Thinking the Unthinkable The Riddles of Classical Social Theories [Hardcover]

In the eloquent style for which he has become famous, Charles Lemert writes of social theory as no one else. Thinking the Unthinkable is offered as text for instruction, yet it defies the prevailing assumption that social theory is a method for clarifying the facts of social life. Lemert shows how social theory began late in the 19th century as a struggle to come to terms with the failure of modern reason to solve the social problems created by the capitalist world-system. Since then, social theory has developed through twists and turns to think and rethink this Unthinkable. Hence the surprising innovations of recent years-postmodern, queer, postcolonial, third-wave feminist, risk theories, among others arising in the wake of globalization. Once again, Lemert has made the difficult clear in a book that students and other readers will treasure and keep.Preface PART I: WHAT IS SOCIAL THEORY? Total Destruction, Bead Lust, and Other Unreasonable Social Things Chapter 1: The Impossible Reasons of Modern Civilizations Chapter 2: Social Theory and Modernity's Unthinkable Chapter 3: Social Violence as the Bread Lust of the Unthinkable Chapter 4: Five Ways to Skin a Cat: Modernity's Five Riddles PART II: UNTHINKABLE SOCIAL THINGS Five Solutions to the Riddle of the Defiant Darkness, 1848-1914 Light and Dark Chapter 5: Revolutionary Reasons: Karl Marx and the Melting of Solid Modernity Chapter 6: Rationality's Double-Bind: Max Weber and Modernity's Threat to Human Spirit Chapter 7: The Reasonable hope of a Social Bond: Emile Durkheim and Modern Man's Trouble with Conflict Riddles and Realities Chapter 8: Perverse Reasons: Sigmund Freud and the Discontents of Conscious Life Chapter 9: Unreasonable Differences: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Logic of the Feminist Standpoint PART III: THE EXILED OTHERS THINK THE UNTHINKABLE The Classic Solutions Encounter Differences and Possibilities Unthinkable Variations on the Classic Riddles: W. E. B. Du Bois, Anna Jul&