Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- I What is theory?
- II The classical attempt at synthesis: Talcott Parsons
- III Parsons on the road to normativist functionalism
- IV Parsons and the elaboration of normativist functionalism
- V Neo-utilitarianism
- VI Interpretive approaches (1): symbolic interactionism
- VII Interpretive approaches (2): ethnomethodology
- VIII Conflict sociology and conflict theory
- IX Habermas and critical theory
- X Habermas' ‘theory of communicative action’
- XI Niklas Luhmann's radicalization of functionalism
- XII Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration and the new British sociology of power
- XIII The renewal of Parsonianism and modernization theory
- XIV Structuralism and poststructuralism
- XV Between structuralism and theory of practice: The cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
- XVI French anti-structuralists (Cornelius Castoriadis, Alain Touraine and Paul Ricoeur)
- XVII Feminist social theories
- XVIII A crisis of modernity? New diagnoses (Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman, Robert Bellah, and the debate between liberals and communitarians)
- XIX Neo-pragmatism
- XX How things stand
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- I What is theory?
- II The classical attempt at synthesis: Talcott Parsons
- III Parsons on the road to normativist functionalism
- IV Parsons and the elaboration of normativist functionalism
- V Neo-utilitarianism
- VI Interpretive approaches (1): symbolic interactionism
- VII Interpretive approaches (2): ethnomethodology
- VIII Conflict sociology and conflict theory
- IX Habermas and critical theory
- X Habermas' ‘theory of communicative action’
- XI Niklas Luhmann's radicalization of functionalism
- XII Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration and the new British sociology of power
- XIII The renewal of Parsonianism and modernization theory
- XIV Structuralism and poststructuralism
- XV Between structuralism and theory of practice: The cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
- XVI French anti-structuralists (Cornelius Castoriadis, Alain Touraine and Paul Ricoeur)
- XVII Feminist social theories
- XVIII A crisis of modernity? New diagnoses (Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman, Robert Bellah, and the debate between liberals and communitarians)
- XIX Neo-pragmatism
- XX How things stand
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
This book is based on lectures originally conceived by one of the authors (Hans Joas) for a visiting professorship at the University of Chicago in 1985 and which he has held regularly since then. The first attendees, towards the end of the 1980s, were students at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, followed, for more than a decade, by students at the Free University of Berlin, along with their counterparts at various American and European universities during certain semesters. The younger of the two authors (Wolfgang Knöbl) contributed to the planning and constant improvement of these lectures at various stages of his academic career: as a student in Erlangen, as junior and assistant lecturer in Berlin and New York, and subsequently as a colleague at the University of Göttingen.
It goes without saying that the precise character of this lecture series has changed considerably over the course of time – not only because of the obvious necessity of keeping them constantly up to date, but also in response to students' needs and the imperative of clearing up points they struggled to understand; the authors' own ongoing theoretical projects have also had an important impact. We have now reached a point at which we feel confident enough in our basic approach and in the validity of our overview to sally forth from the lecture theatre and present our ideas to the reading public. We hope our survey will satisfy the needs of both students in the social sciences and those of non-specialist readers keen to understand international developments in the field of social theory since around the end of the Second World War.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Social TheoryTwenty Introductory Lectures, pp. viii - xiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009