Explorations in Classical Sociological Theory

Seeing the Social World
Fourth Edition
Kenneth Allan
Sarah Daynes - University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA
Explorations in Classical Sociological Theory
September 2016 | 368 pages | Sage US
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Description

Praised for its conversational tone, personal examples, and helpful pedagogical tools, the Fourth Edition of Explorations in Classical Sociological Theory: Seeing the Social World is organized around the modern ideas of progress, knowledge, and democracy.  With this historical thread woven throughout the chapters, the book presents a diverse selection of major classical theorists including Marx, Spencer, Durkheim, Weber, Mead, Simmel, Martineau, Gilman, Douglass, Du Bois, Parsons, and the Frankfurt School. Kenneth Allan and new co-author Sarah Daynes focus on the specific views of each theorist, rather than schools of thought, and highlight modernity and postmodernity to help contemporary readers understand how classical sociological theory applies to their lives.  



Contents

Preface

Preface

Acknowledgments

  • 1. Beginning to See: A Sociological Core
  • The Making of Modernity and the Modern Way of Knowing
  • Institutions of Modernity
  • The Birth of Sociology: August Comte
  • Comte’s Positivism
  • The Evolution of Knowledge
  • Theory
  • Advantages and Goals of Positivism
  • Seeing Society
  • Sociological Methods
  • Practicing Theory—A Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 2. Seeing Society for the First Time: Herbert Spencer
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • The Sociological Imagination of Herbert Spencer
  • Spencer’s Life
  • Spencer’s Social World
  • Spencer’s Sociological Imagination: Functionalism
  • Concepts and Theory: Social Evolution
  • The Social System
  • System Needs
  • Differentiation and Specialization
  • Types of Society
  • Regulatory Complexity
  • Industrial and Militaristic
  • Concepts and Theory: Social Institutions
  • Domestic Institutions
  • Ceremonial Institutions
  • Ecclesiastical Institutions
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Defining Postmodernity
  • Religion: A Postmodern Case in Point
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 3. Class Inequality: Karl Marx
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • The Sociological Imagination of Karl Marx
  • Marx’s Life
  • Marx’s Social World
  • Marx’s Intellectual World
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  • Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
  • Adam Smith
  • Marx’s Sociological Imagination: Critical Conflict Theory
  • Human Nature
  • History—The Material Dialectic
  • Concepts and Theory: The Contradictions of Capitalism
  • Value and Exploitation
  • Industrialization, Markets, and Commodification
  • Concepts and Theory: Class Revolution
  • Class and Class Structure
  • Overproduction
  • Concepts and Theory: The Problem of Ideology and Consciousness
  • Alienation, Private Property, and Commodity Fetish
  • False Consciousness and Religion
  • Class Consciousness
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Machines of Production and Consciousness
  • Machines of Reproduction and Schizophrenic Culture
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 4. Diversity and Social Solidarity: Émile Durkheim
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • The Sociological Imagination of Émile Durkheim
  • Durkheim’s Life
  • Durkheim’s Social World
  • Durkheim’s Intellectual World
  • Montesquieu
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  • Durkheim’s Contribution to Functionalism
  • Durkheim’s Sociological Imagination: Cultural Sociology
  • Concepts and Theory: Primal Society
  • Defining Religion
  • Creating a Sacred World
  • Concepts and Theory: Social Diversity and Moral Consensus
  • Mechanical and Organic Solidarity
  • The Division of Labor
  • The Problem With Modern Society
  • Organic Solidarity and Social Pathology
  • Concepts and Theory: Individualism
  • Suicide
  • The Cult of the Individual
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Grand Narratives, Doubt, and Civil Religion
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 5. Rationality and Organization: Max Weber
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • The Sociological Imagination of Max Weber
  • Weber’s Life
  • Weber’s Social World
  • Weber’s Intellectual World
  • The Problems of Values and Meaning
  • Specific Methods: Ideal Types
  • Specific Methods: Verstehen
  • Weber’s Sociological Imagination
  • Concepts and Theory: The Process of Rationalization
  • Types of Social Action
  • Concepts and Theory: The Evolution of Religion
  • From Magic to Religion
  • From Polytheism to Ethical Monotheism
  • Concepts and Theory: The Rise of Capitalism
  • The Religious Culture of Capitalism
  • Structural Influences on Capitalism
  • Concepts and Theory: Class, Authority, and Social Change
  • Class
  • Status and Party
  • Crosscutting Stratification
  • Authority and Social Change
  • Concepts and Theory: Rational-Legal Organization
  • Ideal-Type Bureaucracies
  • Effects of Bureaucratic Organization
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox

