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The overall organizing framework employed in this textbook is based primarily on the distinctions among different levels of social reality. Theorists routinely distinguish between micro and macro levels of analysis. The micro level involves a focus on human agency and choice and the dynamics of personal relationships and small-scale social systems of various types, particularly those involving face-to-face encounters. The macro level, in contrast, is concerned with larger-scale social systems, typically at the level of total societies.
In addition to micro and macro levels, various intermediate (or meso ) levels of analysis may also be identified. This book is distinctive as a theory text in giving explicit attention to organizations, communities, markets, and socioeconomic classes as meso-level social formations that can be identified between the micro level of face-to-face relations and the macro-level institutional structures of the overall society.
Contemporary Sociological Theory is divided into three sections: the first section introduces contemporary sociological theory and includes the historical development, the early European sources, and the development of American sociology. Section two presents the various major theoretical perspectives that have long been considered the core of contemporary sociological theory and includes the three levels of social interaction - macro, micro and meso. The last section covers contemporary perspectives that reflect multiple levels of analysis such as feminist theory, structuration theory and systems theory, the sociobiological perspective and cultural systems.
With its unique focus on multiple levels of analysis, this graduate-level text will be of interest to sociologists and those they teach.
About the author
D. Paul Johnson is a Professor and the former Chair of the Department of Sociology at Texas Tech University.
Summary
This volume is designed as a basic text for upper level and graduate courses in contemporary sociological theory. Most sociology programs require their majors to take at least one course in sociological theory, sometimes two. A typical breakdown is between classical and contemporary theory. Theory is perhaps one of the bro- est areas of sociological inquiry and serves as a foundation or framework for more specialized study in specific substantive areas of the field. In addition, the study of sociological theory can readily be related to various aspects of other social science disciplines as well. From the very beginning sociology has been characterized by alternative theoretical perspectives. Classical theory includes the European founding figures of the dis- pline whose works were produced during the later half of the nineteenth century and the first couple of decades of the twentieth century plus early American th- rists. For most of the second half of the twentieth century, a fairly high consensus has developed among American sociologists regarding these major founders, p- ticularly with regard to the works of Durkheim and Weber in analyzing the overall society and of Simmel in analyzing social interaction processes. Since the late 1960s and early 1970s the influence of Marx has also been recognized. Recent decades have also witnessed an increased emphasis on the important contributions of several pioneering feminist perspectives in the early years of sociology.
