Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond [Paperback]

This revised edition of Patrick Baert's widely acclaimed Social Theory in the Twentieth Century, now benefitting from the collaboration of Filipe Carreira da Silva has been brought right up-to-date with cutting-edge developments in social theory today. It offers an easy-to-read but provocative account of the development of social theory, covering a range of key figures and classic schools of thought. The authors bridge the gap between philosophy and social theory, locating the theoretical views of individuals such as Michel Foucault, Anthony Giddens and Jürgen Habermas within wider historical traditions.

The revised edition includes new material on French pragmatist sociology and cultural sociology, and on contemporary social thinkers such as Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, Manuel Castells, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, Saskia Sassen and Theda Skocpol. The authors conclude with a bold, new pragmatist agenda for social theory and the social sciences.

Written in a lively style, and avoiding jargon, Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond is aimed at students who wish to gain an understanding of the main debates and dilemmas driving social theory. Like its predecessor, it will be a standard introduction to modern social theory for students in sociology, politics and anthropology.

Preface to the Second Edition

Introduction

1. A Timeless Order and its Achievement: Structuralism and Genetic Structuralism

2. The Biological Metaphor: Functionalism and Neo-functionalism

3. The Enigma of Everyday Life: Symbolic Interactionism, the Dramaturgical Approach and Ethnomethodology

4. The Invasion of Economic Man: From Rational Choice Theory to the New Institutionalism

5. As Sociology meets History: Giddens’s Structuration Theory and Historical Sociology