INTRODUCTION: ANOTHER SOCIOLOGICAL CORE

  • 6. The Modern Person: George Herbert Mead and Georg Simmel
  • George Herbert Mead—Symbolic Interaction
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: Truth, Meaning, and Action
  • Pragmatic Truth
  • Human Action
  • Concepts and Theory: Meaning and Interaction
  • Symbolic Interaction
  • Concepts and Theory: Making Yourself
  • The Mind
  • Stages of Role Taking
  • Self and Society
  • The I and the Me
  • Summary
  • Georg Simmel—Formal Sociology
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: The Individual in Society
  • Subjective and Objective Cultures
  • Concepts and Theory: The Self in the City
  • The Division of Labor
  • Money and Markets
  • Social Networks: Rational Versus Organic Group Membership
  • Summary
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Simulacrum and Hyperreality
  • Reflexivity and the Fragmenting of the Self
  • Fusing the I and the Me
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 7. Seeing Gender: Harriett Martineau and Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  • Waves of Feminism
  • Harriet Martineau—Gender and Democracy
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: Observing Society
  • Morals and Manners
  • Preparing the Observer
  • Safeguarding Observations
  • Concepts and Theory: Gender and Democracy
  • Gender and Family
  • The Cultural Logic of Gender
  • Workforce Participation
  • Concepts and Theory: Religion, Education, and Democracy
  • Religious Forms
  • Religious Forms and Democracy
  • Conditions of Religion
  • Education and Freedom
  • Summary
  • Charlotte Perkins Gilman—The Evolution of Gender
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: Critical Evolution Theory
  • Functional Evolution
  • Adding Marx
  • Gynaecocentric Theory
  • Concepts and Theory: Dynamics of Social Evolution
  • Morbid Excess in Sex Distinction
  • Sexuo-Economic Effects
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 8. Seeing Race: Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Race Literature
  • Frederick Douglass—The American Discourse of Race
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: The Discourse of Slavery
  • Race as Other
  • Democracy and Universalism
  • Summary
  • W. E. B. Du Bois—The Culture of Race
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: The Experience of Oppression and Critical Knowledge
  • Standpoint of the Oppressed
  • Concepts and Theory: Cultural Oppression
  • Exclusion From History
  • Representation
  • Stereotypes and Slippery Slopes
  • Double Consciousness
  • Concepts and Theory: The Dark Nations and World Capitalism
  • The Need for Color
  • Summary
  • Gender and Race: Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Modernity and Identity
  • The Postmodern Twist
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 9. Seeing Ahead: Defining Moments in Twentieth Century Theory: Talcott Parsons and the Frankfurt School
  • Talcott Parsons: Defining Sociology
  • Parsons’s Vision for the Social Sciences
  • Parsons’s Theoretical Project
  • Parsons and the Problem of Social Order
  • Voluntaristic Action
  • Patterning Voluntaristic Action
  • The Frankfurt School: Critiquing Modernity
  • Historical Roots
  • The Problem with Positivism: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
  • An Analysis of Art and Culture
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox

References

References

Index

Index

About the Authors

About the Authors

Additional materials

Description

Praised for its conversational tone, personal examples, and helpful pedagogical tools, the Fourth Edition of Explorations in Classical Sociological Theory: Seeing the Social World is organized around the modern ideas of progress, knowledge, and democracy.  With this historical thread woven throughout the chapters, the book presents a diverse selection of major classical theorists including Marx, Spencer, Durkheim, Weber, Mead, Simmel, Martineau, Gilman, Douglass, Du Bois, Parsons, and the Frankfurt School. Kenneth Allan and new co-author Sarah Daynes focus on the specific views of each theorist, rather than schools of thought, and highlight modernity and postmodernity to help contemporary readers understand how classical sociological theory applies to their lives.  



