This volume challenges prevailing understanding of the two great founders of sociological thought. In a detailed and systematic way the author demonstrates how Marx and Durkheim gradually developed the fundamental frameworks for sociological materialism and idealism. While most recent interpreters of Marx have placed alienation and subjectivity at the centre of his work, Professor Alexander suggests that it was the later Marx’s very emphasis on alienation that allowed him to avoid conceptualizing subjectivity altogether. In Durkheim’s case, by contrast, the author argues that such objectivist theorizing informed the early work alone, and he demonstrates that in his later writings Durkheim elaborated an idealist theory that used religious life as an analytical model for studying the institutions of secular society.

In this volume, Alexander challenges prevailing understanding of two great founders of sociological thought. In a richly detailed yet systematic way, he demonstrates how Marx and Durkheim gradually developed the fundamental frameworks for sociological materialism and idealism.

In this volume the author maintains that sociology must learn to combine the insights of both Durkheim and Marx and that it can only do so on the presuppositional ground that Weber set forth. Alexander maintains that the idealist and materialist traditions must be transformed into analytic dimensions of multidimensional and synthetic theory. This volume focusses on the writing of Talcott Parsons, the only modern thinker who can be considered a true peer of the classical founders, and examines his own profoundly ambivalent attempt to carry out this analytic transformation.

This four volume work, originally published in the 1980s and out of print for some years, represents a major attempt to redirect the course of contemporary sociological thought. Jeffrey Alexander analyses the most general and fundamental elements of sociological thinking about action and order and their ramifications for empirical study. He insists that sociological thought need not choose between voluntary action and social constraint. The four volumes can be read independently of one another as each presents a distinctive theoretical argument in its own right. The first volume is directed at contemporary problems and controversies, not only in ‘theory’ but in the philosophy and sociology of science. The last three volumes make interpretations, confronting the individual theorists, and the secondary literature, on their own terms.

2003 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title This work relocates the origins of nineteenth-century social theory in classical Greece and focuses on three figures: Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim, all of whom wrote dissertations on the culture and structure of ancient society. Greek philosophy, art, and politics inspired their ideas, stirred their imaginations, and defined their intellectual horizons. McCarthy rediscovers the forgotten dreams and classical horizons of these European social theorists and uncovers the close connections between sociology and philosophy, offering new insights into the methods, theories, and approaches of modern social science.

The International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology is the first encyclopedia in the field and a timely response to the surge of interest in economic sociology over the last 30 years. Economic Sociology deals with the multiple and complex relations between economy and society. In particular, it focuses on the impact of social, political and cultur

The Blackwell Companion to Major Classical Social Theorists provides a comprehensive review of classical social theory. Containing original essays especially commissioned for this volume, leading experts and practitioners examine the life and work of 12 major theorists. Includes 12 original essays by leading scholars on major classical social theorists Covers the key figures who shaped social theory, such as Marx, Weber and Durkheim, as well as additional classical theorists such as Harriet Martineau and W. E. B. Du Bois Essays include biographical sketches, the social and intellectual context, and the impact of the thinker's work on social theory generally Includes bibliographies of the theorist's most important works as well as key secondary works Can be used in conjunction with The Blackwell Companion to Major Contemporary Social Theorists, edited by George Ritzer, for a complete reference source in social theory