Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics https://www.mheducation.com/cover-images/Jpeg_400-high/0078026784.jpeg 4 9780078026782 Contemporary Social Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics is ideal for those looking for a brief, yet accessible text on sociological theory. An affordable alternative to a standard text, this volume is concise, comprehensive, informative, engaging, includes a range of pedagogical features, and it appeals to a wide range of students. The 4th edition has added new sections on W.E.B. Du Bois, Queer theory, and key concepts and applications boxes on a variety of contemporary social theories.
Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics

Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics

4th Edition
By George Ritzer and Jeff Stepnisky
ISBN10: 0078026784
ISBN13: 9780078026782
Copyright: 2013
09780078026782

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Program Details

1. Introduction to Sociological Theory 1

Creating Sociological Theory

Defining Sociological Theory

Creating Sociological Theory: A More Realistic View

Multicultural Social Theory

Overview of the Book

Summary

Suggested Readings

2. Classical Theories I

Emile Durkheim: From Mechanical to Organic Solidarity

Two Types of Solidarity

Changes in Dynamic Density

Collective Conscience

Law: Repressive and Restitutive

Anomie

Karl Marx: From Capitalism to Communism

Human Potential

Alienation

Capitalism

Communism

Max Weber: The Rationalization of Society

Social Action

Behavior and Action

Types of Action

Types of Rationality

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Confucianism, Hinduism, and Capitalism

Authority Structures and Rationalization

Summary

Suggested Readings

3. Classical Theories II

Georg Simmel: The Growing Tragedy of Culture

Association

Forms and Types

Consciousness

Group Size

Distance and the Stranger

Distance and Value

Objective and Subjective Culture

Division of Labor

Thorstein Veblen: Increasing Control of Business over Industry

Business

Industry

George Herbert Mead: Social Behaviorism

The Act

Gestures

Significant Symbols and Language

The Self

I and Me

Summary Suggested Readings

4. Contemporary Grand Theories I

Structural Functionalism

The Functional Theory of Stratification and Its Critics

Talcott Parsons’s Structural Functionalism

Robert Merton’s Structural Functionalism

Conflict Theory

The Work of Ralf Dahrendorf

Authority

Groups, Conflict, and Change

General System Theory

The Work of Niklas Luhmann

System and Environment

Autopoiesis

Differentiation

Summary

Suggested Readings

5. Contemporary Grand Theories II

Neo-Marxian Theory

Critical Theory and the Emergence of the Culture Industry

Neo-Marxian Spatial Analysis

The Civilizing Process

Examples of the Civilizing Process

Explaining the Changes: Lengthening Dependency Chains

A Case Study: Fox Hunting

The Colonization of the Lifeworld

Lifeworld, System, and Colonization

Rationalization of System and Lifeworld

The Juggernaut of Modernity

The Juggernaut

Space and Time

Reflexivity

Insecurity and Risks

Summary

Suggested Readings

6. Contemporary Theories of Everyday Life

Symbolic Interactionism

Dramaturgy

Dramaturgy

Impression Management

Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis

Defining Ethnomethodology

Accounts

Some Examples

Accomplishing Gender

Exchange Theory

The Exchange Theory of George Homans

Basic Propositions

Rational Choice Theory

A Skeletal Model

Foundations of Social Theory

Summary

Suggested Readings

7. Contemporary Integrative Theories

A More Integrated Exchange Theory

Exchange Relationships and Networks

Power-Dependence

A More Integrative Exchange Theory

Structuration Theory

Elements of Structuration Theory

Culture and Agency

Habitus and Field

Bridging Subjectivism and Objectivism

Habitus

Field

Summary

Suggested Readings

8. Contemporary Feminist Theories by Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge

The Basic Theoretical Questions

The Classical Roots

Contemporary Feminist Theories

Gender Difference

General Feminist Theories of Difference

Sociological Theories of Difference

Gender Inequality

Gender Oppression

Structural Oppression

Toward a Feminist Sociological Theory

Summary

Suggested Readings

9. Postmodern Grand Theories

The Transition from Industrial to Postindustrial Society

Increasing Governmentality (and Other Grand Theories)

Increasing Governmentality

Other Grand Theories

Postmodernity as Modernity’s Coming of Age

Learning to Live with Ambivalence?

Postmodern Ethics

The Rise of Consumer Society, Loss of Symbolic Exchange, and Increase in Simulations

From Producer to Consumer Society

The Loss of Symbolic Exchange and the Increase in Simulations

The Consumer Society and the New Means of Consumption

Queer Theory: Sex and Sexuality

The Heterosexual/homosexual Binary

Performing Sex

Summary

Suggested Readings

10. Globalization Theory

Major Contemporary Theorists on Globalization

Anthony Giddens on the “Runaway World” of Globalization

Ulrich Beck and the Politics of Globalization

Zygmunt Bauman on the Human Consequences of Globalization

Cultural Theory

Cultural Differentialism

Cultural Convergence

Cultural Hybridization

Economic Theory

Neo-Liberalism

Critiquing Neo-Liberalism

Neo-Marxian Theoretical Alternatives to Neo-Liberalism

Transnational Capitalism

Political Theory

Other Theories

Summary Suggested Readings

About the Author

George Ritzer

George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, where he has been a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and won a Teaching Excellence award by the American Sociological Association, and in 2004, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by LaTrobe University, Melborune, Australia. He has served as Chair of the American Sociological Association's Sections on Theoretical Sociology and organizations and Occupations. He held the UNESCO Chair in Social Theory at the Russian Academy of Sciences, a Fulbright-Hay Chair at York University in Canada, and a Fulbright-Hays award to the Netherlands. He has been Scholar-in-Residence at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences. Dr. Ritzer's main theoretical interests lie in metatheory as well as applied social theory. In metatheory, his contributions include Metatheorizing in Sociology(Lexington Books, 1991), Sociology: A Multiple Paradigm Science (Allyn and Bacon, 1975, 1980), and Toward an Integrated Sociological Paradigm (Allyn and Bacon). Professor Ritzer is perhaps best known for the McDonaldization of Society (4/e, 2004); translated into more than a dozen languages) and several related books (also with a number of translations, including Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society (1995), Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption (2/e, 2005),The Globalization of Nothing (2/e, 2007), and (with Craig Lair) Outsourcing: Globalization and Beyond. He edited the Encyclopedia of Social Theory (2005), and is the founding editor of the Journal of Consumer Culture. He just completed editing the eleven-volume Encyclopedia of Sociology (2007) and The Blackwell Companion to Globalization (2007). In 2006, McGraw-Hill published the second edition of Professor Ritzer's Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classic Roots: The Basics. In 2007, McGraw-Hill will publish the seventh edition of Modern Sociological Theory, and the fifth edition of Classical Sociological Theory. The latter texts, as well as this one, have been translated into a number of languages.

Jeff Stepnisky