Jeffrey Alexander

The influential authors significantly update their popular introductory text that invites students to reflect on their lives in the context of the combustible leap from modern to postmodern life. The authors show how culture is central to understanding many world problems as they challenge readers to confront the problems and possibilities of an era in which the futures of the physical and social environments seem uncertain. As culture rapidly changes in the 21st century, the authors have successfully incorporated these nuances with many important updates on race and racism, Black Lives Matter, the rise of populist politics, ISIS, new social media, feminist perspectives on sex work, trans and non-gender conforming identities, and more. New to this edition:New data, text box examples, photos, exercises, study questions, and glossary terms appear throughout. New discussions added of arts-based and participatory approaches to research, historical changes in the perception of deviance, legalization of marijuana; Islam vs. secularism in France, new forms of socialization, heteronormative and essentialist language related to sex and gender, intersections of social class and other identities, the prison industrial complex, informal sharing economies, atheism, and more. New text boxes include: Young Saudis Find Freedom in their PhonesHow One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s LifeSchool-to-Prison PipelineIndia’s Reproductive Assembly LineWorkers Feel Pain of LayoffsLike Prohibition, the fight over guns is about something elseMicro-aggression and Changing Moral CulturesPraise for A Contemporary Introduction to Sociology"Treats sociology as a living, vibrant discipline. The book is a masterful synthesis written in a style that is at once sophisticated, engaging, and accessible."—Peter Kivisto, Augustana College "Alexander and Thompson have produced the modern textbook we have all been waiting for—comprehensive and coherent, but above all intelligent. Designed to make teaching sociology unproblematic, the book is the ideal combination of theory, evidence, and accessibility."—Bryan S. Turner, editor of The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology"Sets new standards in speaking directly to students of the most significant recent developments in sociology and social changes they are living. It shows how inspiring the sociological imagination can be in areas like media, sexuality, gender relations, inequality, and globalization.—Lyn Spillman, University of Notre Dame"A truly contemporary sociology, one that mines the classics of sociology for insights into a profoundly changed, postmodern world. Most important, the book reminds us of sociology’s capacity to surprise."—Francesca Polletta, University of California–Irvine"An extraordinary textbook that synthesizes a wealth of sociological studies. The book is engaging and readable, key concepts are clearly defined, and important theories are succinctly explicated. I highly recommend it to students and faculty alike."—William Julius Wilson, Harvard University

The influential authors significantly update their popular introductory text that invites students to reflect on their lives in the context of the combustible leap from modern to postmodern life. The authors show how culture is central to understanding many world problems as they challenge readers to confront the problems and possibilities of an era in which the futures of the physical and social environments seem uncertain. As culture rapidly changes in the 21st century, the authors have successfully incorporated these nuances with many important updates on race and racism, Black Lives Matter, the rise of populist politics, ISIS, new social media, feminist perspectives on sex work, trans and non-gender conforming identities, and more. New to this edition:New data, text box examples, photos, exercises, study questions, and glossary terms appear throughout. New discussions added of arts-based and participatory approaches to research, historical changes in the perception of deviance, legalization of marijuana; Islam vs. secularism in France, new forms of socialization, heteronormative and essentialist language related to sex and gender, intersections of social class and other identities, the prison industrial complex, informal sharing economies, atheism, and more. New text boxes include: Young Saudis Find Freedom in their PhonesHow One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s LifeSchool-to-Prison PipelineIndia’s Reproductive Assembly LineWorkers Feel Pain of LayoffsLike Prohibition, the fight over guns is about something elseMicro-aggression and Changing Moral CulturesPraise for A Contemporary Introduction to Sociology"Treats sociology as a living, vibrant discipline. The book is a masterful synthesis written in a style that is at once sophisticated, engaging, and accessible."—Peter Kivisto, Augustana College "Alexander and Thompson have produced the modern textbook we have all been waiting for—comprehensive and coherent, but above all intelligent. Designed to make teaching sociology unproblematic, the book is the ideal combination of theory, evidence, and accessibility."—Bryan S. Turner, editor of The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology"Sets new standards in speaking directly to students of the most significant recent developments in sociology and social changes they are living. It shows how inspiring the sociological imagination can be in areas like media, sexuality, gender relations, inequality, and globalization.—Lyn Spillman, University of Notre Dame"A truly contemporary sociology, one that mines the classics of sociology for insights into a profoundly changed, postmodern world. Most important, the book reminds us of sociology’s capacity to surprise."—Francesca Polletta, University of California–Irvine"An extraordinary textbook that synthesizes a wealth of sociological studies. The book is engaging and readable, key concepts are clearly defined, and important theories are succinctly explicated. I highly recommend it to students and faculty alike."—William Julius Wilson, Harvard University

The limits of one-dimensional theory are strikingly revealed in the schools that the founders of the major sociological traditions established. In this volume Max Weber is presented as the theorist who laid out new starting points and the author considers his work as a response, in part, to the idealist tradition which (in Volume 2), he maintains that Durkheim represents. As Weber was less able to avoid ambiguity, the author examines the weaknesses and efforts at ‘paradigm revision’.

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 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 volume begins by challenging the bases of the recent scientization of sociology. Then it challenges some of the ambitious claims of recent theoretical debate. The author not only reinterprets the most important classical and modern sociological theories but extracts from the debates the elements of a more satisfactory, inclusive approach to these general theoretical points.

The limits of one-dimensional theory are strikingly revealed in the schools that the founders of the major sociological traditions established. In this volume Max Weber is presented as the theorist who laid out new starting points and the author considers his work as a response, in part, to the idealist tradition which (in Volume 2), he maintains that Durkheim represents. As Weber was less able to avoid ambiguity, the author examines the weaknesses and efforts at ‘paradigm revision’.

This volume begins by challenging the bases of the recent scientization of sociology. Then it challenges some of the ambitious claims of recent theoretical debate. The author not only reinterprets the most important classical and modern sociological theories but extracts from the debates the elements of a more satisfactory, inclusive approach to these general theoretical points.

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.

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.