Contents

Preface

Preface

Acknowledgments

  • 1. Beginning to See: A Sociological Core
  • The Making of Modernity and the Modern Way of Knowing
  • Institutions of Modernity
  • The Birth of Sociology: August Comte
  • Comte’s Positivism
  • The Evolution of Knowledge
  • Theory
  • Advantages and Goals of Positivism
  • Seeing Society
  • Sociological Methods
  • Practicing Theory—A Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 2. Seeing Society for the First Time: Herbert Spencer
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • The Sociological Imagination of Herbert Spencer
  • Spencer’s Life
  • Spencer’s Social World
  • Spencer’s Sociological Imagination: Functionalism
  • Concepts and Theory: Social Evolution
  • The Social System
  • System Needs
  • Differentiation and Specialization
  • Types of Society
  • Regulatory Complexity
  • Industrial and Militaristic
  • Concepts and Theory: Social Institutions
  • Domestic Institutions
  • Ceremonial Institutions
  • Ecclesiastical Institutions
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Defining Postmodernity
  • Religion: A Postmodern Case in Point
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 3. Class Inequality: Karl Marx
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • The Sociological Imagination of Karl Marx
  • Marx’s Life
  • Marx’s Social World
  • Marx’s Intellectual World
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  • Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
  • Adam Smith
  • Marx’s Sociological Imagination: Critical Conflict Theory
  • Human Nature
  • History—The Material Dialectic
  • Concepts and Theory: The Contradictions of Capitalism
  • Value and Exploitation
  • Industrialization, Markets, and Commodification
  • Concepts and Theory: Class Revolution
  • Class and Class Structure
  • Overproduction
  • Concepts and Theory: The Problem of Ideology and Consciousness
  • Alienation, Private Property, and Commodity Fetish
  • False Consciousness and Religion
  • Class Consciousness
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Machines of Production and Consciousness
  • Machines of Reproduction and Schizophrenic Culture
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 4. Diversity and Social Solidarity: Émile Durkheim
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • The Sociological Imagination of Émile Durkheim
  • Durkheim’s Life
  • Durkheim’s Social World
  • Durkheim’s Intellectual World
  • Montesquieu
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  • Durkheim’s Contribution to Functionalism
  • Durkheim’s Sociological Imagination: Cultural Sociology
  • Concepts and Theory: Primal Society
  • Defining Religion
  • Creating a Sacred World
  • Concepts and Theory: Social Diversity and Moral Consensus
  • Mechanical and Organic Solidarity
  • The Division of Labor
  • The Problem With Modern Society
  • Organic Solidarity and Social Pathology
  • Concepts and Theory: Individualism
  • Suicide
  • The Cult of the Individual
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Grand Narratives, Doubt, and Civil Religion
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 5. Rationality and Organization: Max Weber
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • The Sociological Imagination of Max Weber
  • Weber’s Life
  • Weber’s Social World
  • Weber’s Intellectual World
  • The Problems of Values and Meaning
  • Specific Methods: Ideal Types
  • Specific Methods: Verstehen
  • Weber’s Sociological Imagination
  • Concepts and Theory: The Process of Rationalization
  • Types of Social Action
  • Concepts and Theory: The Evolution of Religion
  • From Magic to Religion
  • From Polytheism to Ethical Monotheism
  • Concepts and Theory: The Rise of Capitalism
  • The Religious Culture of Capitalism
  • Structural Influences on Capitalism
  • Concepts and Theory: Class, Authority, and Social Change
  • Class
  • Status and Party
  • Crosscutting Stratification
  • Authority and Social Change
  • Concepts and Theory: Rational-Legal Organization
  • Ideal-Type Bureaucracies
  • Effects of Bureaucratic Organization
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox

