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).
