Social Theory

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Social Theory

1.

Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings
by Charles Lemert. 674 pgs.

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"A rich, highly textured, historically sweeping, & strikingly inclusive collection that aims to reconstruct, perhaps for the first time, the actual dialogue of contemporary social thought." Jeffrey Alexander University of California at Los Angeles "Charles Lemert captures the surfacing of multiple theoretical voices in the postmodern era. No theory course should be without Social Theory." Steve Seidman State University of New York at Albany

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Title Page

Contents

Introduction Social Theory

Part One: Modernity's Classical Age: 1848-1919

The Two Sides of Society

Estranged Labour

Camera Obscura

Class Struggle

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

On Imperialism in India

The Values of Commodities

The Fetishism of Commodities

Labour-Power and Capital

The Patriarchal Family

Anomie and the Modern Division of Labor

Sociology and Social Facts

Suicide and Modernity

Primitive Classifications and Social Knowledge

The Cultural Logic of Collective Representations

The Spirit of Capitalism and the Iron Cage

The Bureaucratic Machine

What Is Politics?

The Types of Legitimate Domination

Class, Status, Party

The Psychical Apparatus and the Theory of Instincts

Dream-Work and Interpretation

Oedipus, the Child

Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through

The Return of the Repressed in Social Life

Civilization and the Individual

Arbitrary Social Values and the Linguistic Sign

The Self and Its Selves

Split Lives in the Modern World

Double-Consciousness and the Veil

The Spirit of Modern Europe

The Yellow Wallpaper

Women and Economics

The Colored Woman's Office

The Stranger

The Looking-Glass Self

Part Two: Social Theories and World Conflict: 1919-1945

Action, Knowledge, Self

The New Liberalism

The Irrational Chasm Between Subject and Object

The Unit Act of Action Systems

What Is to Be Done?

The Sociology of Knowledge and Ideology

Psychoanalysis and Sociology

The Self, the I, and the Me

Social Structure and Anomie

Unavoidable Dilemmas

Moral Man and Immoral Society

The Negro Problem as a Moral Issue

Disorganization of the Polish Immigrant

Personality and Status Within the Gang

Art, War, and Fascism

A Room of One's Own

Intellectuals and Hegemony

Nonviolent Force: A Spiritual Dilemma

Identity, Struggle, Contradiction

The Japanese and the Americans

Part Three: The Golden Moment: 1945-1963

The Golden Age

On the United States and Containment of the Soviets

The End of Ideology in the West

Modernization: Stages of Growth

Action Systems and Social Systems

Sex Roles in the American Kinship System

Manifest and Latent Functions

The Structural Study of Myth

Semiological Prospects

Why Theory?

Doubts and Reservations

Character and Society: The Other-directed Personality

Youth and American Identity

On Face-Work

The Eccentric Self and the Discourse of the Other

Others Object

Woman as Other

Between Colonizer and Colonized

The Power of Nonviolent Action

The Sociological Imagination

Participatory Democracy (from The Port Huron Statement)

The Problem That Has No Name

Decolonizing, National Culture, and the Negro Intellectual

Part Four: Will the Center Hold? 1963-1979

Experiments at Renewal and Reconstruction

Change and the Planning System

Emancipatory Knowledge

Society as a Human Product

Knowing a Society from Within: A Woman's Standpoint

The Modern World-System

The State as a Janus-faced Structure

Breaking with Modernity

Toward a Reflexive Sociology

Repressive Desublimation

Reflexive Properties of Practical Sociology

Structures, Habitus, Practices

The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House

Part Five: After Modernity, Since 1979

The Idea of the Postmodern

Whither Postmodernism?

The Postmodern Condition

Simulacra and Simulations: Disneyland

Reactions and Alternatives

Post-Modernity or Radicalized Modernity?

Radical Democracy: Alternative for a New Left

Foucault on Power: A Theory for Women?

The Afrocentric Idea

Postpositivist Case for the Classics

The New Social Structure and the New Social Science

E Pluribus Unum?

After Modernity

The New Cultural Politics of Difference

"Race" as the Trope of the World

The Cyborg Manifesto and Fractured Identities

Infinite Layers/Third World?

Can the Subaltern Speak?

Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination

The New Mestiza

Sexual Identification Is a Strange Thing

Imitation and Gender Insubordination

Who Is Your Mother? Red Roots of White Feminism

The End of the Modern Era

Part Six: Searching for the Millennium

Future Social Science and the Invisible Elbow

Rethinking the Globalizing World

The Information Age

The Global Network

The City in a Globalizing World

The Global, the Local, and the Return of Ethnicity

The New Social Formations

Cultural Criticism and Telecommunications

Working Women in the Time Bind

The Productivity of the Closet

The Courage to Stand Alone

Final Notes: Where Does Reading End?

Acknowledgments/1999 Edition

Index
2.

Value in Social Theory: A Selection of Essays on Methodology
by Gunnar Myrdal. 287 pgs.

Book

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Title Page

Contents

Introduction

Part 1

Chapter Two: The Relation Between Social Theory and Social Policy

Part 2

Chapter Four: American Ideals and The American Conscience

Chapter Five: Valuations and Bbliefs

Chapter Six: Encountering the Negro Problem

Chapter Seven Facts and Valuations

Chapter Eight: Facets of the Negro Problem

Chapter Nine: The Principle of Cumulation

Part 3

Chapter Eleven: The Logical Crux of All Science

Postscript

Index
3.

Social Theory for a Changing Society
by Pierre Bourdieu, James S. Coleman. 392 pgs.

Book

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Contents

Prologue: Constructed Social Organization

NOTES

NOTES

NOTES

NOTES

NOTES

Part One: Changes in Technology and Organizational Responses

1: Moebius-Strip Organizations and Open Labor Markets: Some Consequences of the Reintegration of Conception and Execution in a Volatile Economy

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2: The Future of Bureaucracy and Hierarchy in Organizational Theory: A Report from the Field

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3: Indirect Relationships and Imagined Communities: Large-Scale Social Integratio n and the Transformation of Everyday Life

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Part Two: Changes in Cultural Institutions and Cultural Transmission

4: Social Structure, Institutions, and Cultural Goods: The Case of the United States

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5: The New and the Old in Religion

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6: Families, Childrearing, and Education

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Part Three: Changes in Systems of Social Control

7: On the Individualistic Theory of Social Order

7 On the Individualistic Theory of Social Order

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Social Control and the Organization of the Self (A Summary of the Original Paper)

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8: Discretion, Institutions, and the Problem of Government Commitment

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9: Law Without Accidents

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Part Four: New Political Boundaries and New Political Forms

10: Bounded States in a Global Market: The Uses of International Labor Migrations

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Comments Charles C. Ragin

Comments Charles C. Ragin

Comments Charles C. Ragin

11: Intellectuals and Domination in Post-Communist Societies

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Intellectuals and the Politics of Knowledge (abstract)

Comments Seymour Martin Lipset

Comments Seymour Martin Lipset

Epilogue: On the Possibility of a Field of World Sociology

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About the Book and Editors
4.

Informality: Social Theory and Contemporary Practice
by Barbara A. Misztal. 265 pgs.

Book

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For most of the twentieth century, modernity has been characterised by the formalisation of social relations as face to face interactions are replaced by impersonal bureaucracy and finance. As we enter the new millennium, however, it becomes increasingly clear that it is only by stepping outside these formal structures that trust and co-operation can be created and social change achieved. In a brilliant theoretical tour de force, illustrated with sustained case studies of changing societies in the former eastern Europe and of changing forms of interaction within so-called virtual communities, Barbara Misztal argues that only the society that achieves an appropriate balance between the informality and formality of interaction will find itself in a position to move forward to further democratisation and an improved quality of life.

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Contents

Introduction: What Use is the Concept of Informality?

Part I: Informality and Its Assets

1: Defining Informality

2: The Growing Formlessness and Unpredictability of Social Life

3: Informality and Styles of Interaction

Part II: Revealing the Significance of Informality

4: Explaining Cooperation

5: Making Music Together

6: The Dynamics of Innovation

Part III: Informality in the Changing World

7: Technology and Informality

8: Political Change and Informality

Conclusion: Informality and Democracy

Bibliography

Index
5.

Modernist Radicalism and Its Aftermath: Foundationalism and Anti-Foundationalism in Radical Social Theory
by Stephen Crook. 262 pgs.

Book

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Modernist Radicalism and its Aftermath investigates the ways in which Marx, Durkheim, Althusser and Habermas are all drawn towards foundationalism, and offers a framework for the analysis of foundationalism in social theory.

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Contents

Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Decline of Radical Social Theory

1: The Idea of Modernist Radicalism

2: The Sociological Critique of Modernist Radicalism

3: The Auto-Critique of Modernist Radicalism

4: The Swansong of Modernist Radicalism?

