Concise Reader in Sociological Theory: Theorists, Concepts, and Current Applications

Essential writings from classical and contemporary sociological theorists engagingly introduced and brought to life for students This Concise Reader in Sociological Theory contains excerpts from the writings of a wide range of key theorists who represent the dynamic breadth of classical and contemporary, macro- and micro-sociological theory. The selected writings elaborate on the core concepts and arguments of sociological theory, and, along with the commentary, explore topics that resonate today such as: crisis and change, institutions and networks, power and inequality, race, gender, difference, and much more. The text contains editorial introductions to each section that clearly explain the intellectual context of the theorists and their arguments and reinforce their relevance to sociological analysis and society today. The excerpts include writings from the classicists Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, W.E.B. Du Bois to the contemporary Patricia Hill Collins, Dorothy Smith, Raewyn Connell. This indispensable book: Offers a concise review of the diverse field of sociological theory Includes contributions from a wide range of noted classical and contemporary theorists Incorporates engaging empirical examples from contemporary society Demonstrates the relevance and significance of the ideas presented in the theorists' writings Designed for undergraduate and graduate students in sociology and in social and political theory, Concise Reader in Sociological Theory is an engaging and accessible guide to the most relevant sociological theorists.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1 Part I Classical Theorists 7 1 Karl Marx 9 1A Karl Marx from Wage Labour and Capital 12 II 13 1B Karl Marx and Frederick Engels from Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 17 Profit of Capital 19 1C Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels from The German Ideology 27 2 Emile Durkheim 31 2A Emile Durkheim from The Rules of Sociological Method 34 What is a Social Fact? 34 II 37 2B Emile Durkheim from Suicide: A Study in Sociology 41 3 Max Weber 47 3A Max Weber from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 50 Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification 50 3B Max Weber from Economy and Society 65 The Definition of Sociology and of Social Action 65 Types of Social Action 71 3C Max Weber from Essays in Sociology 75 Bureaucracy 75 Structures of Power 77 Class, Status, Party 78 The Sociology of Charismatic Authority 80 Science as a Vocation 83 Part II Structural Functionalism, Conflict, and Exchange Theories 89 4 Structural Functionalism 91 4A Robert K. Merton from On Social Structure and Science 94 The Ethos of Science 94 Universalism 94 “Communism” 95 Disinterestedness 95 Organized Skepticism 97 5 Conflict and Dependency Theories 99 5A Ralf Dahrendorf from Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society 101 5B Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto from Dependency and Development in Latin America 107 Theory of Dependency and Capitalistic Development 107 6 Social Exchange 111 6A Peter M. Blau from Exchange and Power in Social Life 113 6B James S. Coleman from Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital 116 Social Capital 116 Human Capital and Social Capital 118 Forms of Social Capital 118 6C Paula England from Sometimes the Social Becomes Personal: Gender, Class, and Sexualities 120 Defining Terms 121 Explaining the Gender Differences 123 Part III Symbolic Interaction, Phenomenology, and Ethnomethodology 129 7 Symbolic Interaction 131 7A George H. Mead from Mind, Self & Society 134 From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist 134 7B Erving Goffman from The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life 136 Introduction 136 8 Phenomenology 141 8A Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann from The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge 143 The Reality of Everyday Life 143 Origins of Institutionalization 147 9 Ethnomethodology 159 9A Harold Garfinkel from Studies in Ethnomethodology 161 Practical Sociological Reasoning: Doing Accounts in “Common Sense Situations of Choice” 161 9B Sarah Fenstermaker and Candace West from Doing Gender, Doing Difference: Inequality, Power, and Institutional Change 166 “Difference” as an Ongoing Interactional Accomplishment 166 Common Misapprehensions 168 The Dynamics of Doing Difference 169 Part IV Major Postwar European Influences On Sociological Theory 173 10 Critical Theory: The Frankfurt School 175 10A Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno from Dialectic of Enlightenment 179 10B Jurgen Habermas from The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society 184 11 Pierre Bourdieu 189 11A Pierre Bourdieu from The Forms of Capital 191 Cultural Capital 193 Social Capital 194 11B Pierre Bourdieu from Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste 196 Class Condition and Social Conditioning 198 The Habitus and the Space of Life‐Styles 199 12 Michel Foucault and Queer Theory 209 12A Michel Foucault from The History of Sexuality 212 Method 214 12B Steven Seidman from Queer Theory/Sociology 217 Part V Standpoint Theories Amid Globalization 223 13 Feminist Theories 225 13A Charlotte Perkins Gilman from The Man-Made World or Our Androcentric Culture 229 13B Arlie Hochschild from Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure 231 Framing Rules and Feeling Rules: Issues in Ideology 231 13C Dorothy E. Smith from The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge 233 Relations of Ruling and Objectified Knowledge 235 Women’s Exclusion from the Governing Conceptual Mode 235 Women Sociologists and the Contradiction between Sociology and Experience 236 The Standpoint of Women as a Place to Start 238 13D Patricia Hill Collins from Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment 238 Black Feminist Thought as Critical Social Theory 238 Why U.S. Black Feminist Thought? 242 Black Women as Agents of Knowledge 243 Toward Truth 246 13E Patricia Hill Collins from Intersectionality’s Definitional Dilemmas 249 Racial Formation Theory, Knowledge Projects, and Intersectionality 249 Epistemological Challenges 252 13F R.W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt from Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept 254 What Should Be Retained 257 What Should Be Rejected 258 Gender Hierarchy 258 14 Postcolonial Theories 263 14A W. E. Burghardt Du Bois from The Souls of Black Folk 267 14B Edward W. Said from Orientalism 270 14C Frantz Fanon from Black Skin, White Masks 273 The Fact of Blackness 273 14D Stuart Hall from Cultural Identity and Diaspora 276 14E Raewyn Connell, Fran Collyer, Joao Maia, and Robert Morrell from Toward a Global Sociology of Knowledge: Post-Colonial Realities and Intellectual Practices 279 Southern Situations and Global Arenas 280 14F Alondra Nelson from The Social Life of DNA: Racial Reconciliation and Institutional Morality after the Genome 282 Postgenomic 282 Reconciliation Projects 284 Slavery and Justice 285 15 Globalization and the Reassessment of Modernity 287 15A Zygmunt Bauman from Liquid Modernity 290 After the Nation‐state 290 15B Anthony Giddens from Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age 296 15C Ulrich Beck from Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity 300 On the Logic of Wealth Distribution and Risk Distribution 300 15D Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande from Varieties of Second Modernity: The Cosmopolitan Turn in Social and Political Theory and Research 305 15E Jurgen Habermas from Notes on Post-Secular Society 307 The Descriptive Account of a “Post‐Secular Society” – and the Normative Issue of How Citizens of Such a Society Should Understand Themselves 307 Index 311

About the Author :
MICHELE DILLON is Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire, USA, and was educated at University College Dublin, Ireland, and the University of California, Berkeley, USA. She has many years of experience teaching sociological theory to undergraduate and graduate students, and, among a wide range of publications, she is the author of Introduction to Sociological Theory, Third Edition (Wiley, 2020).