New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory

BRYAN S. TURNER is the Presidential Professor of Sociology and Director of the Mellon Committee for the Study of Religion, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York and Director of the Institute for Religion Politics and Society at the Australian Catholic University (Melbourne). He was the Alona Evans Distinguished Visiting Professor at Wellesley College (2009-10). His most recent publications are Religion and Modern Society (Cambridge 2011) and The Religious and the Political (Cambridge 2013). With Oscar Salemink, he edited the Routledge Handbook of Religions in Asia (2014). He is the founding editor with John O'Neill of the Journal of Classical Sociology (Sage) and with Irfan Ahmad the Journal of Religious and Political Practice (Routledge). He received the Max Planck Award in 2015 for research on secularization and modernity: social and religious pluralism, and is a Guest Professor at the University of Potsdam.

• List of Contributors viiiIntroduction: A New Agenda for Social Theory? 1Bryan S. TurnerPART I FOUNDATIONS 171 The Foundations of Social Theory 19Gerard Delanty2 Contemporary Sociological Theory: Post-Parsonian Developments 38John Holmwood3 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 60Patrick Baert and Fernando Domínguez RubioPART II ACTIONS, ACTORS, AND SYSTEMS 814 Theories of Social Action 83Rob Stones5 Functionalism and Social Systems Theory 106Giuseppe Sciortino6 Structuralism and Poststructuralism 124Daniel Chaffee and Charles Lemert7 Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics 141John Law8 Ethnomethodology and Social Theory 159Richard A. Hilbert9 Rational Choice Theory 179Raymond BoudonPART III PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANALYSIS 19710 Pragmatism and Symbolic Interactionism 199Jack Barbalet11 Phenomenology 218Michael G. Flaherty12 Feminist Theory 235Mary Evans13 Postmodern Social Theory 251Jan Pakulski14 Social Constructionism 281Darin Weinberg15 Conversation Analysis as Social Theory 300John Heritage16 Globalization Theory 321John Boli and Frank J. LechnerPART IV SOCIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 34117 Genetics and Social Theory 343Oonagh Corrigan18 Economic Sociology 360Richard Swedberg19 Cultural Sociology 378Isaac Reed and Jeffrey C. Alexander20 Historical Sociology 391Krishan Kumar21 The Sociology of Religion 409Michele Dillon22 Demography 428John MacInnes and Julio Pérez Díaz23 Science and Technology Studies: From Controversies to Posthumanist Social Theory 451Sophia Roosth and Susan SilbeyPART V NEW DEVELOPMENTS 47524 Mobilities and Social Theory 477John Urry25 Sociological Theory and Human Rights: Two Logics, One World 496Judith Blau and Alberto Moncada26 The Sociology of the Body 513Bryan S. Turner27 Cosmopolitanism and Social Theory 533Daniel Chernilo28 The Future of Social Theory 551Stephen TurnerIndex 567