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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.
List of contents
Part 1. 1690-1919, Modernity’s Classical Age
Social Foundations of Modern Democracy
The Unthinkable Two Sides of Society
Split Lives in the Modern World
Part 2. 1919-1945, Social Theories and World Conflict
Action and Knowledge in a Troubled World
Unavoidable Dilemmas
Part 3. 1945-1964, The Golden Moment
The Golden Age
Doubts and Reservations
Others Object
Part 4. 1963-1979, Will the Center Hold?
Experiments in Renewal and Reconstruction
Part 5. 1969-2001, After Modernity
The Idea of the Postmodern and Its Critics
Reactions and Alternatives
New Cultural Theories After Modernity
Part 6. After 2001, Global Realities in an Uncertain Future
Global Uncertainties
Rethinking the Past That Haunts the Future
Is the Modern Order Broken?
About the author
Charles Lemert is University Professor and Andrus Professor of Social Theory Emeritus at Wesleyan University. Among his books are The Structural Lie: Small Clues to Global Things (2011), Why Niebuhr Matters (2011), Uncertain Worlds: World-Systems Analysis in Changing Times (2013, with Immanuel Wallerstein and Carlos Aguirre Rojas), and Globalization: Introduction to the End of the Known World (2015). He is at work on The Uncertain Future of Capitalism (2021, with Kristin Plys) and, among other books, Uncertainties of Time: The Past and Future TimeSpace (with Immanuel Wallerstein, posthumously).
Summary
Today, as the world is threatened by anti-democratic movements, this editionadds a new early section on the origins of democratic values in 1700s—and a new concluding section that focuses on how, in the 2020s, social theorists are rethinking the world to better understand and resist the menace of anti-democracy movements.
