Contemporary Sociological Theory (Wiley Blackwell Readers in Sociology)

This thorough collection of contemporary sociological theory is the definitive guide to current perspectives and approaches in the field. Organized by theme, the volume includes the most representative material available on topics such as symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, structuralism, network theory, critical theory, feminist theory, and the current debates over modernity and postmodernity. The theories of Foucault, Giddens, and Bourdieu also appear in longer sections, enabling students and scholars to examine the work in greater depth. Editorial introductions put these readings into theoretical perspective, making this an authoritative and compact survey of contemporary sociological theory. This book, in conjunction with its complement, Classical Sociological Theory, offers readers a complete overview of sociological theory pt. 1. Micro-sociological analysis. The phenomenology of the social world / Alfred Schutz -- The social construction of reality / Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman -- The presentation of self in everyday life / Erving Goffman -- Symbolic interactionism / Herbert Blumer -- pt. 2. Exchange and rationality. Social behavior as exchange / George C. Homans -- Exchange and power in social life / Peter M. Blau -- Social capital in the creation of human capital / James S. Coleman -- Foundations for a theory of collective decisions / James S. Coleman -- The logic of collective action / Mancur Olson -- pt. 3. Institutional analysis. Limits of steering / Niklas Luhmann -- Coercion, capital, and European states / Charles Tilly -- The iron age revisited : institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields / Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell -- pt. 4. The sociological theory of Michel Foucault. The birth and the clinic ; Truth and power ; Discipline and punish / Michel Foucault -- pt. 5. The sociological theory of Anthony Giddens. Some new rules of sociological method ; Agency, structure ; The consequences of modernity / Anthony Giddens. The sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu. Social space and symbolic space ; Structures, Habitus, practices ; The field of cultural production, or: the economic world reversed / Pierre Bourdieu -- pt. 7. Race, gender, and difference. The conceptual practices of power / Dorothy E. Smith -- Black feminist epistemology / Patricia Hill Collins -- Black skin, white masks / Frantz Fanon -- The paradoxes of integration / Orlando Patterson -- pt. 8. The sociological theory of Jürgen Habermas. Civil society and the political public sphere ; The tasks of a critical theory of society ; Theory and practice / Jürgen Habermas -- pt. 9. Modernity and postmodernity. The social constraint towards self-constraint / Norbert Elias -- A sociological theory of postmodernity / Zygmunt Bauman -- Describing the future / Niklas Luhmann. Social life is part of every individual and every interaction, not only of the large-scale affairs of governments, economies, and complex organizations.