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Restless Ideas

Contemporary Social Theory in an Anxious Age

How do we make sense of the rise of political strongmen like Trump and Erdoğan, or the increase in hate crimes and terrorism? How can we understand Brexit and xenophobic, anti-immigrant sentiments and policies? More importantly, what can we do to make it all stop?

In Restless Ideas, Tony Simmons illustrates how social theory provides us with the skills for more informed observation, analysis and empathic understanding of social behaviour and social interaction. Social theory deepens our understanding of the world around us by empowering us to become practical theorists in our own lives.

Simmons traces the roots of contemporary social theory back to the works of the early structural functionalists, systems theorists, conflict theorists, symbolic interactionists, and ethnomethodologists, and incorporates contemporary social thinkers theorizing from the margins who are redefining the canon. Later chapters focus on the current influence of structuration theory, feminist and queer theory, Indigenous theory, third wave critical theory, postmodernism and poststructuralism, and liquid and late modernity theories and globalization theories.

Contributors

Tony Simmons

Tony Simmons teaches sociology at Athabasca University. He is the author of Revitalizing the Classics: What Past Social Theorists Can Teach Us Today and co-author of Reading Organizational Theory: A Critical Approach to the Study of Organizational Behaviour and Structure.
Chapter Title Contents Contributors Pages Year Price

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- 1 $0.10

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The Waning of the Western Worldview … 1 Eurocentrism and Its Discontents … 3 The Crumbling Canon of Social Theory: The Classics … 9 The Expanding Horizons of Contemporary Social … 20 $2.00

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Living on the Brink … 21 Social Theory in an Anxious Age … 23 An Age of Indeterminacy … 24 Looking Back at Twentieth-Century Sociological Theory … 27 Looking Around at … 26 $2.60

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Systems Are Everywhere … 47 Living in Systems … 52 A Brief History of the Social System … 53 The Language of Social Systems Theory … 55 From Anthropology to Sociology … 49 $4.90

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The Human Habit of Social Conflict … 96 Optimism, Pessimism or Realism? … 100 Origins of Conflict Theory … 102 Modern Sociological Conflict Theory … 105 The Structural … 42 $4.20

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The Modern Legacy of Karl Marx … 138 The Many Faces of Contemporary Marxism … 147 Critical Theory … 150 Structuralist Marxism … 150 Post-Marxism … 164 The … 43 $4.30

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The Critical Vision of the Frankfurt School … 181 The First Generation … 182 Herbert Marcuse … 187 The Second Generation … 194 Jürgen Habermas … 195 The Third … 51 $5.10

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The Rise of Microsocial Theories … 232 Other Microsocial Theories … 235 George Herbert Mead: Original Pioneer of Symbolic Interactionism … 239 The Vocabulary of Interactionism … 41 $4.10

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The Methods in Our Madness … 273 Studying the Common Sense Methods of Everyday Life … 275 What Ethnomethodologists Study … 281 The Vocabulary of Ethnomethodology … 282 … 38 $3.80

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The Postmodern Age … 311 What Is Postmodernism? … 314 Characteristics of Postmodernism … 315 The Roots of Postmodern Theories … 321 Michel Foucault: Pioneer of … 63 $6.30

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For Women, the Struggle Continues … 374 The Wave Narrative of Feminism … 376 The Many Faces of Feminism Today … 385 Standpoint Theory … 392 Intersectionality Theory … 44 $4.40

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Colonization and Knowledge … 418 Indigenous Knowledge … 421 The Decolonization of Indigenous Knowledge … 423 Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science: Beyond Contestation to … 23 $2.30

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What Is Late Modernity? … 441 From Modernism to Late Modernity: The Social Theories of Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu … 447 Structuration Theory of Anthony Giddens … 448 … 64 $6.40

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The Global Age … 505 The Many Voices of Globalization Theory … 512 Manuel Castells and the Network Society … 533 Ulrich Beck and the Risk Society … 538 References … 550 52 $5.20

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From the Crumbling Western Canon to the Hidden Global Heritage … 559 References … 561 5 $0.50

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- 19 $1.90