In this comprehensive and clear introduction to contemporary social theory, Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert explore the major theoretical traditions from the Frankfurt School to the digital revolution and beyond. Fully revised and updated, this second edition has been expanded to consider the most recent developments in social theory, including a new chapter on the digital revolution and the increasingly significant impact of technological developments (such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics) on society, culture and politics. Introduction to Contemporary Social Theory provides the reader with a superb overview of key developments in social theory, including the Frankfurt School, American pragmatism, structuralism, post-structuralism, feminism, globalization and world-systems theory. In doing so, the textbook explores the ideas of a wide range of social theorists, including Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Talcott Parsons, Erving Goffman, Harold Garfinkel, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, C. Wright Mills, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Julia Kristeva, Jurgen Habermas, Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, Manuel Castells, Cornel West, Immanuel Wallerstein and Zygmunt Bauman. This textbook provides stylish exposition with powerful social critique and original insights. It will be indispensable to students and academics alike.

For decades, Charles Lemert has been the leading voice in social theory. In Capitalism and its Uncertain Future he teams up with one of the most creative emerging social theorists, Kristin Plys, to examine how social theory imagines capitalism. This engaging and innovative book provides new perspectives on well known theorists from Adam Smith, and Frantz Fanon, to Gilles Deleuze, while also introducing readers to lesser known theorists such as Lucia Sanchez Saornil, Mohammad Ali El Hammi, and many more. The book examines theories of capitalism from four perspectives: macro-historical theories of the origins of capitalism; postcolonial theories of capitalism that situate capitalism as seen from the Global South; theories of capitalism from the perspective of labor; and prospective theories of capitalism's uncertain future. This provocative and ambitious, yet accessible, perspective on theories of capitalism will be of interest to anyone who wants to explore where we've been and where we're headed.

For decades, Charles Lemert has been the leading voice in social theory. In Capitalism and its Uncertain Future he teams up with one of the most creative emerging social theorists, Kristin Plys, to examine how social theory imagines capitalism. This engaging and innovative book provides new perspectives on well known theorists from Adam Smith, and Frantz Fanon, to Gilles Deleuze, while also introducing readers to lesser known theorists such as Lucia Sanchez Saornil, Mohammad Ali El Hammi, and many more. The book examines theories of capitalism from four perspectives: macro-historical theories of the origins of capitalism; postcolonial theories of capitalism that situate capitalism as seen from the Global South; theories of capitalism from the perspective of labor; and prospective theories of capitalism's uncertain future. This provocative and ambitious, yet accessible, perspective on theories of capitalism will be of interest to anyone who wants to explore where we've been and where we're headed.

Social Theory is more than a reader. Feminists, race theorists, decolonizing leaders, and others are thoughtfully introduced by Charles Lemert's substantial commentaries. Social Theory has always sought to keep up with the new while respecting the old-from Durkheim and Weber to Latinx and LGBTQ pioneers. When the book first appeared it was, as it remains, a collection of selections from those who have changed how we think about social things. Today, as the world is threatened by a global wave of anti-democratic movements, Social Theory adds a new early section to remind us of the origins of democratic values in the 1700s. A new concluding section focuses the theoretical mind on how, in the 2020s, social theorists are rethinking the world in order to better understand and resist the menace of anti-democratic movements.

In this comprehensive and clear introduction to contemporary social theory, Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert explore the major theoretical traditions from the Frankfurt School to the digital revolution and beyond. Fully revised and updated, this second edition has been expanded to consider the most recent developments in social theory, including a new chapter on the digital revolution and the increasingly significant impact of technological developments (such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics) on society, culture and politics. Introduction to Contemporary Social Theory provides the reader with a superb overview of key developments in social theory, including the Frankfurt School, American pragmatism, structuralism, post-structuralism, feminism, globalization and world-systems theory. In doing so, the textbook explores the ideas of a wide range of social theorists, including Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Talcott Parsons, Erving Goffman, Harold Garfinkel, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, C. Wright Mills, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Julia Kristeva, Jurgen Habermas, Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, Manuel Castells, Cornel West, Immanuel Wallerstein and Zygmunt Bauman. This textbook provides stylish exposition with powerful social critique and original insights. It will be indispensable to students and academics alike.

Expected to become a classic in the field and the classroom standard for teachers and their students, this book offers the most comprehensive, engaging selection of classic and contemporary readings on globalization currently available.

