This book presents a comprehensive, extended, and systematic analysis of social theory as it developed between the two World Wars, a period during which major transformation occurred. Centering on the continuities, on the one hand, and discontinuities on the other, in substantive theory, it deals with the major ideas of Cooley, Ellwood, Park, Thomas, Ogburn, Bernard, Chapin, Mead, Faris, Hankins, MacIver, Reuter, Lundberg, H. P. Becker, Parsons, Znaniecki, Sorokin, and Blumer. Finally, the problematic relevancy of the past for the present is directly confronted. The author examines how basic assumptions of theory in particular periods have used relatively unique schema and generated considerable controversy.

This book presents a new agency paradigm that can resolve complex socio-political situations in cross-cultural environments.

Published in 1999, this book is an exploration of the life and work of American sociologist Alvin W. Gouldner. Gouldner's life and contribution to legal theory is a case study in the limits of critical, self-reflexive inquiry. Hegel's dialect is a major theme running throughout Gouldner's work, and, even throughout his life, Gouldner himself seemed trapped in the unfolding of the spirit through three distinct stages: 1945-1960 - thesis; 1960-1970 - antithesis; and 1970-1980 - synthesis or new thesis. Implications for creating a reflexive critical sociology in Gouldner's image are discussed.

In this compendium of related and cross-referential essays, David R. Maines draws from pragmatist/symbolic interactionist assumptions to formulate a consistent new view of the entire field of sociology. Suitable for courses in social theory, qualitative methods, social psychology, and narrative inquiry, this volume will change the way the general public looks at interpretive sociology.This book is organized as an expression of the centrality of interactionism to general sociology. Each chapter is designed to articulate this view of the field. Symbolic interactionism, the way Maines has come to understand and use it, is essentially the concerted application of pragmatist principles of philosophy to social inquiry.There are four basic elements to this characterization. First, people transform themselves: people are self-aware beings who reflexively form their conduct and thus are capable of adjusting their lines of action and creating new ones. Second, people transform their social worlds: human action takes place in contexts of situations and social worlds. People can modify the social matrices in which they act, and thus people are agents of change. Third, people engage in social dialogue: communication is generic and is at the heart of both stability and change. A fourth element is that people respond to and deal with their transformations. Humans construct situations and societies; they establish social structures and cultures. These are the consequences of human action and, once formed, they reflexively function to direct and channel conduct.Maines argues that when people do things together they can create enduring group formations, such as divisions of labor, rules for inheritance, wage-labor relations, or ideologies. These are instances of group characteristics that influence human conduct and indeed are not reducible to the traits of individuals making up the group or society.

The Social Thought of Talcott Parsons offers an insightful new reading of the work of Talcott Parsons, keeping in view at once the important influences of Max Weber on his sociology and the central place occupied by methodology - which enables us to better understand the relationship between American and European social theory. Revealing American democracy and its nemesis, National Socialism in Germany as the basis of his theory of society, this book explores the debates in which Parsons was engaged throughout his life, with the Frankfurt School, C. Wright Mills and the young radicals among the "disobedient" student generation, as well as economism and utilitarianism in social theory; the opponents that Parsons confronted in the interests of humanism. In addition to revisiting Parsons' extensive oeuvre, Uta Gerhardt takes up themes in current research and theory - including social inequality, civic culture, and globalization - offering a fascinating demonstration of what the conceptual approaches of Parsons can accomplish today. Revealing methodology and the American ethos to be the cornerstones of Parsons' social thought, this book will appeal not only to those with interests in classical sociology - and who wish to fully understand what this 'classic' has to offer - but also to those who wish to make sociology answer to the problems of the society of the present.

The social sciences underwent rapid development in postwar America. Problems once framed in social terms gradually became redefined as individual with regards to scope and remedy, with economics and psychology winning influence over the other social sciences. By the 1970s, both economics and psychology had spread their intellectual remits wide: psychology's concepts suffused everyday language, while economists entered a myriad of policy debates. Psychology and economics contributed to, and benefited from, a conception of society that was increasingly skeptical of social explanations and interventions. Sociology, in particular, lost intellectual and policy ground to its peers, even regarding 'social problems' that the discipline long considered its settled domain. The book's ten chapters explore this shift, each refracted through a single 'problem': the family, crime, urban concerns, education, discrimination, poverty, addiction, war, and mental health, examining the effects an increasingly individualized lens has had on the way we see these problems.

Founders, classics, and canons have been vitally important in helping to frame sociology's identity. Within the academy today, a number of positionsfeminist, postmodernist, postcolonialquestion the status of "tradition."In Founders, Classics, Canons, Peter Baehr defends the continuing importance of sociology's classics and traditions in a university education. Baehr offers arguments against interpreting, defending, and attacking sociology's great texts and authors in terms of founders and canons. He demonstrates why, in logical and historical terms, discourses and traditions cannot actually be "founded" and why the term "founder" has little explanatory content. Equally, he takes issue with the notion of "canon" and argues that the analogy between the theological canon and sociological classic texts, though seductive, is mistaken.Although he questions the uses to which the concepts of founder, classic, and canon have been put, Baehr is not dismissive. On the contrary, he seeks to understand the value and meaning these concepts have for the people who employ them in the cultural battle to affirm or attack the liberal university tradition.

