Key Sociological Thinkers - Softcover

Stones, R.; Weber, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0814781160 ISBN 13: 9780814781166

Publisher: New York University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Despite the fact that most of us think often about society and social life, few of us have had extensive schooling in how to organize or structure such thought. Guided by the belief that the sociological imagination is impoversihed if accessible only to a handful of specialists, Key Sociological Thinkers provides the lay reader with a clear and manageable overview of the major sociological developments from Marx to the present day. Twenty-one concise, thorough chapters introduce the key thinkers in the field; their driving impulses, issues central to their work, substantive examples of the theory in action, their legacy, as well as reading lists meant to stimulate further research. The book's range includes not only canonical figures, such as Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, but feminist, post-structuralist, and post-colonialist thinkers of recent decades, including Nancy Chodorow, Michel Foucault, and Stuart Hall. Other sociologists and social theorists overed include Sigmund Freud, Georg Simmel, Herbert Blumer, Talcott Parsons, Robert Merton, Simone de Beauvoir, Norbert Elias, Erving Goffman, David Lockwood, Harold Garfinkel, Louis Althusser, Jurgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, Arlie Hochschild, and Anthony Giddens. Key Sociological Thinkers is ideal for students new to the field, veterans looking to brush up, and anyone eager to expand their understanding of the world in which we live. Rob Stones is Lecturer in Sociology and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Essex and author of Sociological Reasoning: Towards a Past-Modern Sociology.

About this title

Review:

"Weber is at his best when he explains the terrible cruelty of marginalizing and segregating children from their peers on account of disability."
-"Trial",

"Provides a progression of well-documented, horrific stories of abuse that are experienced by both children and adults, by both individuals and who were born with a disability and by individuals who became disabled."
-Harold A. Johnson, Michigan State University

"Weber accomplishes three significant tasks in "Disability Harassment" he demonstrates the existence of disability harassment, explains the harm that it causes, and provides courts with tools to prevent future instances of disability-based maltreatment. "Disability Harassment" thereby contributes to the anti-discrimination literature by focusing attention on the comparatively less examined, but pervasive phenomenon of intentional mistreatment of people with disabilities."
-"Northwestern University Law Review",

""Disability Harassment" provides a detailed, complex, and interwoven series of argument and legal strategies that can be used by lawyers to address the school and work based abuses experienced by individuals with disabilities."
-"Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education",

"Weber lays out an understandable explanation of the remedies that exist for people who are harassed based on disability, including those that are available under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Rehabilitation Act, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). . . . Few lawyers practice in the area of disability law. One perhaps unintended benefit of the book is that it may recruit trial lawyers to Weber's cause. His passion for the subject gives life to the pages of the book and may inspire trial lawyers to get involved in these types of cases. . . . In the end, Weber makes it clear that practitioners can protect the rights of children and workers with disabilities. And he succeeds in making his main point: that children and workers ought to be treated equally and evaluated on their merits, not their afflictions. This book helps trial lawyers get closer to that laudable goal."
-"Trial Review",

From the Back Cover:

Key Sociological Thinkers provides a clear and contextualised overview of the best of sociological thought. Written by leading academics, it offers stimulating and insightful assessments of 24 of the most influential thinkers in sociology: from Marx, Weber and Simmel to Chodorow, Foucault and Bauman. In addition, there are extended glossary accounts of thirteen additional theorists who have influenced, or been influenced by, these key thinkers.

The third edition of this popular and established text is updated to cover the lives, works and legacies of Mead, Du Bois, Latour and Alexander, and to include five newly-authored chapters on Durkheim, Merton, Goffman, Bourdieu and Giddens. It contains a major new introduction, linking sociological theory to events and processes in three different historical periods of modernity.

With frameworks for deep learning around group discussion, and much-valued ‘Seeing Things Differently’ sections to demonstrate how each thinker’s ideas can be used to illuminate aspects of social life in new ways, this continues be an essential text for all students of sociological theory.

Online-only chapters on Adorno, Blumer, De Beauvoir, Freud and Lockwood can be found on www.macmillanihe.com/stones

About this edition

• Publisher: New York University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0814781160
• ISBN 13: 9780814781166
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Stones Rob