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Current sociological theories appear to have lost their general persuasiveness in part because, unlike the theories of the ‘classical era’, they fail to maintain an integrated stance toward society, and the practical role that sociology plays in society. The authors explore various facets of this failure and possibilities for reconstructing sociological theories as integrated wholes capable of conveying a moral and political immediacy. They discuss the evolution of several concepts (for example, the social, structure, and self) and address the significant disputes (for example, structuralism versus humanism, and individual versus society) that have dominated twentieth-century sociological thought. Their ideas and analyses are directed towards an audience of students and theorists who are coming to terms with the project of sociological theory, and its relationship with moral discourses and political practice. The authors of these essays are sociological theorists from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. They are all established, but not ‘establishment’ authors. The book contains no orthodoxies, and no answers. However, the essays do contribute to identifying the range of issues that will constitute the agenda for the next generation of sociological theorists.
A striking feature of the human condition is its dual, contradictory, inherently split character; on the one hand, autonomy and freedom; on the other, constraint and dependence on social structure. This volume addresses this central problem of the linkage between human action and social structure in sociological and social science theory. Contributions cover several different approaches to the agency-structure problematic, and represent the work of a number of leading international sociologists. Their efforts point to a reorientation of social theory, both on philosophical and methodological levels.
Baudrillard is widely recognised as a powerful new force in cultural and social criticism, and is often referred to as the ‘High Priest of Postmodernism’. This study presents a detached assessment of his social thought and his reputation, challenging the way his work has been received in postmodernism and proposing a new reading of his contribution to social theory. Using many sources currently available only in French, Mike Gane provides the keys to understanding Baudrillard’s project and reveals the extent and scope of Baudrillard’s challenge to modern social theory and cultural criticism. He looks at the sources of Baudrillard’s ideas, analysing how Baudrillard has turned these sources against themselves. He describes Baudrillard’s dramatic encounter with critical Marxist theory and psychoanalysis, showing how Baudrillard’s post-Marxist writings define, through the exploration of fatal theory, a new episode in cultural history: a period of cultural implosion. This balanced account of Baudrillard’s social theory emphasises the originality of his work and argues that his significance can only be understood by grasping the paradoxes of his project – Baudrillard’s work is poetic, yet, at the same time, critical and fatal.
A social science which has become so remote from the society which pays for its upkeep is ultimately doomed, threatened less by repression than by intellectual contempt and financial neglect. This is the message of the authors of this book in this reassessment of the evolution and present state of British sociology. Their investigation analyses the discipline as a social institution, whose product is inexorably shaped by the everyday circumstances of its producers; it is the concrete outcome of people’s work, rather than a body of abstract ideas. Drawing upon their varied experience as teachers and researchers, they identify three major trends in contemporary sociology. First, that the discipline’s rapid expansion has led to a retreat from rigorous research into Utopian and introspective theorising. Second, that the concept of sociological research is being taught in a totally false way because of this, and encourages ‘research’ within a wholly academic environment. Third, that the current unpopularity of sociology with academics, prospective students and politicians is no coincidence, but a reflection of the conditions under which sociology is now produced and practised. In Sociology and Social Research the authors suggest substantial changes in sociological research, the way in which it is carried out and the conditions under which it is undertaken. Their book is a timely warning to fellow sociologists when the profession is under attack as a result of public expenditure cuts.
Theorizing in sociology has increasingly become a self-generating and self-fulfilling activity, as sociologists absorb theory as an isolated and formalist part of their discipline. Joe Bailey believes that sociological theory should be a contribution to practical social intervention. His book presents a practical view of social theorizing as an activity at which sociologists are skilled and which they could teach to the interventionist professions. The relation between theory and practice is defined as one in which theory guides practice and makes explicit necessary choices. A description of disciplines and professions is provided as a basis for examining social intervention in three areas – law, social work and urban planning. The author considers some exemplary contributions which sociological theorizing could and should provide, and concludes by proposing a pluralist view of theory as the best strategy for a sociology relevant to practice.
In this important volume of specially commissioned essays, nine leading sociologists present their answers to the question, 'What use are the sociological classics today?' They report on the latest scholarship, on neglected features of the various masters, on promising applications and unrecognised implications.
Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia has been a profoundly provocative book. The debate about politics and social knowledge that was spawned by its original publication in 1929 attracted the most promising younger scholars, some of whom shaped the thought of several generations. The book became a focus for a debate on the methodological and epistemological problems confronting German social science. More than thirty major papers were published in response to Mannheim’s text. Writers such as Hannah Arendt, Ernst Robert Curtius, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Helmuth Plessner, Hans Speier and Paul Tillich were among the contributors. Their positions varied from seeing in the sociology of knowledge a sophisticated reformulation of the materialist conception of history to linking its popularity to a betrayal of Marxism. The English publication in 1936 defined formative issues for two generations of sociological self-reflection. Knowledge and Politics provides an introduction to the dispute and reproduces the leading contributions. It sheds new light on one of the greatest controversies that have marked German social science in the past hundred years.
The landscape of social theory has changed significantly over the three decades since the publication of Anthony Giddens and Jonathan Turner’s seminal Social Theory Today. Sociologists in the twenty-first century desperately need a new agenda centered around central questions of social theory. In Social Theory Now, Claudio E. Benzecry, Monika Krause, and Isaac Ariail Reed set a new course for sociologists, bringing together contributions from the most distinctive?sociological?traditions?in an ambitious survey of where social theory is today and where it might be going. The book?provides a strategic window onto social theory based on current research, examining trends in classical traditions and the cutting edge of more recent approaches. From distinctive theoretical positions, contributors address questions about?how social order is accomplished; the role of materiality, practice, and meaning; as well as the conditions for the knowledge of the social world. The theoretical traditions presented include cultural sociology, microsociologies, world-system theory and post-colonial theory, gender and feminism, actor network and network theory, systems theory, field theory, rational choice, poststructuralism, pragmatism, and the sociology of conventions. Each chapter introduces a tradition and presents an agenda for further theoretical development. Social Theory Now is an essential tool for sociologists. It will be central to the discussion and teaching of contemporary social theory?for years to come.
This account of Talcott Parsons’s work clarifies his basic concepts and sets out their correlation. Dr Menzies believes that the philosophy of science working within the confines of the analytic-synthetic distinction tends to provide a rigid, static and sterile account of theories. He presents a more dynamic account of the scientific enterprise in order to come to grips with the amorphous nature of theory, and to provide the basic framework for his analysis of Parsons. Menzies argues that Parsons’s central problematic in The Structure of Social Action is utilitarianism in general and the classical economists’ account of the rise of capitalism in particular, and as such the book is not a reconciliation of positivistic and idealistic elements and these run throughout his subsequent work. Two major strands in Parsons’s work – the social action theory and the systems theory (structural-functionalism) – are separated and examined individually.