When the University of Chicago was founded in 1892 it established the first sociology department in the United States. The department grew rapidly in reputation and influence and by the 1920s graduates of its program were heading newly formed sociology programs across the country and determining the direction of the discipline and its future research. Their way of thinking about social relations revolutionized the social sciences by emphasizing an empirical approach to research, instead of the more philosophical "armchair" perspective that previously prevailed in American sociology. The Chicago School Diaspora presents work by Canadian and international scholars who identify with what they understand as the "Chicago School tradition." Broadly speaking, many of the scholars affiliated with sociology at Chicago understood human behaviour to be determined by social structures and environmental factors, rather than personal and biological characteristics. Contributors highlight key thinkers and epistemological issues associated with the Chicago School, as well as contemporary empirical research. Offering innovative theoretical explanations for the diversity and breadth of its scholarly traditions, The Chicago School Diaspora offers a fresh approach to ideas, topics, and approaches associated with the origins of North American sociology. Contributors include Michael Adorjan (University of Hong Kong, China), Gary Bowden (University of New Brunswick), Jeffrey Brown (University of New Brunswick), Tony Christensen (Wilfrid Laurier University), Luis Cisneros (postdoctoral scholar, University of Arizona), Gary A. Cook (Beloit College), Mary Jo Deegan (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Scott Grills (Brandon University), Mervyn Horgan (University of Guelph), Mark Hutter (Rowan University), Benjamin Kelly (Nipissing University), Rolf Lindner (Humboldt University & HafenCity University, Germany), Jacqueline Low (University of New Brunswick), Mourad Mjahed (Peace Corps, Rabat, Morocco), DeMond S. Miller (Rowan University), Edward Nell (New School for Social Research), David A. Nock (Lakehead University), Defne Över (PhD candidate, Cornell University), George Park (Memorial University), Thomas K. Park (University of Arizona), Dorothy Pawluch (McMaster University), Robert Prus (University of Waterloo), Antony J. Puddephatt (Lakehead University), Isher-Paul Sahni (Concordia University), Roger A. Salerno (Pace University), William Shaffir (McMaster University), Greg Smith (University of Salford, UK), Robert A. Stebbins (University of Calgary), Izabela Wagner (Warsaw University, Poland and CEMS EHESS - School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, France), and Yves Winkin (ENS Lyon, France).

The emergence of the social sciences, established in the mid to late nineteenth-century, had a substantial bearing on how researchers, academics, and eventually the general public thought about criminal behavior. Using Modernism as a lens, Stephen Brauer, examines how these disciplines shaped Americans’ understanding of criminality in the twentieth-century and how it provides a new way to think about culture, social norms, and ultimately, laws. In theory, laws act as articulations and codifications of a community’s beliefs, values, and principles. By breaking laws, criminals help us reinforce social norms by providing the opportunity to affirm what is believed to be right. By operating outside the bounds of acceptable behavior, the criminal serves as a useful figure to understand what is at stake in the culture, what the central issues of that culture might be, and what the fears and anxieties are. Criminality serves as a lens through which we can read ourselves and how the criminal operates as a cultural figure signifies the things we are negotiating in our lives and in our communities. Brauer focuses on two main concepts, central to the very concept of Modernism, to explore criminality: contingency, the idea that the individual might not be in control of their own deviance, and agency, the notion that the criminal makes a conscious choice to use crime as a means of economic success. The figure of the criminal is a powerful one and is key to exploring American twentieth-century culture. This book would be of interest to students and scholars in criminology, sociology, cultural studies, literary studies, history, and many others.

Placing the neglected issue of class back into the study and understanding of religion, Sean McCloud reconsiders the meaning of class in today's world. More than a status grounded in material conditions, says McCloud, class is also an identity rhetorically and symbolically made and unmade through representations. It entails relationships, identifications, boundaries, meanings, power, and our most ingrained habits of mind and body. He demonstrates that employing class as an analytical tool that cuts across variables such as creed, race, ethnicity, and gender can illuminate American religious life in unprecedented ways. Through social theory, historical analysis, and ethnography, McCloud makes an interdisciplinary argument for reinserting class into the study of religion. First, he offers a new three-part conception of class for use in studying religion. He then presents a focused cultural history of religious studies by examining how social class surfaced in twentieth-century theories of religious affiliation. He concludes with historical and ethnographic case studies of religion and class. Divine Hierarchies makes a convincing case for the past and present importance of class in American religious thought, practice, and scholarship.