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Classical Sociological Theory
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Classical Sociological Theory

Eighth Edition

Other Titles in:
Social Theory

April 2020 | 608 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc

The authors are proud sponsors of the 2020 SAGE Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award—enabling graduate students and early career faculty to attend the annual ASA pre-conference teaching and learning workshop.

Classical Sociological Theory, Eighth Edition, provides a comprehensive overview of the major theorists and schools of sociological thought from the Enlightenment roots of theory through the early 20th century. The integration of key theories with biographical sketches of theorists and the requisite historical and intellectual context helps students to better understand the original works of classical authors as well as to compare and contrast classical theories.
 
Preface
 
Acknowledgments
 
About the Authors
 
Part I: Introduction to Classical Sociological Theory
 
Chapter 1: A Historical Sketch of Sociological Theory: The Early Years
Introduction

 
Premodern Sociological Theory

 
Social Forces in the Development of Sociological Theory

 
Intellectual Forces and the Rise of Sociological Theory

 
The Development of French Sociology

 
The Development of German Sociology

 
The Origins of British Sociology

 
The Key Figure in Early Italian Sociology

 
Non-European Classical Theory

 
The Contemporary Relevance of Classical Sociological Theory

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 2: A Historical Sketch of Sociological Theory: The Later Years
Early American Sociological Theory

 
Sociological Theory to Midcentury

 
Sociological Theory from Midcentury

 
Late Twentieth-Century Integrative Theory

 
Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity

 
Social Theory in the Twenty-First Century

 
Summary

 
 
Part II: Classical Sociological Theory
 
Chapter 3: Alexis de Tocqueville
Comparative Study

 
American Politics

 
The Sociology in Tocqueville’s Work

 
The Key Sociological Problem(s)

 
Freedom, Democracy, and Socialism

 
Colonialism

 
Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 4: Auguste Comte
Comte’s Profound Ambitions

 
Comte’s Sociology

 
Theory and Practice

 
Criticisms and Contributions

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 5: Herbert Spencer
Spencer and Comte

 
General Theoretical Principles

 
Sociology

 
The Evolution of Society

 
Ethics and Politics

 
Criticisms and Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 6: Karl Marx
Introduction

 
The Dialectic

 
Dialectical Method

 
Human Potential

 
The Structures of Capitalist Society

 
Materialist Conception of History

 
Cultural Aspects of Capitalist Society

 
Marx’s Economics: A Case Study

 
Communism

 
Criticisms

 
Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 7: Emile Durkheim
Introduction

 
Social Facts

 
The Division of Labor in Society

 
Suicide

 
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

 
Moral Education and Social Reform

 
Criticisms

 
Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 8: Max Weber
Methodology

 
Substantive Sociology

 
Criticisms

 
Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 9: Georg Simmel
Primary Concerns

 
Individual Consciousness and Individuality

 
Social Interaction (“Association”)

 
Social Structures and Worlds

 
Objective Culture

 
The Philosophy of Money

 
Secrecy: A Case Study in Simmel’s Sociology

 
Criticisms

 
Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 10: Early Women Sociologists and Classical Sociological Theory: 1830–1930
Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)

 
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)

 
Jane Addams (1860–1935) and the Chicago Women’s School

 
Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964) and Ida Wells-Barnett (1862–1931)

 
Marianne Schnitger Weber (1870–1954)

 
Beatrice Potter Webb (1858–1943)

 
Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 11: W. E. B. Du Bois
Intellectual Influences

 
Studying Race Scientifically: The Philadelphia Negro

 
Theoretical Contributions

 
Economics

 
Karl Marx, Socialism, and Communism

 
Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 12: Thorstein Veblen
Intellectual Influences

 
Basic Premises

 
Substantive Issues

 
Criticisms and Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 13: Joseph Schumpeter
Creative Destruction

 
Schumpeter’s Broader Economic Theory

 
Toward a More Dynamic Theory of the Economy

 
Schumpeter’s Sociology

 
The Future

 
Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 14: Karl Mannheim
The Sociology of Knowledge

 
Ideology and Utopia

 
Rationality and the Irrationality of the Times

 
Criticisms and Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 15: George Herbert Mead
Intellectual Roots

 
The Priority of the Social

 
The Act

 
Mental Processes and the Mind

 
Self

 
Society

 
Criticisms and Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 16: Alfred Schutz
The Ideas of Edmund Husserl

 
Science and the Social World

 
Typifications and Recipes

 
The Life-World

 
Intersubjectivity

 
Realms of the Social World

 
Consciousness, Meanings, and Motives

 
Criticisms and Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 17: Talcott Parsons
Parsons’s Integrative Efforts

 
General Principles

 
The Action System

 
Change and Dynamism in Parsonsian Theory

 
Criticisms and Contemporary Applications

 
Summary

 
 
References
 
Name Index
 
Subject Index

Thank you. I liked the book and adopted.

Dr Masako Endo
Sociology Dept, Drexel University
March 13, 2024

An excellent survey of classical sociological theory with supplemental biographies of theorists in the textbook.

Dr Bill Brocato
Social Sciences Dept, Univ Of Maryland Eastern Shore
December 14, 2020

George Ritzer

George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, where he has also been a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and won a Teaching Excellence Award. He was awarded the Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award by the American Sociological Association, an honorary doctorate from LaTrobe University in Australia, and the Robin Williams Lectureship from the Eastern Sociological Society. His best-known work, The McDonaldization of Society (8th ed.), has been read by hundreds of thousands of students over two decades and translated into over a dozen languages. Ritzer is also the editor of McDonaldization: The Reader... More About Author

Jeffrey N. Stepnisky

Jeffrey Stepnisky is an Associate Professor of Sociology at MacEwan University in Alberta, Canada, where he teaches classical and contemporary social theory. He has published in the area of social theory, especially as it relates to questions of subjectivity, in journals such as The Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior and Social Theory & Health. Along with this book he is co-author of Sociological Theory, Classical Sociological Theory, and Modern Sociological Theory, and has co-edited the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, all with George Ritzer. More About Author

Also available as a South Asia Edition.

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ISBN: 9781544354828
$151.00