INTRODUCTION: ANOTHER SOCIOLOGICAL CORE

  • 6. The Modern Person: George Herbert Mead and Georg Simmel
  • George Herbert Mead—Symbolic Interaction
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: Truth, Meaning, and Action
  • Pragmatic Truth
  • Human Action
  • Concepts and Theory: Meaning and Interaction
  • Symbolic Interaction
  • Concepts and Theory: Making Yourself
  • The Mind
  • Stages of Role Taking
  • Self and Society
  • The I and the Me
  • Summary
  • Georg Simmel—Formal Sociology
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: The Individual in Society
  • Subjective and Objective Cultures
  • Concepts and Theory: The Self in the City
  • The Division of Labor
  • Money and Markets
  • Social Networks: Rational Versus Organic Group Membership
  • Summary
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Simulacrum and Hyperreality
  • Reflexivity and the Fragmenting of the Self
  • Fusing the I and the Me
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 7. Seeing Gender: Harriett Martineau and Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  • Waves of Feminism
  • Harriet Martineau—Gender and Democracy
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: Observing Society
  • Morals and Manners
  • Preparing the Observer
  • Safeguarding Observations
  • Concepts and Theory: Gender and Democracy
  • Gender and Family
  • The Cultural Logic of Gender
  • Workforce Participation
  • Concepts and Theory: Religion, Education, and Democracy
  • Religious Forms
  • Religious Forms and Democracy
  • Conditions of Religion
  • Education and Freedom
  • Summary
  • Charlotte Perkins Gilman—The Evolution of Gender
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: Critical Evolution Theory
  • Functional Evolution
  • Adding Marx
  • Gynaecocentric Theory
  • Concepts and Theory: Dynamics of Social Evolution
  • Morbid Excess in Sex Distinction
  • Sexuo-Economic Effects
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 8. Seeing Race: Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Race Literature
  • Frederick Douglass—The American Discourse of Race
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: The Discourse of Slavery
  • Race as Other
  • Democracy and Universalism
  • Summary
  • W. E. B. Du Bois—The Culture of Race
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: The Experience of Oppression and Critical Knowledge
  • Standpoint of the Oppressed
  • Concepts and Theory: Cultural Oppression
  • Exclusion From History
  • Representation
  • Stereotypes and Slippery Slopes
  • Double Consciousness
  • Concepts and Theory: The Dark Nations and World Capitalism
  • The Need for Color
  • Summary
  • Gender and Race: Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Modernity and Identity
  • The Postmodern Twist
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 9. Seeing Ahead: Defining Moments in Twentieth Century Theory: Talcott Parsons and the Frankfurt School
  • Talcott Parsons: Defining Sociology
  • Parsons’s Vision for the Social Sciences
  • Parsons’s Theoretical Project
  • Parsons and the Problem of Social Order
  • Voluntaristic Action
  • Patterning Voluntaristic Action
  • The Frankfurt School: Critiquing Modernity
  • Historical Roots
  • The Problem with Positivism: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
  • An Analysis of Art and Culture
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox

References

References

Index

Index

About the Authors

About the Authors

Additional materials

SAGE Publishing Logo

Explorations in Classical Sociological Theory

Seeing the Social World

Kenneth Allan , Sarah Daynes
Cancel Print

September 2016 | 368 pages | Sage US

Format Published Date ISBN Price

Praised for its conversational tone, personal examples, and helpful pedagogical tools, the Fourth Edition of Explorations in Classical Sociological Theory: Seeing the Social World is organized around the modern ideas of progress, knowledge, and democracy.  With this historical thread woven throughout the chapters, the book presents a diverse selection of major classical theorists including Marx, Spencer, Durkheim, Weber, Mead, Simmel, Martineau, Gilman, Douglass, Du Bois, Parsons, and the Frankfurt School. Kenneth Allan and new co-author Sarah Daynes focus on the specific views of each theorist, rather than schools of thought, and highlight modernity and postmodernity to help contemporary readers understand how classical sociological theory applies to their lives.  