5: The Postmodernist of Modernist Radicalism

6: Foundationalism and Radicalism

7: Post-Foundational Radicalism

Notes

Bibliography

Name Index

Subject Index
6.

Social Theory and the Environment
by David Goldblatt. 247 pgs.

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Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Social Theory, Environmental Degradation and Environmental Politics

1: Capitalism, Industrialism and the Transformation of Nature: Anthony Giddens

2: Urbanism, Globalization and Environmental Politics: Anthony Giddens

3: The Political Ecology of Capitalism: André Gorz

4: Social and Cultural Origins of Environmental Movements: Jürgen Habermas

5: The Sociology of Risk: Ulrich Beck

Conclusion: Social Theory, Socialism and the Environment

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index
7.

Ethics and the Urban Ethos: An Essay in Social Theory and Theological Reconstruction
by Max L. Stackhouse. 228 pgs.

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Chapter I an Introduction

Chapter II Perspectives on the City

Chapter III Urban Power

Chapter IV Social Theory as Secular Theology

Chapter V Eschatology and Social Policy

Chapter VI Theological Models as Normative Social Theory

Chapter VIII Ethics in the Urban Ethos

NOTES

INDEX
8.

Social Capital versus Social Theory: Political Economy and Social Science at the Turn of the Millennium
by Ben Fine. 294 pgs.

Book

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This volume traces the origins of social capital through the work of Becker, Bourdieu and Coleman, and comprehensively reviews the literature across the social sciences.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Part I

1: Introduction and Overview

Part II

2: The Enigma and Fluidity of Capital

3: Bringing the Social Back In

4: Bourdieu’s Social Capital

5: Bringing Rational Choice Back in

6: Making the Benchmark Work for Social Theory

7: The Expanding Universe of Social Capital

Part III

8: Making the Post-Washington Consensus

9: World Banking on Social Capital

10: Measuring Social Capital— How Long is a Missing Link?

Part IV

11: Social Capital versus Political Economy

Notes

References

Name Index

Subject Index
9.

Property and Power in Social Theory: A Study in Intellectual Rivalry
by Dick Pels. 318 pgs.

Book

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Property and power perform a key role in social and political theories of class inequality and social stratification, however, theorists have yet clearly to define these concepts, their mutual boundaries and scopes of application. This book answers the property/power puzzle by undertaking a broad historical inquiry into its intellectual origins and present-day effects through a series of case studies, including: Marxism vs. anarchism * the fascist assertion of the primacy of the political * social science as power theory * the managerial revolution * the knowledge society and the new intellectual classes

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Contents

Illustrations

Preface

Introduction

1: The Liberal Dichotomy and Its Dissolution

2: Inside the Diamond

3: Marxism Vs. Anarchism

4: Fascism and the Primacy of the Political

5: Social Science as Power Theory

6: Power, Property, and Managerialism

7: Intellectual Closure and the New Class

8: Towards a Theory of Intellectual Rivalry

Notes

Bibliography

Index
10.

Interpreting Culture: Rethinking Method and Truth in Social Theory
by Joseph D. Lewandowski. 206 pgs.

Book

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This study argues that cultures are made up of social fields, embedded social practices that are continually created and patterned in certain ways. The author builds on the work of major social theorists of the modern era.

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Title Page

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgements

1: The Contemporary Logics of Social Theory

2: Method and Truth Amid the Ruins of the Social

3: Affect and Evidence in the Logic of Constructing Constellations

4: Method and Truth in French Social Theory

5: Constructing Urban Constellations

Afterword: Constructing Constellations, or Thematizing Embeddedness

Notes

Bibliography

Index
11.

The Social Theory of Georg Simmel
by Nicholas J. Spykman. 300 pgs.

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Preface

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

List of Abbreviations

The Life of Georg Simmel (March 1, 1858--September 26, 1918)

General Introduction

Book I Social Philosophy: Methodology--Epistemology

Book 1 Introduction

Chapter I The Concept of Society

Chapter II Sociology

Chapter III Sociology as Distinct from the Social Sciences and Social Psychology

Chapter IV Sociology as Distinct from Social Philosophy

Chapter V Sociology as Distinct from the Philosophy of History and the Search for Historical Laws

Chapter VI The Method and Technique of Formal Sociology

Chapter VII The Prerequisites of Socialization

Summary

Book II Social Science Formal Sociology

Chapter I Submission

Chapter II Opposition

Chapter III the Numerical Relations of Social Forms

Chapter IV the Spatial Relations of Social Forms

Chapter V Social Conservation

Chapter VI Social Differentiation

Chapter VII the Individual and the Group

Summary

Book III Social Philosophy Metaphysics

Chapter I Money and Individual Liberty

Chapter II Money and the Style of Modern Life

Summary

Conclusion

Index
12.

Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity: The Post-Theistic Program of French Social Theory
by Andrew Wernick. 281 pgs.

Book

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This book offers an exciting reinterpretation of Auguste Comte, the founder of French sociology. Andrew Wernick provides the first in-depth critique of Comte's concept of religion and its place in his thinking on politics, sociology and philosophy of science. He places Comte's ideas within the context of post-1789 French political and intellectual history, and of modern philosophy, especially postmodernism. Wernick relates Comte to Marx and Nietzsche as seminal figures of modernity and examines key features of modern and postmodern French social theory, tracing the inherent flaws and disintegration of Comte's system.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

1: Introduction: Rethinking Comte

2: The System and Its Logic (i): from Positive Philosophy to Social Science

3: The System and Its Logic (2): from Sociology to the Subjective Synthesis

4: Religion and the Crisis of Industrialism

5: Love and the Social Body

6: The Path to Perfection

7: Humanity as 'Le Vrai Grand-Étre'

8: Socio-Theology After Comte

References

Index
13.

Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment
by Christopher J. Berry. 228 pgs.

Book

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David Hume, Adam Smith, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, Lord Kames, John Millar, James Dunbar and Gilbert Stuart were at the heart of Scottish Enlightenment thought. This introductory survey offers the student a clear, accessible interpretation and synthesis of the social thought of these historically significant thinkers. Organised thematically, it takes the student through their accounts of social institutions, their critique of individualism, their methodology, their views of progress and of moral and cultural values. By taking human sociality as their premise, the book shows how they produced important analyses of historical change, politics and morality, together with an assessment of their own commercial society.

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Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

I: The Enlightenment and Scotland

Notes

2: Sociality and the Critique of Individualism

Notes

Science, Explanation and History

Notes

4: Social Diversity

Notes

5: Social History

Notes

6: Commercial Society

Notes

7: Social Values

Notes

8: Reading the Scottish Enlightenment

Notes

Bibliography

Index
14.

Social Theory after the Holocaust
by Robert Fine, Charles Turner. 266 pgs.

Book

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This collection of essays explores the character and quality of the Holocaust�2s impact and the abiding legacy it has left for social theory. The premise which informs the contributions is that, ten years after its publication, Zygmunt Bauman�2s claim that social theory has either failed to address the Holocaust or protected itself from its implications remains true.

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Contents

Introduction

Notes

Chapter 1: The Holocaust's Life as a Ghost

Notes

Chapter 2: Hannah Arendt: Politics and Understanding after the Holocaust

Notes

Chapter 3: Whither the Broken Middle? Rose and Fackenheim on Mourning, Modernity and the Holocaust

Notes

Chapter 4: Good against Evil? H.G. Adler, T.W. Adorno and the Representation of the Holocaust

Notes

Chapter 5: ‘after Auschwitz’: Trauma and the Grammar of Ethics

Notes

Chapter 6: Lyotard: Emancipation, Anti-Semitism and ‘the Jews’

Notes

Chapter 7: Eradicating Evil: Levinas, Judaism and the Holocaust

Notes

Chapter 8: Silence — Voice — Representation

Notes

Chapter 9: Friends and Others: Lessing's Die Juden and Nathan der Weise

Notes

Chapter 10: The Visibility of the Holocaust: Franz Neumann and the Nuremburg Trials

Notes

Chapter 11: Holocaust Testimony and the Challenge to the Philosophy of History

Notes

Chapter 12: Open Behind: Myth and Politics

Notes

Notes on Contributors

Name Index

Subject Index
15.

The Resurgence of Race: Black Social Theory from Reconstruction to the Pan-African Conferences
by William Toll. 280 pgs.

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Contents

Preface

Introduction

1: Free Men, Freedmen, and Race: Black Social Theory in the Gilded Age

2: Booker T. Washington and a Pedagogy for the Oppressed

3: Non-Partisanship, Ethnicity, and Opposition to Booker T. Washington

4: W. E. B. Dubois and the Consolidation of Cosmopolitan Leadership

5: The Promise of Cultural Reconstruction

Conclusion: a Cultured Race

Notes

Index

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