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
Benton, Ted: - Ted Benton is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, UK.
Holton, Robert J.: - ROBERT J. HOLTON is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Hughes, Jason: - Jason Hughes is Professor of Sociology at the University of Leicester, UK. His research interests span a range of concerns but include: the sociology of consumption; the sociology of the body and health; emotions, work and identity; figurational sociology and sociological theory; moral panics and regulation. His first book, Learning to Smoke (2003) was winner of the 2006 Norbert Elias prize. More recently he has completed, together with Eric Dunning, a major study of the work of Norbert Elias entitled Norbert Elias and Modern Sociology: Knowledge, Interdependence, Power, Process (2013). He has also recently published a number of edited books, including Visual Methods (2012) and Internet Research Methods (2012); and co-edited books, including Moral Panics and the Contemporary World (2013); Human Documents and Archival Research (2013) and Communities of Practice: Critical Perspectives (2007).
Matthewman, Steve: - STEVE MATTHEWMAN is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Outhwaite, William: - William Outhwaite is Chair and Professor of Sociology at Newcastle University, UK. His recent publications include The Future of Society (2006), European Society (2008), Habermas (2nd edn, 2009) and, with Larry Ray, Social Theory and Postcommunism (2005). His work focuses on social and political change in Europe since 1989, for which he was awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.
Stones, Rob: - ROB STONES is Professor in Sociology at the University of Essex, UK.
