Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots

George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, where he has also been a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and won a Teaching Excellence Award. He was awarded the Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award by the American Sociological Association, an honorary doctorate from LaTrobe University in Australia, and the Robin Williams Lectureship from the Eastern Sociological Society. His best-known work, The McDonaldization of Society (8th ed.), has been read by hundreds of thousands of students over two decades and translated into over a dozen languages. Ritzer is also the editor of McDonaldization: The Reader; and author of other works of critical sociology related to the McDonaldization thesis, including Enchanting a Disenchanted World, The Globalization of Nothing, Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society, as well as a series best-selling social theory textbooks and Globalization: A Basic Text. He is the Editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Theory (2 vols.), the Encyclopedia of Sociology (11 vols.; 2nd edition forthcoming), the Encyclopedia of Globalization (5 vols.), and is Founding Editor of the Journal of Consumer Culture. In 2016 he will publish the second edition of Essentials of Sociology with SAGE. Jeffrey Stepnisky is an Associate Professor of Sociology at MacEwan University in Alberta, Canada, where he teaches classical and contemporary social theory. He has published in the area of social theory, especially as it relates to questions of subjectivity, in journals such as The Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior and Social Theory & Health. Along with this book he is co-author of Sociological Theory, Classical Sociological Theory, and Modern Sociological Theory, and has co-edited the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, all with George Ritzer.

CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Sociological Theory
Creating Sociological Theory
Defining Sociological Theory
Creating Sociological Theory: A More Realistic View
Overview of the Book
Summary
Suggested Readings
CHAPTER 2 Classical Theories I
Émile Durkheim: From Mechanical to Organic Solidarity
Karl Marx: From Capitalism to Communism
Max Weber: The Rationalization of Society
Summary
Suggested Readings
CHAPTER 3 Classical Theories II
Georg Simmel: The Growing Tragedy of Culture
Thorstein Veblen: Increasing Control of Business Over Industry
George Herbert Mead: Social Behaviorism
W. E. B. Du Bois: Race and Racism in Modern Society
Summary
Suggested Readings
CHAPTER 4 Contemporary Grand Theories I
Structural Functionalism
Conflict Theory
General Systems Theory
Summary
Suggested Readings
CHAPTER 5 Contemporary Grand Theories II
Neo-Marxian Theory
The Civilizing Process
The Colonization of the Lifeworld
The Juggernaut of Modernity
Summary
Suggested Readings
CHAPTER 6 Contemporary Theories of Everyday Life
Symbolic Interactionism
Dramaturgy
Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
Exchange Theory
Rational Choice Theory
Summary
Suggested Readings
CHAPTER 7 Contemporary Integrative Theories
A More Integrated Exchange Theory
Structuration Theory
Culture and Agency
Habitus and Field
Summary
Suggested Readings
CHAPTER 8 Contemporary Feminist Theories
The Basic Theoretical Questions
The Classical Roots
Contemporary Feminist Theories
Challenges to Feminism
Summary
Suggested Readings
CHAPTER 9 Theories of Race and Colonialism
Fanon and the Colonial Subject
Postcolonial Theory
Critical Theories of Race and Racism
Racial Formation
A Systematic Theory of Race
Southern Theory and Indigenous Resurgence
Summary
Suggested Readings
CHAPTER 10 Postmodern Grand Theories
The Transition From Industrial to Postindustrial Society
Increasing Governmentality (and Other Grand Theories)
Postmodernity as Modernity’s Coming of Age
The Rise of Consumer Society, Loss of Symbolic Exchange, and Increase in Simulations
The Consumer Society and the New Means of Consumption
Queer Theory: Sex and Sexuality
Summary
Suggested Readings
CHAPTER 11 Globalization Theory
Major Contemporary Theorists on Globalization
Cultural Theory
Economic Theory
Political Theory
Summary
Suggested Readings
CHAPTER 12 Science, technology, and nature
Affect Theory and the New Materialism
Science Studies and Actor-Network Theory
Theories of the Anthropocene
Summary
Suggested Readings
Glossary
Source Acknowledgments