This book argues that sociology has lost its ability to provide critical diagnoses of the present human condition because sociology has stopped considering the philosophical requirements of social enquiry. The book attempts to restore that ability by retrieving some of the key questions that sociologists tend to gloss over, inescapability and attainability. The book identifies five key questions in which issues of inescapability and attainability emerge. These are the questions of the certainty of our knowledge, the viability of our politics, the continuity of our selves, the accessibility of the past, and the transparency of the future. The book demonstrates how these questions are addressed in different forms and by different intellectual means during the past 200 years and shows how they persist today.

The book is divided into three parts.

Filipe Carreira da Silva addresses the basic questions 'How should we read Mead?' and 'Why should we read Mead today' by showing that the history of ideas and theory-building are closely-related endeavors. Following a contextualist approach in exploring the meaning of Mead's writings, Carreira da Silva reads the entire corpus of Mead's published and unpublished writings in light of the context in which they were originally produced, from concrete events like the American involvement in World War I to more general debates like that of the nature of modernity. Mead and Modernity attests to the relevance of Mead's ideas by assessing the relative merits of his responses to three fundamental modern problematics: science, selfhood, and democratic politics. The outcome is an innovative intellectual portrait of Mead as a seminal thinker whose contributions extend beyond his well-known social theory of the self and include important insights into the philosophy of science and radical democratic theory.

The seventh edition of "Modern Sociological Theory" by George Ritzer, one of the foremost authorities on sociological theory, gives readers a comprehensive overview of the major contemporary schools of sociological thought. Key theories are integrated with biographical sketches of theorists, and theories are placed in their historical and intellectual context. This helps students to better understand the original works and helps them appreciate the diversity of contemporary theory.

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This innovative publication maps out the broad and interdisciplinary field of contemporary European social theory. It covers sociological theory, the wider theoretical traditions in the social sciences including cultural and political theory, anthropological theory, social philosophy and social thought in the broadest sense of the term. This volume surveys the classical heritage, the major national traditions and the fate of social theory in a post-national and post-disciplinary era. It also identifies what is distinctive about European social theory in terms of themes and traditions. It is divided into five parts: disciplinary traditions, national traditions, major schools, key themes and the reception of European social theory in American and Asia. Thirty-five contributors from nineteen countries across Europe, Russia, the Americas and Asian Pacific have been commissioned to utilize the most up-to-date research available to provide a critical, international analysis of their area of expertise. Overall, this is an indispensable book for students, teachers and researchers in sociology, cultural studies, politics, philosophy and human geography and will set the tone for future research in the social sciences.

"The seventh edition of Sociological Theory by George Ritzer, one of the foremost authorities on sociological theory, gives readers a comprehensive overview of the major theorists and schools of sociological thought. Key theories are integrated with biographical sketches of theorists, and theories are placed in their historical and intellectual context. This helps students to better understand the original works of classical and modern theorists as well as to compare and contrast the latest substantive theories."--BOOK JACKET.

The authors systematically interrogate postmodern theory to evaluate its relevance for critical social theory and radical politics today. The book contains an introduction and critique to the work of Foucault, Delueze and Guattari and an introduction to postmodern feminist theory.

Tracing the emergence and evolution of the modern discourse on boredom in French and German literary, philosophical, and sociological texts, this book fills a gap in the intellectual and cultural history of European modernity.