Here, for the first time in print, is the full historical story of globalization drawn from original sources, explained by accessible introductions and biographical commentaries, and clearly organized as a comprehensive teaching text to guide students through the ins and outs of globalization. With astonishing social, political and historical depth, the book ranges from the Babylonian and Persian empires in Mesopotamia to the global electronic economy of the 21st century, from ancient Greece and imperial Rome to transformations in contemporary state power and global inequalities. From Kenichi Ohmae to Al Gore, from Osama bin Laden to Timothy Garton-Ash, from Amartya Sen to Abdou Maliq Simone: this is a dazzling collection of the most important academic and public statements on globalization.

Throughout, the Editors expertly guide the reader through the complex terrain of globalization its engaging histories, its transnational economies, its multiple cultures and cosmopolitan politics.

Expected to become a classic in the field and the classroom standard for teachers and their students, this book offers the most comprehensive, engaging selection of classic and contemporary readings on globalization currently available.

Here, for the first time in print, is the full historical story of globalization ? drawn from original sources, explained by accessible introductions and biographical commentaries, and clearly organized as a comprehensive teaching text to guide students through the ins and outs of globalization. With astonishing social, political and historical depth, the book ranges from the Babylonian and Persian empires in Mesopotamia to the global electronic economy of the 21st century, from ancient Greece and imperial Rome to transformations in contemporary state power and global inequalities. From Kenichi Ohmae to Al Gore, from Osama bin Laden to Timothy Garton-Ash, from Amartya Sen to Abdou Maliq Simone: this is a dazzling collection of the most important academic and public statements on globalization.

Throughout, the Editors expertly guide the reader through the complex terrain of globalization ? its engaging histories, its transnational economies, its multiple cultures and cosmopolitan politics.

This is a new and revised edition of a book which has had a major impact upon the social sciences and public political debate. Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert's THE NEW INDIVIDUALISM inspired readers with the dramatic suggestion that 'the reinvention craze' - from self-help and therapy culture to management restructurings and corporate downsizings - is central to a 'new individualism' sweeping the globe. Giving particular attention to the narratives of people seeking to define anew their lives in an age of globalization, the authors contend that an endless hunger for instant change and relentless emphasis on self-reinvention is fundamental to grasping the disorientating effects of the new individualism.

This edition contains a substantial new Introduction in which Elliott and Lemert reply to some of the standard criticisms made of the theory of the new individualism, and also addresses the escalation of new individualist thinking in the wake of recent global crises.

Social Theory is more than a reader. Feminists, race theorists, decolonizing leaders, and others are thoughtfully introduced by Charles Lemert's substantial commentaries. Social Theory has always sought to keep up with the new while respecting the old-from Durkheim and Weber to Latinx and LGBTQ pioneers. When the book first appeared it was, as it remains, a collection of selections from those who have changed how we think about social things. Today, as the world is threatened by a global wave of anti-democratic movements, Social Theory adds a new early section to remind us of the origins of democratic values in the 1700s. A new concluding section focuses the theoretical mind on how, in the 2020s, social theorists are rethinking the world in order to better understand and resist the menace of anti-democratic movements.

Contents:
Preface: Dark Days - September 11, 2001 Part I: The Beginnings of a Millennium: 1990s 1. The Coming of My Last Born - April 8, 1998 The Eclipse of Society, 1901-2001 2. Blood and Skin - 1999 Whose We? - Dark Thoughts of the Universal Self, 1998 3. A Call in the Morning - 1988 The Rights and Justices of the Multicultural Panic, 1990s Part II: The Last New Century: 1890s 4. Calling out Father by Calling up His Mother - About 1941 The Coloured Woman's Office: Anna Julia Cooper, 1892 5. Get On Home! - About 1949 Bad Dreams of Big Business: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1898 6. All Kinds of People Getting Off - 1954 The Colour Line: W.E.B. Du Bois, 1903 Part III: Between, Before, and Beyond/1873-2020 7. When Good People Do Evil - 1989 The Queer Passing of Analytic Things: Nella Larsen, 1929 8. What Would Jesus Have Done? - 1965 The Race of Time: Deconstruction, Du Bois, & Reconstruction, 1935-1873 9. Dreaming in the Dark - November 26, 1997 Justice in the Colonizer's Nightmare: Muhammad, Malcolm, & Necessary Drag, 1965-2020 10. A Call in the Night - February 11, 2000 The Gospel According to Matt: Suicide and the Good of Society, 2000 Acknowledgements Endnotes Endmatter, including index

Prominent sociologist Charles Lemert compellingly argues that race is the central feature of modern culture; this was true for the twentieth century and it will be true for the twenty-first. If we want to understand how the world works, Lemert explains, we must understand the centrality of race in our lives and in the foundation of our society. We must also be able to face up to what we've done to one another in the name of race.

