Understanding Society: A Survey of Modern Social Theory focuses on contemporary social theory (1930s to the present), while also covering classical theory in its opening chapters. The second edition maintains the topical organizationof the text, grouping theorists into major categories including critical theory; structuralism and post-structuralism; feminism; and globalization. New material includes a brand-new chapter on the somatic aspects of personal identity, as well as contemporary debates over communications, popular culture, the global village, corporatism, globalization, race, gender, and sexuality. INDICE: 1: An Introduction to Social Theory; The Basics: What Is Society?; Science and Values; Causality and Laws; Modernity and the Enlightenment; Flashback: Bonjour Monsieur Condorcet; Modern Historical Trends; Modernism in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences; Paradigms of Social Theory; 2: Functionalism and Its Critics; Hobbes's Question: Why Have a Society at All?; Durkheim on Society as a Functional Organism; Vignette: A Functional Life; Talcott Parsons and Structural Functionalism; Robert Merton; Conflict Theory; Flashback: A PartyDisrupted; C. Wright Mills; Sociobiology: An Evolutionary Functionalism; Conclusion; 3: The Debate over Materialism; Vignette: The Factory; Marx's Main Ideas; Two Marxists Who Shook the World: Lenin and Trotsky; Antonio Gramsci and Hegemony; Louis Althusser on Ideology; Jean-Paul Sartre's Search for a Method; Karl Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge; Pierre Bourdieu and the Varieties of Capital; Jean Baudrillard on Consumer Culture; Flashback: Sarah at the Mall; The End of the Left?; 4: Slamming Society: Critical Theory and Situationism; Vignette: The Free Spirits; The Philosophical Foundations of Critical Reason: Hegel and Nietzsche; Freud on Civilization and Its Discontents; Theodor Adorno onCulture; Herbert Marcuse on Modern Industrial Society; Some Criticisms of theFrankfurt School; Christopher Lasch on the Culture of Narcissism; Jürgen Habermas on Capitalism and Communicative Action; Situationism; Culture Jamming; Flashback: An Unexpected Visit; 5: Meaning in Society: Human Agency and Social Explanation; Vignette: Athena's Tale; Structure vs Agency: The Basics; Weber onUnderstanding Society; Ludwig Wittgenstein and Language Games; R.G. Collingwood's Historical Idealism; Peter Winch on the Idea of a Social Science; Hans-Georg Gadamer's Hermeneutics; Flashback: A Big Confusing Greek Wedding; RationalChoice Theory; Anthony Giddens on Agency and Structure; 6: Society as Symbolsor Constructs: Symbolic Interactionism and Phenomenology; Vignette: Saturday Night Dazzler; Cooley, Mead, and the Birth of Symbolic Interactionism; HerbertBlumer and Mature Symbolic Interactionism; Erving Goffman's Dramaturgy; Flashback: Dancing with a Star; The Phenomenology of Everyday Life; The Social Construction of Reality; Ethnomethodology; 7: Structuralism, Semiotics, and Post-Structuralism; Vignette: A Long Voyage; The Basics of Structuralism and Semiotics; Joseph Campbell and the Hero with a Thousand Faces; Flashback: Mission Accomplished; Semiotics and Popular Culture; Post-Structuralism: The Theoretical Logic of Postmodernism; Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction; Michel Foucault onPower and the Docile Body; 8: Postmodernism: Political Economy and Communications; Vignette: The Postmodern Guy; Revisiting Postmodern Culture; The Postmodern Condition; The Post-Industrial Information Society; Manuel Castells: The Network Society and the Information Age; Flashback: Bart and Network Society; 9: Postmodern
- ISBN: 978-0-19-543250-3
- Editorial: Oxford University
- Encuadernacion: Desconocida
- Páginas: 536
- Fecha Publicación: 30/09/2010
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: Inglés