The Social Lens

Description

Written in a conversational style that is both appealing and provocative, this text uses real life examples to draw readers in and invite them to consider the ideas that have shaped our understanding of society. Kenneth Allan covers the key thinkers in Western thought for the past 200 years. Section I. Introduction : the modern agenda : nineteenth-century theorizing. Capitalism and engines of social change--Karl Marx (1818-1883) ; Rationality and the bureaucratic society--Max Weber (1864-1920) ; Cultural diversity and social integration--Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) ; The individual in modern society--George Herbert Mead (1863-1931), Georg Simmel (1858-1918) ; The challenges of gender and race--Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) -- Section II. Introduction : theory cumulation and schools of thought in the mid-twentieth century. Structural functionalism--Talcott Parsons (1902-1979), Robert K. Merton (1910-2003) ; Conflict and critical theories ; Part I: Conflict theory--Lewis Coser (1913-2003), Ralf Dahrendorf (1929- ), Randall Collins (1941- ) -- Part II: Jurgen Habermas : critical theory and modernity ; Structures of inequality ; race and gender--William Julius Wilson (1935- ), Janet Chafetz (1942- ) -- Interactionist theories--Herbert Blumer (1900-1987), Erving Goffman (1922-1982), Harold Garfinkel (1917- ) ; Exchange theory--Peter M. Blau (1918-2002), Karen S. Cook (1946- ), Randall Collins (1941- ) -- Section III. Introduction : contemporary new visions and critiques. Constructing society--Anthony Giddens (1938- ), Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) -- World-systems ; Immanuel Wallerstein (1930- ), Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) ; Identity politics--Dorothy E. Smith (1926- ), Cornel West (1953- ), Patricia Hill Collins (1948- ) -- Post-theories ; Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Jean Baudrillard (1929- ).