This is a new and revised edition of a book which has had a major impact upon the social sciences and public political debate. Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert's THE NEW INDIVIDUALISM inspired readers with the dramatic suggestion that 'the reinvention craze' - from self-help and therapy culture to management restructurings and corporate downsizings - is central to a 'new individualism' sweeping the globe. Giving particular attention to the narratives of people seeking to define anew their lives in an age of globalization, the authors contend that an endless hunger for instant change and relentless emphasis on self-reinvention is fundamental to grasping the disorientating effects of the new individualism.

This edition contains a substantial new Introduction in which Elliott and Lemert reply to some of the standard criticisms made of the theory of the new individualism, and also addresses the escalation of new individualist thinking in the wake of recent global crises.

With a new foreword by Charles Lemert

'Its greatness...lies in ceaseless and varied use of the money form to unearth and conceptually reveal incommensurabilities of all kinds, in social reality fully as much as in thought itself.' - Fredric Jameson

In The Philosophy of Money, Georg Simmel puts money on the couch. He provides us with a classic analysis of the social, psychological and philosophical aspects of the money economy, full of brilliant insights into the forms that social relationships take. He analyzes the relationships of money to exchange, human personality, the position of women, and individual freedom. Simmel also offers us prophetic insights into the consequences of the modern money economy and the division of labour, in particular the processes of alienation and reification in work and urban life.

An immense and profound piece of work it demands to be read today and for years to come as a stunning account of the meaning, use and culture of money.

Georg Simmel (1858-1918) was born in Berlin, the youngest of seven children. He studied philosophy and history at the University of Berlin and was one of the first generation of great German sociologists that included Max Weber.

Deadly Worlds offers an original analysis of one of the unsolved questions of the current age: what are the emotional costs and possibilities of globalization? Lemert and Elliott challenge the dominant interpretations of the late modern world by delving below the surface of cultural and economic theories to explore theories of the new individualism. Against European ideas that the individual is either a manipulated artifact of mass culture or a reflexive self facing global risks, they pose the possibility that the new worlds are actually deadly. Against the American tradition of viewing the individual as having abandoned her moral center, they suggest the necessity of rediscovered aggression as a proper moral quality. Deadly Worlds is controversial, but also plain spoken and intriguing. It dares to rework the case method by telling the stories of real individuals: Kelly struggling to find herself by plastic surgery; Norman responding to a positive HIV status by remaking his community; Larry desperately seeking to control the world's demands by therapy; Phyllis using her natural gift for aggression to heal and build institutions. The life stories root the book's themes in worlds all can recognize, while the presentation of the prevailing theories of globalization and its effects expand the reader's social imagination to new possibilities.

Erving Goffman (1922-82) was arguably one of the most influential American sociologists of the twentieth century. A keen observer of the interaction order of everyday life, Goffman's books, which have sold in the hundreds of thousands, continue to be widely read and his concepts have permanently entered the sociology lexicon. This volume consists of twelve original essays, all written by prominent Goffman scholars, that critically assess Goffman's many contributions to various areas of study, including functionalism, social psychology, ethnomethodology, and feminist theory.

A leading social theorist analyzes how and why Niebuhr's revival has taken place, ultimately arguing for his political and moral relevance today Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) was a Protestant preacher, an influential religious thinker, and an important moral guide in mid-twentieth-century America. But what does he have to say to us now? In what way does he inform the thinking of political leaders and commentators from Barack Obama and Madeleine Albright to David Brooks and Walter Russell Mead, all of whom acknowledge his influence? In this lively overview of Niebuhr's career, Charles Lemert analyzes why interest in Niebuhr is rising and how Niebuhr provides the answers we ache for in the face of seismic shifts in the global order. In the middle of the twentieth century, having outgrown a theological liberalism, Niebuhr challenged and rethought the nonsocialist Left in American politics. He developed a political realism that refused to sacrifice ideals to mere pragmatism, or politics to bitterness and greed. He examined the problem of morality in an immoral society and reimagined the balance between rights and freedom for the individual and social justice for the many. With brevity and deep insight, Lemert shows how Niebuhr's ideas illuminate our most difficult questions today.

