Summary
Contents
Subject index
George Ritzer is one of the leading social and cultural commentators of the present day. In this essential new book he considers some of the main tendencies in contemporary social theory. Included here are Ritzer's latest reflections on the uses and misuses of metatheory. According to Ritzer, sociology is a multiparadigm science. The differences and intensities of rivalries between paradigms are often very confusing for students and even for professional sociologists. This book seeks to find a way out of the confusion by sketching out the lineaments of a new integrated sociological paradigm and demonstrates how this paradigm can be applied. It shows the various ways in which Ritzer has developed rationalization theory to shed light on professional integration, the shape of consumer culture, hyperrationality and the state of sociology today.
Metatheorizing in Sociology
Metatheorizing in Sociology
There is strong antipathy, at least on the surface, among many sociological theorists to abstract (Stinchcombe, 1986) and grand (Hirsch et al., 1987) theorizing. Opponents argue that the abstraction of sociological theory should be greatly circumscribed and that theories should be derived from, and remain close to, the social world. This hostility is surprising because sociological theory, by its very nature, must be abstract, at least to some degree. It is also surprising because it comes from theorists; one would expect empiricists and practitioners to be hostile to the abstraction of sociological theory, but not theorists. After all, there is a need for at least some portion of the sociological community to think abstractly: if not theorists, who will function ...
- Loading...