Professor Lévi-Strauss’s first major work, Les Structures élémentaires de la Parenté, has acquired a classic reputation since its original publication in 1949; and it has become the constant focus of academic debate about central theoretical concerns in social anthropology. It is, however, a long and difficult book for many students to read in French, and its arguments have consequently b…
Volume 1 of The Structure of Social Action is a must-read for those looking to understand Parsons' thinking of sociology and economics.
This is a novel account of social change that supplants conventional understandings of `society′ and presents a sociology that takes as its main unit of analysis flows through time and across space. Developing a comparative analysis of the UK and US, the new Germany and Japan, Lash and Urry show how restructuration after organized capitalism has its basis in increasingly reflexive social act…
Ernest Gellner explores here the links between anthropology and politics, and shows just how central these are. The recent postmodernist turn in anthropology has been linked to the expiation of colonial guilt. Traditional, functionalist anthropology is characteristically regarded as an accessory to the crime, and anyone critical of the relativistic claims of interpretative anthropology (as Erne…
The second edition of this major book on the social analysis of religion incorporates a substantial new introduction by Bryan S Turner. Religion and Social Theory assesses the different theoretical approaches to the social function of religion. Turner discusses at length the ideas of key contributors to these approaches (including Engels, Durkheim, Weber, Nietzsche, Freud, Parsons, Marcuse, Hab…
In his exploration of the interaction between religion and worldwide social and cultural change, the author examines the major theories of global change and discusses the ways in which such change impinges on contemporary religious practice, meaning and influence.