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The Development of Sociological Theory
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The Development of Sociological Theory
Readings from the Enlightenment to the Present

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February 2017 | 552 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc

The author is a proud sponsor 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.

The Development of Sociological Theory: Readings from the Enlightenment to the Present brings together excerpts from 96 original works by important theorists, from the roots of sociological thought through the contemporary and post-modern periods.  Noted theory scholar Javier Treviño has created an anthology with breadth and variety, while staying mainly within theoretical schools and traditions that are sociological. The selections have been selected and edited for classroom use and are presented according to two orderings—as a rough chronology that illustrates the historical development of theoretical knowledge in sociology and as a typology of systems of sociological theorizing for more methodical consideration. 

 


 
PART I. THE NATURE, STRUCTURE, AND TYPES OF SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
On Intellectual Craftsmanship

C. Wright Mills
The Importance of General Theory

Talcott Parsons
Middle-Range Theories

Robert K. Merton
Theory as Explanation

George C. Homans
The Oversocialized View of Human Nature

Dennis H. Wrong
The Theoretical Infrastructure

Alvin W. Gouldner
 
PART II. THE ENLIGHTENMENT ROOTS OF SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
The Problem of Order

Thomas Hobbes
The Social Contract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Laws, Mores, and Manners

Charles de Montesquieu
 
PART III. PROTOSOCIOLOGY
An Unjust Social Order

Henri de Saint-Simon
The Hierarchical Structure of Society

Henri de Saint-Simon
Order and Progress

Auguste Comte
Law of the Three Stages

Auguste Comte
Social Progress

Herbert Spencer
The Evolution of Society

Herbert Spencer
The General Happiness

Harriet Martineau
Folkways and Mores

William Graham Sumner
In-Groups, Out-Groups, and Ethnocentrism

William Graham Sumner
 
PART IV. THE CLASSICAL TRADITION
Commodity Fetishism

Karl Marx
Alienated Labor

Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Historical Materialism
Émile Durkheim
Mechanical and Organic Solidarity
Types of Suicide

Émile Durkheim
Social Facts

Émile Durkheim
The Rationalism of Western Civilization

Max Weber
The Spirit of Capitalism

Max Weber
Types of Authority

Max Weber
The Stranger

Georg Simmel
Dyad and Triad

Georg Simmel
The Metropolis and Mental Life

Georg Simmel
 
PART V. THE INTERSTITIAL STATEMENTS
The Ruling Class

Gaetano Mosca
The Circulation of the Elites

Vilfredo Pareto
The Iron Law of Oligarchy

Robert Michels
The Crowd Mind

Gustave Le Bon
The Laws of Imitation

Gabriel Tarde
The Herd Instinct

Sigmund Freud
The Conscience of Society

Sigmund Freud
Conspicuous Consumption

Thorstein Veblen
Cultural Lag

William F. Ogburn
Ideational, Sensate, and Idealistic Cultures

Pitirim A. Sorokin
Imminent Sociocultural Change

Pitirim A. Sorokin
The Pattern Variables

Talcott Parsons
The Social System

Talcott Parsons
The AGIL Schema

Talcott Parsons
Manifest and Latent Functions

Robert K. Merton
Social Structure and Anomie

Robert K. Merton
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Robert K. Merton
Structural Integration and Change

Hans H. Gerth
Character and Conformity

David Riesman
 
PART VII. THE CRITICAL EDGE
Social Structures, Social Conflicts, and Safety-Valve Institutions

Lewis A. Coser
Class Conflict and Structural Change

Ralf Dahrendorf
The Sociology of Knowledge

Karl Mannheim
Hegemony

Antonio Gramsci
The Reification of Consciousness

Georg Lukács
Critical Theory

Max Horkheimer
The Culture Industry

Theodor W. Adorno
The Designer as Cultural Worker

C. Wright Mills
 
PART VIII. THE SELF, INTERACTIONS, AND EXCHANGES
The Definition of the Situation

W. I. Thomas
Self and Society

George Herbert Mead
The Looking-Glass Self

Charles Horton Cooley
Primary Groups

Charles Horton Cooley
Performances in Everyday Life

Erving Goffman
Managing Stigma

Erving Goffman
The Meaningfully Produced Social World

Alfred Schütz
Society as Objective Reality

Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann
Ethnomethodology

Harold Garfinkel
Obligatory Exchange

Marcel Mauss
Social Behavior as Exchange

George C. Homans
Reciprocity, Power Imbalance, and Dialectical Change

Peter M. Blau
Individual Interests and Systems of Exchange

James S. Coleman
 
PART IX. COMMUNITY AND CIVIL SOCIETY
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

