The golden anniversary edition of "Theory of Collective Behavior" is a modern republication of a sociological and social psychology classic. Adding a reflective new Preface by the author and an extensive, analytical Foreword by MIT's Gary Marx, it is an authorized edition.

The golden anniversary edition of "THEORY OF COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR" from Quid Pro Books is a modern take on a sociological and social psychology classic. Featuring a reflective new Preface by the author and an extensive, analytical Foreword by MIT's Gary Marx, it is an authorized and painstaking edition-not just scanned and forgotten like most such reprints today. As part of the "Classics of the Social Sciences" Series, it features quality formatting such as original notes, legible tables, complete index, and extensive bibliography (including updating references for the new Foreword). The original page numbers are embedded for continuity of citations and referencing.

Publisher's Note: Some retail sites use our description for others' OCR or photocopied versions without clarifying that it only applies to the anniversary edition by Quid Pro, LLC. Only the Quid Pro edition features proofread materials, fully-presented notes and bibliography, and new introductions by the author and Gary Marx. It is the authorized edition, prepared with care and pride, and has a cover painting by sociologist Jerome Carlin of revolutionary figures at a costume ball. Please look for this specific version and not rely on the description's location as indicating which one is sold for that page.

As Gary Marx notes in his Foreword, "The book is elegant, original, carefully crafted and forcefully argued. In its totality, it is a fine example of an effort to define a field, identify major types and systematically connect central variables. This is done to organize an amorphous collection of behaviors that seem to be intuitively linked, but which had not previously enjoyed an equivalent framework for identifying those links. His innovative treatment of the form known as the craze nicely illustrates this. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of economic history and applying stages of the value-added process, Smelser shows commonalities across areas previously seen as distinct-such as economic swings, expressive crowds and fads and fashion-and offers a systematic way to differentiate these from other forms. The sense of craftsmanship and the care in construction can serve as a model for theorizing and for the effort to both acknowledge and yet reduce the indeterminacy of social phenomena."

Marx concludes, "As 2011 events such as the Tsunami in Japan and the unexpected uprisings in the Middle East suggest, the importance of the field and the need to advance knowledge is not just historical. This book remains a rich contribution toward that advancement."

Now in its second printing, it is truly a standard, foundational work in the field, often adopted for classwork and research.

We live in an age saturated with surveillance. Our personal and public lives are increasingly on display for governments, merchants, employers, hackers-and the merely curious-to see. In Windows into the Soul, Gary T. Marx, a central figure in the rapidly expanding field of surveillance studies, argues that surveillance itself is neither good nor bad, but that context and comportment make it so. In this landmark book, Marx sums up a lifetime of work on issues of surveillance and social control by disentangling and parsing the empirical richness of watching and being watched. Using fictional narratives as well as the findings of social science, Marx draws on decades of studies of covert policing, computer profiling, location and work monitoring, drug testing, caller identification, and much more, Marx gives us a conceptual language to understand the new realities and his work clearly emphasizes the paradoxes, trade-offs, and confusion enveloping the field. Windows into the Soul shows how surveillance can penetrate our social and personal lives in profound, and sometimes harrowing, ways. Ultimately, Marx argues, recognizing complexity and asking the right questions is essential to bringing light and accountability to the darker, more iniquitous corners of our emerging surveillance society.

Providing a rich picture of past and present undercover work, and drawing on unpublished documents and interviews with the FBI and local police, this penetrating study examines the variety of undercover operations and the ethical issues and empirical assumptions raised when the state officially sanctions deception and trickery and allows its agents to participate in crime.

"For nearly fifty years, Neil Smelser has been one of the world's most distinguished sociologists. His intellectual range is remarkable, and so too his influence over the discipline. The essays collected here are a fitting tribute precisely because they are intellectually rich, diverse, thought-provoking and unafraid of controversy. They offer commanding views of a dozen subfields, syntheses of important lines of work, and agendas for the future."--Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council

"If the legacy of scholars is measured by the work of their students, Neil Smelser has done very well indeed. The great range of topics covered in this volume is a testament to his sociological breath. This collection should be read for what it reveals about the many dimensions of an intellectual life well lived, as well as for what it teaches about the past and the present of our discipline."--Michele Lamont, co- author of" Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology: Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the United States

"A brilliant collection of essays giving expression to the diversity and depth of Neil Smelser's scholarly and intellectual achievement. The authors show how Smelser's multidisciplinary synthesis represents a summary of the achievements of economics, psychology and sociology in the second half of the twentieth century."--Bryan S. Turner, author of "The Body and Society