Social Theory
Twenty Introductory Lectures

An unrivalled overview of social theory and its development from 1945 to the present day.

Hans Joas (Author), Wolfgang Knöbl (Author), Alex Skinner (Translated by)

9780521690881, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 9 July 2009

618 pages
22.1 x 15.1 x 2.8 cm, 0.96 kg

'Hans Joas and Wolfgang Knöbl's Social Theory: Twenty Introductory Lectures is a remarkable book. There is nothing that I know that comes anywhere near to it in the contemporary landscape of social theory. [It] is, in addition to other things, an intellectually heavyweight textbook for graduate students and professors, providing a summation of, and critical commentary on, virtually all the major and minor currents in social theory since the middle of the twentieth century.' Rob Stones, Journal of Classical Sociology

Social theory is the theoretical core of the social sciences, clearly distinguishable from political theory and cultural analysis. This book offers a unique overview of the development of social theory from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the present day. Spanning the literature in English, French and German, it provides an excellent background to the most important social theorists and theories in contemporary sociological thought, with crisp summaries of the main books, arguments and controversies. It also deals with newly emerging schools from rational choice to symbolic interactionism, with new ambitious approaches (Habermas, Luhmann, Giddens, Bourdieu), structuralism and antistructuralism, critical revisions of modernization theory, feminism and neopragmatism. Written by two of the world's leading sociologists and based on their extensive academic teaching, this unrivalled work is ideal both for students in the social sciences and humanities and for anyone interested in contemporary theoretical debates.

Introduction
1. What is theory?
2. The classical attempt at synthesis: Talcott Parsons
3. Parsons on the road to normativist functionalism
4. Parsons and the elaboration of normativist functionalism
5. Neo-utilitarianism
6. Interpretive approaches (1): symbolic interactionism
7. Interpretive approaches (2): ethnomethodology
8. Conflict sociology and conflict theory
9. Habermas and critical theory
10. Habermas' 'theory of communicative action'
11. Niklas Luhmann's radicalization of functionalism
12. Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration and the new British sociology of power
13. The renewal of Parsonianism and modernization theory
14. Structuralism and poststructuralism
15. Between structuralism and theory of practice: the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
16. French anti-structuralists (Cornelius Castoriadis, Alain Touraine and Paul Ricoeur)
17. Feminist social theories
18. A crisis of modernity? New diagnoses (Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman, Robert Bellah, and the debate between liberals and communitarians)
19. Neopragmatism
20. How things stand
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Political science & theory [JPA], Social theory [JHBA], History of ideas [JFCX], Social & political philosophy [HPS]