Durkheim's Ghosts is a fascinating presentation of the tradition of social theory influenced by Emile Durkheim's thinking on the social foundations of knowledge. From Saussure and Levi-Strauss to Foucault, Bourdieu and Derrida, today's criticisms of modern politics and culture owe an important, if unacknowledged, debt to Durkheim. These engaging and innovative essays by leading sociologist Charles Lemert bring together his writings on the contributions of French social theory past and present. Rather than merely interpret the theories, Lemert uses them to explore the futures of sociology, social theory, and culture studies. Durkheim's Ghosts offers the reader original insights into Durkheim's legacy and the wider French traditions for the cultural and social sciences. Of special note is the book's new and exciting theory of culture and semiotics. Provocative, scholarly, imaginative and ambitious this book will be invaluable to anyone interested in social theory, culture, and intellectual history of modern times.

Durkheim's Ghosts is a fascinating presentation of the tradition of social theory influenced by Emile Durkheim's thinking on the social foundations of knowledge. From Saussure and Levi-Strauss to Foucault, Bourdieu and Derrida, today's criticisms of modern politics and culture owe an important, if unacknowledged, debt to Durkheim. These engaging and innovative essays by leading sociologist Charles Lemert bring together his writings on the contributions of French social theory past and present. Rather than merely interpret the theories, Lemert uses them to explore the futures of sociology, social theory, and culture studies. Durkheim's Ghosts offers the reader original insights into Durkheim's legacy and the wider French traditions for the cultural and social sciences. Of special note is the book's new and exciting theory of culture and semiotics. Provocative, scholarly, imaginative and ambitious this book will be invaluable to anyone interested in social theory, culture, and intellectual history of modern times.

The New Psychoanalysis explores and explains important developments in psychoanalytic thought and practice since Freud 's death in 1939. Drawing on the experience of her many years of clinical work with patients, as well research and teaching in the training institutes she directs, Phyllis W. Meadow offers convincing testimony to the power of the unconscious forces that drive our thinking, feeling, and behaving. She shows how the mind unfolds in the face of tensions native to the unconscious life, and how psychoanalysis is applicable to the full range of emotional disorders. This highly accessible book is ideal for the therapist or psychologist, as well as the social theorist or general reader, who is concerned with the hold of aggression on the lives of human beings facing a world still as violent and destructive as it was in Freud 's day. The introduction, by Charles Lemert, provides a challenging essay on the connections between psychoanalytic and social theories.

Recently Anna Julia Cooper has emerged as the most important classic writer in the tradition of African American feminist thought. Mary Helen Washington described Cooper's work as 'the most precise, forceful, well-argued statement of black feminist thought to come out of the nineteenth century.' This is the first collection of all of Cooper's major writings, including many never before published. It includes all of the essays from her famous book, A Voice from the South, in addition to many other essays and letters accessible only in archives until now. The organization of this important new collection lends itself to a clearer understanding of the major themes and contributions of Cooper's thought, her development as a thinker and writer, and the critiques and controversies surrounding her work. Lemert and Bhan introduce Cooper as an activist, settlement founder, school teacher, college president, linguist, and scholar_a life that paralleled the prodigious accomplishments of W.E.B. Du Bois in so many ways.

The first edition of Tally's Corner, a sociological classic selling more than one million copies, was the first compelling response to the culture of poverty thesis-that the poor are different and, according to conservatives, morally inferior-and alternative explanations that many African Americans are caught in a tangle of pathology owing to the absence of black men in families. The debate has raged up to the present day. Yet Liebow's shadow theory of values-especially the values of poor, urban, black men-remains the single most parsimonious account of the reasons why the behavior of the poor appears to be at odds with the values of the American mainstream. While Elliot Liebow's vivid narrative of "street-corner" black men remains unchanged, the new introductions to this long-awaited revised edition bring the book up to date. Wilson and Lemert describe the debates since 1965 and situate Liebow's classic text in respect to current theories of urban poverty and race. They account for what Liebow might have seen had he studied the street corner today after welfare has been virtually ended and the drug economy had taken its toll. They also take stock of how the new global economy is a source of added strain on the urban poor. Discussion of field methods since the 1960s rounds out the book's new coverage.

In fifteen years, Charles Lemert's Social Things has become a much-loved modern classic among teachers, students, and many other readers for introducing the sociological imagination through lively, memorable stories and interpretations. This fifth edition is fresh: the history of sociology section is updated to incorporate new discussions of the way sociological ideas have spread into numerous other fields to inform the new post-disciplinary social theory; the book now includes original yet practically vivid presentations of globalization, queer theory, critical race theory, and much else; and an entirely new chapter, "Global Things on a Fragile Planet," addresses the environmental crises that challenge our global world. Lemert focuses on man-made disasters like the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill in 2010 and natural tragedies like the 2011 earthquakes and tsunami in Japan in which the fragility of organized human life and the sociological incompetence of many social structures are dramatically illustrated.