Full Description
For one-semester, junior/senior-level courses in Contemporary Sociological Theory. This text examines the assumptions and concepts of the five major sociological theories and the classical roots of the modern theories. It focuses specifically on functionalism, conflict theory, theories of rational choice, symbolic interactionism, and phenomenology.
Contents
1. THE UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIETY. 2. FUNCTIONALISM. Part OneParsons: Grand Theory. Part Two: Robert K. Merton: Middle-Range Theory. Part Three: Neofunctionalism. 3. CONFLICT THEORY. Part One: Conflict Theory and the Critique of Society. Part Two: Conflict Theory and Analytic Sociology: The Legacy of Max Weber. 4. EVOLUTION AND MODERNITY: MACROSOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES. Part One: Karl Marx and the Classless Society. Part Two: Talcott Parsons's Evolutionary Model. Part Three: Jurgen Habermas: Rationalization and Communicative Action. Part Four: Anthony Giddens: Structuration Theory and High Modernity. 5. SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM. Part One: George Herbert Mead: The Self. Part Two: Herbert Blumer: Interpretation and Methodology. Part Three: Erving Goffman: Dramaturgy and the Interaction Order. Part Four: Arlie Russell Hochschild and Patricia Hill Collins: Expanding the Horizons of Symbolic Interactionism. 6. PHENOMENOLOGY. Part One: Harold Garfinkel: The Founder of Ethnomethodology. Part Two: Peter Berger: The Social Construction of Reality. Part Three: Dorothy E. Smith: Rational Choice, Social Exchange, and Individual Behavior. Part Two: Rational Choice and the Analysis of Social Structure. Part Three: James Coleman and the Foundations of Social Theory. 8. REDISCOVERING THE BODY: THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE BODY AND SOCIOBIOLOGY. Part One: The Sociology of the Body. Part Two: Sociobiology. 9. CONCLUSION: EVALUATING SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY. Part One: The Future of Sociological Theory: Modernism and Postmodernism. Part Two: Social Theory and Understanding: The Value of Multiple Perspectives. Selected Bibliography. Index.
