Overview

Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory: Text and Readings provides students with the best of both worlds-carefully-edited excerpts from the original works of sociology's key theorists accompanied by an analytical framework that discusses the lives, ideas, and historical circumstances of each theorist. This unique format enables students to examine, compare, and contrast each theorist's major themes and concepts. In the Fourth Edition of this bestseller, examples from contemporary life and a rich variety of updated pedagogical tools (tables, figures, photographs, discussion questions,) illuminate complex ideas. NEW TO THIS EDITION: The overarching theoretical framework has been expanded to further help students understand, compare, and contrast the readings. Additional discussion of the Enlightenment thinkers, such as Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Hobbes, Wollstonecraft, demonstrates how these thinkers shaped the core theoretical questions that guide sociological inquiry to this day. A new primary source reading from theorist Ulrich Beck enables students to analyze climate change from a sociological perspective. A new reading from Talcott Parsons gives students a better understanding of social action theory and structural functionalism. Updated examples, statistics and visuals tie theory to current events.

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9781071808481

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Scott Appelrouth (PhD, New York University, 2000) is Professor of Sociology at California State University, Northridge. His interests include sociological theory, cultural sociology, and social movements. He has taught classical and contemporary theory at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, and has published several articles in research- and teaching-oriented journals on social movements, theory, and the controversies over jazz during the 1920s and rap during the 1980s. His current research focuses on political discourse in American party platforms. Laura Desfor Edles (PhD, University of California, Los Angeles, 1990) is Professor of Sociology at California State University, Northridge. She is the author of Symbol and Ritual in the New Spain: The Transition to Democracy after Franco (1998) and Cultural Sociology in Practice (2002), as well as various articles on culture, theory, race/ethnicity, and social movements.

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