Table Of Contents:

  • Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • 1. Beginning to See: A Sociological Core
  • The Making of Modernity and the Modern Way of Knowing
  • Institutions of Modernity
  • The Birth of Sociology: August Comte
  • Comte’s Positivism
  • The Evolution of Knowledge
  • Theory
  • Advantages and Goals of Positivism
  • Seeing Society
  • Sociological Methods
  • Practicing Theory—A Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 2. Seeing Society for the First Time: Herbert Spencer
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • The Sociological Imagination of Herbert Spencer
  • Spencer’s Life
  • Spencer’s Social World
  • Spencer’s Sociological Imagination: Functionalism
  • Concepts and Theory: Social Evolution
  • The Social System
  • System Needs
  • Differentiation and Specialization
  • Types of Society
  • Regulatory Complexity
  • Industrial and Militaristic
  • Concepts and Theory: Social Institutions
  • Domestic Institutions
  • Ceremonial Institutions
  • Ecclesiastical Institutions
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Defining Postmodernity
  • Religion: A Postmodern Case in Point
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 3. Class Inequality: Karl Marx
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • The Sociological Imagination of Karl Marx
  • Marx’s Life
  • Marx’s Social World
  • Marx’s Intellectual World
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  • Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
  • Adam Smith
  • Marx’s Sociological Imagination: Critical Conflict Theory
  • Human Nature
  • History—The Material Dialectic
  • Concepts and Theory: The Contradictions of Capitalism
  • Value and Exploitation
  • Industrialization, Markets, and Commodification
  • Concepts and Theory: Class Revolution
  • Class and Class Structure
  • Overproduction
  • Concepts and Theory: The Problem of Ideology and Consciousness
  • Alienation, Private Property, and Commodity Fetish
  • False Consciousness and Religion
  • Class Consciousness
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Machines of Production and Consciousness
  • Machines of Reproduction and Schizophrenic Culture
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 4. Diversity and Social Solidarity: Émile Durkheim
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • The Sociological Imagination of Émile Durkheim
  • Durkheim’s Life
  • Durkheim’s Social World
  • Durkheim’s Intellectual World
  • Montesquieu
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  • Durkheim’s Contribution to Functionalism
  • Durkheim’s Sociological Imagination: Cultural Sociology
  • Concepts and Theory: Primal Society
  • Defining Religion
  • Creating a Sacred World
  • Concepts and Theory: Social Diversity and Moral Consensus
  • Mechanical and Organic Solidarity
  • The Division of Labor
  • The Problem With Modern Society
  • Organic Solidarity and Social Pathology
  • Concepts and Theory: Individualism
  • Suicide
  • The Cult of the Individual
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Grand Narratives, Doubt, and Civil Religion
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 5. Rationality and Organization: Max Weber
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • The Sociological Imagination of Max Weber
  • Weber’s Life
  • Weber’s Social World
  • Weber’s Intellectual World
  • The Problems of Values and Meaning
  • Specific Methods: Ideal Types
  • Specific Methods: Verstehen
  • Weber’s Sociological Imagination
  • Concepts and Theory: The Process of Rationalization
  • Types of Social Action
  • Concepts and Theory: The Evolution of Religion
  • From Magic to Religion
  • From Polytheism to Ethical Monotheism
  • Concepts and Theory: The Rise of Capitalism
  • The Religious Culture of Capitalism
  • Structural Influences on Capitalism
  • Concepts and Theory: Class, Authority, and Social Change
  • Class
  • Status and Party
  • Crosscutting Stratification
  • Authority and Social Change
  • Concepts and Theory: Rational-Legal Organization
  • Ideal-Type Bureaucracies
  • Effects of Bureaucratic Organization
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • INTRODUCTION: ANOTHER SOCIOLOGICAL CORE
  • 6. The Modern Person: George Herbert Mead and Georg Simmel
  • George Herbert Mead—Symbolic Interaction
