisby).
3. The Social and Political Thought of Antonio Gramsci (Richard Bellamy).
4. The World in a Text: Levi Strauss's Tristes Tropiques (Clifford Geertz).
5. Althusser and the Problem of Determinations (Michelle Barrett).
6. Gadamer and Ricoeur on Hermeneutics (Susan Hekman).
Part II: Solidarity, Interaction and Social Practice.
7. What is Ethnomethodology? (Harold Garfinkel).
8. Erving Goffman on Ritual and Solidarity in Social Life (Randall Collins).
9. Elements of the Theory of Structuration (Anthony Giddens).
10. Institutional Reflexivity and Modernity (Anthony Giddens).
11. Structures, Habitus and Practices (Pierre Bourdieu).
12. Social Space and Symbolic Power (Pierre Bourdieu).
13. Rational Choice Theory (John Elster).
Part III: Critical Theory of Modernity.
14. Ideology and Modern Culture (John Thompson).
15. The Tasks of a Critical Theory (Jürgen Habermas).
16. The Normative Content of Modernity (Jürgen Habermas).
17. Habermas and Lyotard (Richard Rorty).
18. Foucault and Marxism (Mark Poster).
Part IV: Feminism, Gender and Subjectivity.
19. Foucault, Feminism and the Body (Lois McNay).
20. The Case of Habermas and Gender (Nancy Fraser).
21. Feminism and Modernism (Janet Wolff).
22. Post-post-modernism? Theorising Gender (Sylvia Walby).
23. Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (Nancy Chodorow).
24. Death of the Subject? (Agnes Heller).
Part V: Modernity, Democracy, Social Movements.
25. The End of Organized Capitalism (Scott Lash and John Urry).
26. World Systems Analysis (Immanuel Wallerstein).
27. Surveillance and Modernity (Christopher Dandeker).
28. The Future of Democracy (Noberto Bobbio).
29. What Should Democracy Mean Today? (David Held).
30. Democracy: From City States to a Cosmopolitan Order? (David Held).
31. Class, Environmental and Social Movements (Boris Frankel).
32. Ecological Communication (Niklas Luhmann).
33. The Green Political Programme (Robert Goodin).
34. The Naturalistic Fallacy of the Ecological Movement (Ulrich Beck).
Part VI: Modernity and Postmodernity.
35. Modernity and Ambivalence (Zygmunt Bauman).
36. The Consumer Society (Jean Baudrillard).
37. The Post-Modern: A Transparent Society? (Gianno Vattimo).
38. Against Postmodernism (Alex Callinicos).
39. Modernity and the Holocaust (Zygmunt Bauman)
