Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics

1. Introduction to Sociological Theory 1

Creating Sociological Theory

Defining Sociological Theory

Creating Sociological Theory: A More Realistic View

Multicultural Social Theory

Overview of the Book

Summary

Suggested Readings

2. Classical Theories I

Emile Durkheim: From Mechanical to Organic Solidarity

Two Types of Solidarity

Changes in Dynamic Density

Collective Conscience

Law: Repressive and Restitutive

Anomie

Karl Marx: From Capitalism to Communism

Human Potential

Alienation

Capitalism

Communism

Max Weber: The Rationalization of Society

Social Action

Behavior and Action

Types of Action

Types of Rationality

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Confucianism, Hinduism, and Capitalism

Authority Structures and Rationalization

Summary

Suggested Readings

3. Classical Theories II

Georg Simmel: The Growing Tragedy of Culture

Association

Forms and Types

Consciousness

Group Size

Distance and the Stranger

Distance and Value

Objective and Subjective Culture

Division of Labor

Thorstein Veblen: Increasing Control of Business over Industry

Business

Industry

George Herbert Mead: Social Behaviorism

The Act

Gestures

Significant Symbols and Language

The Self

I and Me

Summary Suggested Readings

4. Contemporary Grand Theories I

Structural Functionalism

The Functional Theory of Stratification and Its Critics

Talcott Parsons’s Structural Functionalism

Robert Merton’s Structural Functionalism

Conflict Theory

The Work of Ralf Dahrendorf

Authority

Groups, Conflict, and Change

General System Theory

The Work of Niklas Luhmann

System and Environment

Autopoiesis

Differentiation

Summary

Suggested Readings

5. Contemporary Grand Theories II

Neo-Marxian Theory

Critical Theory and the Emergence of the Culture Industry

Neo-Marxian Spatial Analysis

The Civilizing Process

Examples of the Civilizing Process

Explaining the Changes: Lengthening Dependency Chains

A Case Study: Fox Hunting

The Colonization of the Lifeworld

Lifeworld, System, and Colonization

Rationalization of System and Lifeworld

The Juggernaut of Modernity

The Juggernaut

Space and Time

Reflexivity

Insecurity and Risks

Summary

Suggested Readings

6. Contemporary Theories of Everyday Life

Symbolic Interactionism

Dramaturgy

Dramaturgy

Impression Management

Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis

Defining Ethnomethodology

Accounts

Some Examples

Accomplishing Gender

Exchange Theory

The Exchange Theory of George Homans

Basic Propositions

Rational Choice Theory

A Skeletal Model

Foundations of Social Theory

Summary

Suggested Readings

7. Contemporary Integrative Theories

A More Integrated Exchange Theory

Exchange Relationships and Networks

Power-Dependence

A More Integrative Exchange Theory

Structuration Theory

Elements of Structuration Theory

Culture and Agency

Habitus and Field

Bridging Subjectivism and Objectivism

Habitus

Field

Summary

Suggested Readings

8. Contemporary Feminist Theories by Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge

The Basic Theoretical Questions

The Classical Roots

Contemporary Feminist Theories

Gender Difference

General Feminist Theories of Difference

Sociological Theories of Difference

Gender Inequality

Gender Oppression

Structural Oppression

Toward a Feminist Sociological Theory

Summary

Suggested Readings

9. Postmodern Grand Theories

The Transition from Industrial to Postindustrial Society

Increasing Governmentality (and Other Grand Theories)

Increasing Governmentality

Other Grand Theories

Postmodernity as Modernity’s Coming of Age

Learning to Live with Ambivalence?

Postmodern Ethics

The Rise of Consumer Society, Loss of Symbolic Exchange, and Increase in Simulations

From Producer to Consumer Society

The Loss of Symbolic Exchange and the Increase in Simulations

The Consumer Society and the New Means of Consumption

Queer Theory: Sex and Sexuality

The Heterosexual/homosexual Binary

Performing Sex

Summary

Suggested Readings

10. Globalization Theory

Major Contemporary Theorists on Globalization

Anthony Giddens on the “Runaway World” of Globalization

Ulrich Beck and the Politics of Globalization

Zygmunt Bauman on the Human Consequences of Globalization

Cultural Theory

Cultural Differentialism

Cultural Convergence

Cultural Hybridization

Economic Theory

Neo-Liberalism

Critiquing Neo-Liberalism

Neo-Marxian Theoretical Alternatives to Neo-Liberalism

Transnational Capitalism

Political Theory

Other Theories

Summary Suggested Readings

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