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: Truth, Meaning, and Action
  • Pragmatic Truth
  • Human Action
  • Concepts and Theory: Meaning and Interaction
  • Symbolic Interaction
  • Concepts and Theory: Making Yourself
  • The Mind
  • Stages of Role Taking
  • Self and Society
  • The I and the Me
  • Summary
  • Georg Simmel—Formal Sociology
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: The Individual in Society
  • Subjective and Objective Cultures
  • Concepts and Theory: The Self in the City
  • The Division of Labor
  • Money and Markets
  • Social Networks: Rational Versus Organic Group Membership
  • Summary
  • Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Simulacrum and Hyperreality
  • Reflexivity and the Fragmenting of the Self
  • Fusing the I and the Me
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 7. Seeing Gender: Harriett Martineau and Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  • Waves of Feminism
  • Harriet Martineau—Gender and Democracy
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: Observing Society
  • Morals and Manners
  • Preparing the Observer
  • Safeguarding Observations
  • Concepts and Theory: Gender and Democracy
  • Gender and Family
  • The Cultural Logic of Gender
  • Workforce Participation
  • Concepts and Theory: Religion, Education, and Democracy
  • Religious Forms
  • Religious Forms and Democracy
  • Conditions of Religion
  • Education and Freedom
  • Summary
  • Charlotte Perkins Gilman—The Evolution of Gender
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: Critical Evolution Theory
  • Functional Evolution
  • Adding Marx
  • Gynaecocentric Theory
  • Concepts and Theory: Dynamics of Social Evolution
  • Morbid Excess in Sex Distinction
  • Sexuo-Economic Effects
  • Summary
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 8. Seeing Race: Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Race Literature
  • Frederick Douglass—The American Discourse of Race
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: The Discourse of Slavery
  • Race as Other
  • Democracy and Universalism
  • Summary
  • W. E. B. Du Bois—The Culture of Race
  • Theorist’s Digest
  • Concepts and Theory: The Experience of Oppression and Critical Knowledge
  • Standpoint of the Oppressed
  • Concepts and Theory: Cultural Oppression
  • Exclusion From History
  • Representation
  • Stereotypes and Slippery Slopes
  • Double Consciousness
  • Concepts and Theory: The Dark Nations and World Capitalism
  • The Need for Color
  • Summary
  • Gender and Race: Thinking About Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Modernity and Identity
  • The Postmodern Twist
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • 9. Seeing Ahead: Defining Moments in Twentieth Century Theory: Talcott Parsons and the Frankfurt School
  • Talcott Parsons: Defining Sociology
  • Parsons’s Vision for the Social Sciences
  • Parsons’s Theoretical Project
  • Parsons and the Problem of Social Order
  • Voluntaristic Action
  • Patterning Voluntaristic Action
  • The Frankfurt School: Critiquing Modernity
  • Historical Roots
  • The Problem with Positivism: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
  • An Analysis of Art and Culture
  • Building Your Theory Toolbox
  • References
  • Index
  • About the Authors

Recent Product Reviews:

“I have [been] using Allan's books since I started teaching social theory courses as an adjunct in grad school. [He] takes complicated materials that can be very dense and obtuse [and presents] concepts in a straightforward manner. The writing clarity stands on its own.”
William G. Holt, Birmingham-Southern College
“I feel that the Sociological Imagination sections, Theoretical Hints, Enduring Issues, and Theory Toolboxes are especially useful to my students.”
Stephanie Bucy, Columbia College
“[Explorations in Classical Sociology Theory] makes accessible to undergraduates rather difficult material. [It] sets theories in the context of major conceptual frameworks and orientations [and] offers contemporary interpretations and applications.”
Rachel Filinson, Rhode Island College
“Allan does a much better job of setting the scene for [an] understanding of Classical Theory than other texts I have used in the past. He also speaks in lay terms so that undergraduates [can] grasp the material.”
Eileen Connell, Colorado State University

Recommendations