Full Description
Charles Lemert is one of the most renowned critics of social theory and theorists today. The editors of this book have offered and contextualised many of his best essays and situated them against the backdrop of American sociology. The breadth of Lemert's work doesn't stop at an academic engagement with theoretical debates such as 'globalisation' or 'postmodernism,' but cuts right to the heart of abiding social issues. His work is focused and continues to probe pressing questions such as the rise of vulnerabilities in an era of new capitalism. By weaving together personal narrative, research, lucid explanations, and a dynamic engagement with social theory of old and new, his unique prose renders accessible complex theoretical debates.
Contents
Part I Rethinking Social Knowledge; Chapter 1 Cultural Multiplexity and Religious Polytheism; Chapter 2 Sociological Theory and the Relativistic Paradigm; Part II Social Things; Chapter 3 Sociology as Theories of Lost Worlds; Chapter 4 Durkeim's Ghosts in the Culture of Sociologies; Part III Critical Sociology; Chapter 5 Sociology; Chapter 6 The Uses of French Structuralism; Chapter 7 Against Capital-S Sociology; Part IV Dark Thoughts; Chapter 8 Dreaming in the Dark, November 26, 1997; Chapter 9 The Race of Time; Part V Ethics and Identity; Chapter 10 Whose We?; Chapter 11 Can Worlds Be Changed?; Part VI Globalized Worlds; Chapter 12 If There Is a Global WE, Might We All Be Dispossessed?; Chapter 13 Surviving the New Individualism, Anthony Elliott; Part VII Intellectual Memoir; Chapter 14 The Race of Time and the Lives of the Dead;
