The Blackwell companion to social theory

The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory brings together leading scholars from around the world to provide the first truly international overview of the major developments in twentieth-century Western social thought. Edited and introduced by Bryan S. Turner, this volume aims not only to chart the main thinkers, schools, and movements within contemporary social theory, but also to identify points of convergence and possibly synthesis, particularly between North American and European traditions. The principal focus is on post-classical modern social theory, but while major modern thinkers such as Giddens, Habermas, Lyotard, Luhmann, Foucault, and Derrida are examined, they are situated within the context of a classical tradition which includes Parsons, Garfinkel, Berger, Goffman, Elias, and Mannheim. The 15 chapters of the volume are divided into logically organized sections on the classical foundations, action and system theory, interpretative sociology, post-structuralism and postmodernism, micro and macrosociology, historical and comparative sociology, and the problems of the social. There are separate chapters on feminism, world systems theory, symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology, critical theory, classical sociology, hermeneutics, action theory, rational choice theory, sociology of space, and cultural sociology.