Ferdinand Tönnies
The Quest for Community

Robert A. Nisbet
Civil Religion in America

Robert N. Bellah
A Normative Theory of Moral Community

Philip Selznick
Communitarianism

Amitai Etzioni
The Civilizing Process

Norbert Elias
 
PART X. RACE AND GENDER
The Veil and Double Consciousness

W. E. B. Du Bois
The Talented Tenth

W. E. B. Du Bois
The Economic Status of Women

Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Feminist Standpoint Theory

Dorothy E. Smith
Black Feminist Thought

Patricia Hill Collins
Performative Theory of Gender Acts

Judith Butler
 
PART XI. SYSTEMS AND NETWORKS
Autopoietic Systems

Niklas Luhmann
Lifeworld and Social System

Jürgen Habermas
World-Systems Analysis

Immanuel Wallerstein
The Network Society

Manuel Castells
Actor-Network-Theory

Bruno Latour
 
PART XII. LATE MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNITY
Sociological Intervention

Alain Touraine
Structuration Theory

Anthony Giddens
Ontological Security, Existential Anxiety, and Self-Identity

Anthony Giddens
Habitus

Pierre Bourdieu
Ulrich Beck
The Risk Society
Zygmunt Bauman
Liquid Modernity
Global Modernities

Roland Robertson
The Postmodern Condition

Jean-François Lyotard
Hyperreality

Jean Baudrillard

“This comprehensive selection makes a powerful case for the importance of the sociological imagination. Treviño shows how theorists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries explored the ideas of community, power, culture, race, and gender…[and] how systems, networks, and information flows are seen as driving a transition from modernity to an emerging late modern or postmodern society.”

 

—John Scott, University of Essex (UK) and University of Copenhagen

John Scott
University of Essex (UK) and University of Copenhagen

"Treviño has succeeded in the quite difficult task of producing an anthology that includes all the major authors and currents of sociological theory. His introductions to the readings present them clearly and concisely.”

 

—Sandro Segre, University of Genoa, Italy

Sandro Segre
University of Genoa, Italy

“A. Javier Treviño’s erudition, thoughtfulness, and flair for pedagogy shine through in every aspect of this impressive, well-crafted volume: in its overall architecture, which neatly encompasses both historical chronology and thematics; in its judicious selection of texts, which span more than two centuries of the sociological tradition; in its careful textual abridgements, which allow essential arguments and insights to be easily accessible; and in its clear, elegant, and well-informed essays at the start of each section.”

 

—Mustafa Emirbayer, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Mustafa Emirbayer
University of Wisconsin–Madison

This book is fantastic. The idea of putting together pieces of classic sociological text in an order that make sense was quite genius. Since I believe there is only one way of thinking sociologically, I have always insisted that classical thinkers are more similar to each other than different. One may think that Marx and Weber are talking about two different things from two distinct points of view, however reading this books chapter in order, you would find out that they are quite similar.

Mr Peyman Hekmatpour
Sociology Dept, University Of Oklahoma
January 10, 2018
Key features

KEY FEATURES:

  • Most of the theorists selected are sociologists, or working within a strongly sociological tradition, to analyze, interpret, or critique the social world.
  • Readings have been carefully abridged to focus on essential information, and retitled so that they better reflect their contents.
  • The book’s dual organization groups theorists with common concerns and approaches together, while at the same time giving a sense of sociological theory’s historical chronology.
  • The book opens with a set of readings that pertain to metatheory—the investigation and analysis of sociological theory—to help readers understand the nature, structure, and types of the sociological theories that are presented throughout the volume.
  • A second introductory section contains readings by Hobbes, Rousseau, and Montesquieu—key Enlightenment figures who influenced the development of sociological thought.


Sample Materials & Chapters

Part I

Part IV


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